From the Chamber: what does the council do for me?

I am not sure if everyone truly understands what Wokingham Borough Council does for them. Most of the day to day complaints we get as Councillors relate to Potholes, Streetlights and Grass cutting, which in financial terms are actually quite a small part of the services we provide. Nearly 70% of your Council Tax money is spent on paying for care of the elderly and disabled, looking after children and getting children to school. WBC also provides libraries, leisure centres, parks, play areas, bus services, Coroners, Registry services, Planning Application services, just to name a few things, but all of these things are delivered by the officers of the Council, with only the interests of serving our residents at heart.

SO, talking about our costs, Adult Social Care work is very labour intensive work and many will tell you that it is very rewarding, but the salary increases in National Insurance from April are expected to increase the costs of running this service for Wokingham Borough Council’s residents by £3.5M. Wokingham Borough Council expects its own staffing costs to also rise by £1.5M, from April. We received a government grant to help with this, but it was only for £1.2M, leaving us £3.8M short in total in our income, next year, just to cover the National Insurance Increases alone.

On top of this, the grant we receive from Central Government was reduced by a further £1m. This is because Wokingham Borough Council is perceived to be a wealthy area with low levels of deprivation and the government thinks we need less money to run services for our residents. However, this calculation does not factor in the cost of providing services in the area or the numbers of people needing help and gives us very few options for leveraging an income from those who can truly afford to pay more. Our Council Tax will increase by 4.99%, which is in line with similar Council’s in the country and the maximum we are allowed to raise it by, but central government are making the assumption that we will raise it to that level. If we do not, our grants will reduced further, next year because it will be considered that we don’t need the money.

Impower, an independent research consultancy, have ranked Wokingham as the 5th most efficient Council in the country, getting the best value out of every pound that we have. It is something to be proud of, but it does require us to make decisions that are not always popular and residents may not always understand where the process is going. However, protecting those who need our help the most and consulting with residents about the problems we face are absolutely part of our key values.

Cllr Imogen Shepherd-DuBey is Executive member for Finance and Governance, and Ward Member for Emmbrook.