By Cllr Stephen Conway
We all have our own wish-lists of items on which we would like the borough council to spend more money.
Councillors have their own personal preferences, too, but we have to consider the whole range of council services.
We try to balance competing demands for additional funding, thinking not of short-term popularity but of long-term need.
The pressure to decide between competing demands has increased enormously at a time when councils’ budgets are experiencing the double whammy of inflation and increased demand for services.
For Wokingham, the challenge is made greater by historic underfunding by central government.
Recently, ministers belatedly acknowledged our particular needs, thanks in large measure to the representations made by more than 1,000 of the borough’s residents. But the additional money we received is unfortunately nowhere near enough to cover either inflationary pressures or increased demand.
We still have to find an additional £16 million, through savings or income generation, in the coming financial year.
Wokingham Borough Council is responsible for a very wide range of spending areas, from planning and highways to social care for the elderly and support for adults and children battling with physical or mental health problems.
Money allocated to one area of need is inevitably money not spent in another area of the council’s responsibilities. Sadly, we simply do not have the resources to support all areas to the extent that we would want.
The situation would be appreciably worse if we did not focus a lot of effort on managing the council’s finances as efficiently and effectively as we can.
A council that has run out of money cannot provide the services that some of our residents desperately need, let alone those that are desirable but not absolutely essential.
We know what happens when councils or governments behave irresponsibly and promise increases in spending that cannot be afforded.
In the case of councils, if they run down their reserves to a dangerously low level and are unable to set a balanced budget, they are liable to have their powers given to government-appointed inspectors, who cut all services to a statutory minimum and usually insist on a council tax increase double the government’s cap.
In the case of governments, as we saw in September 2022 with the disastrous Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget, irresponsibility has even graver consequences.
The markets, recognising that the mini-budget’s promise of tax cuts and extra spending did not add up, lost confidence in Sterling, leading to a dramatic rise in interest rates that hit mortgage holders very hard.
Sound finances matter. If irresponsible promises are made to win votes, we all suffer sooner or later.
Cllr Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Twyford
