To receive any statements by the Leader of the Council and Executive Members.
In accordance with Procedure Rule 4.2.23 the total time allocated to this item shall not exceed 20 minutes, and no Member shall speak for more than 5 minutes.
Minutes:
Stephen Conway, Leader of the Council:
As we have heard already, the Council is planning to vacate its Shute End headquarters as part of its efforts to save money in these challenging times. It is only right and proper that when we are having to make savings, the Council’s estate should make a contribution. Though many of us are emotionally attached to it, and I have to say I am one of those people, I have spent many happy hours in this Council Chamber, this building is far too expensive to run in our current circumstances. Jackie might care to note that thanks to modern, flexible, working practices, especially working part of the week from home, a building of this size is no longer needed. We can therefore save the council taxpayer money by moving to smaller accommodation that is cheaper to run. Associated with this move away from this idea of a big central headquarters is a community hub model, and we are exploring this at present to see if we can decentralise the way the Council interacts with our community. This would bring the Council and its services into the main communities of the Borough, so I wanted to update colleagues on that, and explain why vacating Shute End is the right thing to do.
Sarah Kerr, Executive Member for Climate Emergency and Resident Services:
I just wanted to update on three parts of my portfolio. Firstly, the website went live in July. The previous one was built with old technology and was at the end of its life, and it caused many frustrations for residents. This is just the beginning of the development. We have launched what is known as Minimum Viable Product. It is already improving user satisfaction and making services more visible to vulnerable residents. The new site is also more accessible, particularly for those with disabilities. We are going to continue to improve and develop the website based on data and feedback. Enhancing digital services like our website benefits all residents and saves time by preventing avoidable problems. This enables us to focus on helping those who cannot use digital services or need a more personal non digital approach, and I would just like to take a moment to thank the officers who have worked so hard. This has been a really tough job to do, and they have done an exceptional job, so thank you very much.
I would also just like to highlight some progress in the domestic abuse part of my portfolio. The statutory duties that we have for domestic abuse are actually quite narrow, and the majority of the victims that we support do not actually fall under these statutory duties, but it is obviously the right thing that we morally do. We also do a lot of work in preventative stuff as well, and many of you will be aware of the Council’s home refuge service. Something else that I wanted to mention was that we now have put domestic abuse specialists sitting in different parts of the Council, including in the Housing team, Children’s Services, and Adult Services. Domestic abuse is often hidden. Many victims are survivors themselves, not recognising that they are suffering abuse from a perpetrator, and it is often difficult for those in professions such as social care, to identify that there is abuse. We have listened to feedback and recognise that having independent domestic violence advisors as part of these teams, is crucial to ensure that the domestic abuse lens is applied, protecting and providing support in the right places, and not allowing the abuse to continue or get worse.
Finally, I wanted to provide the news that we have got confirmation now from National Grid and Scottish and Southern Electric Network, that we can proceed to our original timeline on the Barkham Solar Farm. It has been a monumental effort. There have been about 1,300 projects in the country that were in the situation that we were in. We are one of just ten that have been given the green light to go ahead. The transmission issue has been rectified. I would like to thank firstly Bouygues as our contractor who have been absolutely brilliant through this. They have been patient, providing support and working with us to help on this issue. We are in conversations about getting them remobilised again once we have got the final details, and that contract variation. I would like to thank SSEN and National Grid as well. We have been holding tripartite discussion with them and they have been incredibly helpful. I would just like to pass on my thanks to them. Most importantly though, I want to give officers my heartfelt thanks, and many officers have been involved, but two in this room, our CEO and Deputy Chief Executive have been involved in these discussions. The work that has gone into this, to be in that position, to be at the forefront of these changes that we are seeing in the Grid and what is happening, comes from the hard work that you have put in and the lobbying that has gone on. It has just been phenomenal. I just want to take a moment to thank you.
Prue Bray, Executive Member Children’s Services:
I think that you all know that at the end of August the Executive approved a new Home to School Transport policy that will apply from September 2024. I am very grateful to the Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee, to officers and my fellow Executive Members for the work that they have put into the formulation of the new policy.
There is one aspect of that new policy that I would like to draw your attention to this evening because it has not had much of an airing, and I think it needs one, not least because without some form of explanation it risks being misunderstood. This is about how the policy deals with low income families. Where a child is eligible for free school meals or if a parent with whom they live is in receipt of Maximum Working Tax Credit, the rules for eligibility for free transport are slightly more generous than for other children. However, there will still be children who do not meet the criteria for free school transport but who attend a school beyond the maximum safe walking distance, and usually this is because their parents have chosen that school. In the past the Council’s offering for these children has a been a discount on the full cost of a farepayer place on a school bus. That offer was not written into the wording of the policy itself but did appear on the application form for a farepayer place. We will no longer be explicitly offering that discount. Before you all start expressing shock and horror, this is not because we want to make life more difficult for families who are struggling. I would ask you to note that a discount on a farepayer place is no good to anyone who lives in an area of the Borough where there is no Council operated bus that runs to your school, which is quite a lot of the Borough, or where there are not enough places left on school buses for all the people who want them, as is the case in Shinfield this year. To give you some idea of how many people actually use this discount, it was fewer than 1% of the children registered for free school meals. I would also point out that the discount we offered has in the past made the cost just a little bit cheaper than a Reading Buses bus pass, but that a farepayer place only entitles the child to get to school and back, for the official start and end of the school day, on that specific bus, whereas a bus pass is much more flexible. Finally, if a family is actually struggling with the cost of transport, the likelihood is that they are going to be struggling financially in other way, and the offer of a discount on a farepayer place, even if one is available may not really be the answer.
So, what are we doing instead? The answer is looking at it differently. Where a child is not entitled to free transport but is on free school meals or a parent that they live with, is on Maximum Working Tax Credit, we will look at directing them to sources of wider help if they request it. We also have the right to exercise discretion with regards to transport. This is written very clearly into the policy now. This is not, I am not making a promise that we will provide transport for people who are not eligible for it, but what I doing is making a statement that we will consider the circumstances of every individual child and what is in their best interest, and do our best to help in a more holistic way than we have done up to now.
Imogen Shepherd-Dubey, Executive Member for Finance:
I thought it was about time that I gave you an update on our current financial situation. All councils are finding their finances are being subjected to significant unprecedented inflation, and we particularly receive inadequate levels of grant funding from Central Government. Like everyone else we are dealing with escalating costs but particularly in protecting and providing support for vulnerable adults and children. Councils across the country are having to make unpopular decisions, as we are doing, just to keep going, and I wonder how long it will take before this government actually acknowledges the crisis that our public services are having, which certainly includes local government.
Here in Wokingham Borough, we receive just over £400 less for an average household per year in our Government grant than other similar councils. Just think about that for a minute in terms of how much council tax we each pay. Our council tax is capped, and I would certainly not want to suggest rising it above that level, and it would disproportionally affect those less able to pay. The Government grant also does not factor in the reality of the high cost of living in Wokingham Borough, which makes the costs of council services higher too. Essentially the Government’s method of calculating this grant has created a grossly unfair deal for our residents and we need a better deal.
So, since the Liberal Democrats took control of our Council finances, we have been working hard with our officers to reduce outgoings and to match our shrinking real terms income. We have also had to find funding to cover the holes in the budget left by the previous administration. One of the clear differences since the change of control is our external borrowing, which is now significantly under better control and much more manageable. We are using more of our residents’ money to pay for what we need, rather than paying interest on external loans.
Wokingham Town Centre regeneration cost over £150million to build. It is not making anywhere near the amounts that we were promised when the regeneration started under the Conservatives. However, it currently has a manageable debt of now £95million and we are making around £2million per year after interest payments. We also have the investment properties in our Community Infrastructure Fund. This fund has sadly decreased in value by nearly £9million since the properties were purchased under the previous administration again. We are currently viewing the losses, but the portfolio as a whole is still generating nearly £4million per year in rental income for the Council. Going forwards the Liberal Democrats intend to only add to this portfolio if there is a property of community value to our residents in the Borough. Our recent care home acquisition was part of this, and will serve the residents by reducing our overall care costs.
Moving on to our Treasury Management. It has been publicly reported that we loaned £10million to Woking Borough Council, and it is certainly not a bad thing. We have actually loaned money to four different councils this year, and it is a very common practice amongst councils to lend each other funds, and it has been routinely happening here without incident for more than 20 years. These investments are agreed by all councillors on this Council as part of our Treasury Management Strategy in February Council meeting. These loans will bring in over £1million of interest by the middle of next year and will help us plug our revenue deficit. If you have not realised, investing in Councils is not the same as investing in most businesses, or indeed Icelandic banks as the previous administration found out. This is because councils provide statutory services and are underwritten by Central Government using Public Works Loan Board for loans, and even if a Council is as broken as Woking with over £2billion debt caused by the Conservative administration, their existing contracts and financial commitments will be paid. Because no council has ever defaulted on its loans, and it is a factor that makes local authorities one of the safest places for us to invest Wokingham Borough Council’s money. The only risk would be is if Central Government as a whole was to go bankrupt, which with our current state of leadership is more of a possibility than I would like to think. In the Wokingham example we were getting the £10million returned in March with an additional £50,000 of interest. I cannot think of a bank that would offer that rate of return for a 9 month loan. Much of this money is part of ringfenced CIL money and grants, and are waiting for projects to start, but it makes far more financial sense for us to make this work for us in the meantime, and it is a good example of treasury management.
With all that is said we cannot and should not underestimate the size of the challenge of the financial deficit that we do have. We are additionally inviting residents to take part in our forthcoming budget engagement survey, where they can help us shape how the Council makes decisions to save taxpayers money. In all that we are doing we are committed to ensuring that there is minimal impact on our frontline services, and we are prioritising protecting those who need our help the most. It is for this journey that we have our officers to thank and all the hard work that they put into this every single day.