By Clive Jones
The Local Government Association has been having its annual conference this week in Harrogate.
The event is attended by many Council Leaders, Council Chief Executives, and senior politicians from all over the country.
Itis a good opportunity for councillors from all political parties to meet and share best practice with others and discuss the challenges that their respective authorities face in the months and years ahead.
Its been usual for the Council Leader and others to attend to represent Wokingham. I was particularly keen to attend on Tuesday because Michael Gove was going to be addressing the conference in his capacity as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
I was hoping that I would get the opportunity to speak to him.
When I became the Leader of Wokingham Borough Council five weeks ago my first action was to write to Mr Gove asking to meet with him so we could discuss ideas to reduce the numbers of new houses that the government were forcing onto Wokingham, currently nearly 800 a year.
Before his speech, I and around 15-20 other council Leaders from around the country got the opportunity for an informal conversation with Mr Gove.
In my couple of minutes with him he committed to come to Wokingham. This is really good news because he will be able to gauge for himself the strength of feeling that there is against the governments excessive housing numbers for Wokingham. I realise that as Secretary of State (a cabinet minister) he has a particularly busy schedule so we will do our best to fit in with him.
An issue for councils in the last few years has been the one-year financial settlements from the government. Several years ago, financial settlements were for more than one year. This makes it very difficult for councils to plan their expenditure for the coming years.
Mr Gove announced that there would be a two-year settlement next year. This is of course a step in the right direction. Three years would have been better, we can hope that will follow in 2025.
He was keen to address geographic inequalities and support the most vulnerable in society. I am sure we can all agree with those words, there wern’t however any details of how he intends to do this. I was encouraged when he said that no one has a monopoly of good ideas, meaning no political party has a monopoly of good ideas.
I certainly agree with that statement which is why we are happy to work with other political groups on the council.
We have created the Wokingham Borough Partnership with Labour and Independent councillors and it is working well. Sadly, our offers to work with the Conservatives have been refused.
They were offered the Vice Chair of the powerful Overview and Scrutiny Management committee and the Chair of the Health Overview and Scrutiny committee. They refused to take either position.
I am looking forward to working with Mr Gove and his team to see what we can do to get housing numbers down for Wokingham.
Cllr Clive Jones is the leader of the council, and ward member for Hawkedon
