By Cllr Clive Jones
Congratulations to Liz Truss on becoming Prime Minister this is the pinnacle of her career. I hope she takes the opportunity to reset the relationship between central government and local government.
Local government is in desperate need of proper funding. Funding that has been refused by successive Conservative Prime Ministers.
Wokingham is struggling to balance its budget. Last year the Conservatives had to use £2m of reserves to balance its budget.
We can’t continue to do this.
We haven’t been left enough in the reserves by the last Conservative administration to continue to top up budgets from reserves.
We are seeing an increase in demand for council services and expect this to continue considerably as the cost of living crisis bites even harder over the next year.
We also have the added complication that the Conservatives budget last year was too optimistic on many revenue fronts such as car park and leisure income, so there will be big shortfalls in income budgets this year.
The biggest area of concern is inflation.
It is now forecast to rise to 18% next year. If this happens it will have a huge impact on the councils costs.
It will also make life very difficult for residents having to cope with further massive increases in food bills, energy bills and fuel bills.
Liberal Democrats are working very hard to make sure we have a balanced budget. However, Wokingham Borough Council won’t know what support the council will get from the government until a few days before Christmas, we will also only get a settlement for one year.
This makes it very difficult for the Council to plan its budgets.
Previous Council leaderships also complained about this poor financial management by central government.
The government have been promising a two- to three-year Local government settlement for years but it never happens, making it very difficult for local councils to plan their spending.
It’s not just difficult for Wokingham Borough Council; other Borough, District, and County councils across the country also have difficulty in setting thier budgets.
I will be writing to the new Levelling Up Secretary Simon Clarke who is also responsible Local government asking for a fairer settlement for local government as soon as possible and hopefully way before Christmas.
I will also be writing to him continuing my campaign to get housing numbers down in Wokingham.
Mr Clarke is the third Secretary of State with responsibility for Local government in the last three months.
It’s been three months since the Lib Dems have been responsible for the council in Wokingham, so the third Secretary of State we have had to try and work with.
Three Secretaries of state in three months shows just how seriously the Conservatives take Local government, or perhaps not.
I will also be continuing my campaign with the new Secretary of State for Health, Therese Coffey, to make sure she ensures that the proposed reforms for Adult Social Care which come into effect in October 2023 are funded properly.
At the moment there are no plans by the Conservatives to fund these reforms properly which is likely to mean that many councils up and down the country will go bust. I know this is a concern to other councils in the South east and some of our MPs, but there is no sign that the government is listening or considering help for councils.
This Liberal Democrat council is very pro-bus, unlike the previous Conservative administration. In the first few hours of us taking on the administration of the Council in May we had to find hundreds of thousands of pounds to keep 18 bus services that the Conservatives had not budgeted to continue. These are currently protected to the end of March 2023.
In May, I wrote to Grant Shapps who was then the Secretary of State for Transport asking him to provide councils with funds to support Local bus services. He has been sacked by the new Prime Minister because he supported the other candidate, Rishi Sunak. I will continue my campaign for proper funding for buses by writing to the new Secretary of State for Transport Anne Marie Trevelyan asking her to fund buses in Wokingham properly.
The new Prime Minister Liz Truss must act on the energy crisis as fast as possible by scrapping the hike in the energy cap due on October 1.
Liberal democrats have called for this for several weeks, but the Conservatives haven’t been listening. Businesses as well as individuals need to be helped. If something isn’t done to help with the energy crisis, we will be heading for a very serious recession.
This will be disastrous for the residents of Wokingham and for the many small businesses in our communities.
Cllr Clive Jones is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and Lib Dem member for Hawkendon ward
