I hope you had a happy Easter. Easter is a time of renewal and hope for a better future. With all the terrible things happening in the world right now, it seems to me that clinging onto hope is more important than ever.
The dreadful things happening in various parts of the globe put our own challenges into perspective. The conflict and international division we see on our screens remind us how fortunate we are not to be experiencing the daily horrors of war.
Easter, spring, and war in the world have encouraged me to reflect again on how much our own area has to offer and how I should value things I all too often take for granted.
In Wokingham Borough, we are blessed with beautiful countryside and wonderful country parks. We have lively urban centres, served by great local shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs, and leisure businesses. We have good and socially minded local employers, big, medium, and small, offering many different job opportunities. We have great schools and a world-class university. We have wonderful local charitable and voluntary organizations, dedicated to making life easier for those who need a helping hand. We also have committed town and parish councils, covering all parts of the borough, which do excellent work supporting their local communities.
And we have a great community spirit. In the various towns and villages of Wokingham Borough, there are many people who are not just focused on themselves and their families, but care about the place they live and devote time and effort to making their communities strong. It never ceases to amaze me what a wide range of clubs and societies there are in the borough, catering to almost every conceivable interest and need.
These clubs and societies help to bring people together. They also provide social interaction for those who might otherwise be isolated and lonely. We all benefit from meeting people. Numerous studies show that good health and mental wellbeing is helped by social contact.
The borough council tries, despite the limited financial resources available to it, to work with the grain of this strong sense of community and local action. Our job as a council is not just to provide local services, but also to facilitate and support the good work undertaken by others.
Partnership has been a key part of the approach of the current administration at Wokingham Borough Council. We have built upon existing partnerships with the local charitable sector and business. We have forged a new strategic partnership with the University of Reading, which gives us access to its expertise on climate change, business support, and employment and skills. We are working more closely than ever with other councils: we played a key part in the creation of the Berkshire Prosperity Board, which brings together the six Berkshire unitary councils in a productive partnership to bid for external funding for major projects. Our town and parish councils are no less important partners. We are building a new relationship with them, to ensure that we work together more effectively to maximize our ability to serve the local communities of the borough.
Partnership working is not always easy. Like all relationships, partnerships go through their difficult times and need to be sustained by commitment and effort on all sides. But the benefits they bring are indisputable. Pooling knowledge, experience, and resources helps us all to support the borough better. The lesson I have learned over the past three years is that we can achieve much more together than we can on our own.
By Cllr Stephen Conway
