By Cllr Stephen Conway
We live in testing times. Over the last seven years, we have faced challenge after challenge – Brexit, Covid, and now the war in Ukraine.
Not since the Second World War has there been such a prolonged period of crisis and disruption.
For those of us who have become accustomed to improving living standards and rising expectations in every area of life, it has all been very unsettling.
For every household in the land, changes have had to be made to adapt to a tumultuous world. Most of us have faced a squeeze on our finances; some have been plunged into real hardship.
Councils are also feeling the pinch. Inflation, combined with rising demand for services and high interest rates, is forcing unpopular savings in public services. In some cases, the financial pressures have been so great that they have driven councils into insolvency, or close to it. This has happened in Slough, Woking, Thurrock, and now Hastings.
Birmingham, one of the biggest councils in the country, has had to stop all new spending to remain afloat.
A council that has gone bankrupt serves no one.
The government sends in commissioners, who impose draconian cuts in services and increase the council tax by much more than the government’s cap.
Wokingham has avoided this fate, despite receiving less core funding from central government than any unitary authority in England (unitary authorities are responsible for Adult Social Care and Children’s Services, by far the biggest areas of council expenditure).
We have survived because we have bitten the bullet and made vital savings to enable us to remain solvent while continuing to provide help to those who are most in need – including the most vulnerable elderly members of our community and disabled children with daily challenges of a kind most of us can only imagine, as well as the most acutely affected by the current cost-of-living crisis.
Adversity can bring out the worst in people. It can lead to selfishness (looking after number one) and scapegoating (it’s their fault).
All too easily, it can fray the bonds between individuals and groups that create a cohesive and supportive society.
But adversity can also bring out the best in people.
In the Second World War, Britain survived in no small part due to what became known as ‘wartime spirit’ – a focus on what really matters and a willingness to put others first and recognize the importance of helping those who are less fortunate than yourself. We need that spirit now, as we confront challenges almost as great as those faced by the wartime generation.
Your borough council is committed to do its best to protect core services in the most challenging financial environment in living memory.
We have to make savings in some areas to have enough money to protect the services that affect people’s lives fundamentally – Adult Social Care and Children’s Services – and to help those driven into desperate circumstances by the cost-of-living crisis.
I believe that most of you will endorse this strategy for survival in difficult times. Most people will support the idea of making savings in areas of the council’s activities that make a less than profound difference to people’s lives, rather than making savings where they will cause real harm.
The opposition, of course, will seek to make political capital out of each and every saving that we are obliged to make.
But I am confident that you, the good people of the borough, will understand that tough decisions have to made to balance the books and maintain our support for the most vulnerable and least well-off members of our community.
Cllr Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Twyford
