Agenda item

Councillor John Halsall, Leader of the Council 2020/21 Budget Statement

Minutes:

Last May, I was honoured that you elected me Leader of the Council.  It has been a huge pleasure to work with our Chief Executive, the Executive, Directors, the Officer Team and Councillors.  In eight months, we have covered a lot of ground and launched some important initiatives.

 

Mr Mayor, it gives me great pleasure to propose this budget put before you this evening. The formulation of this year’s budget has involved a level of transparency and collaboration like no other.  The Opposition in Overview and Scrutiny has been able to input their comments and concerns throughout the process, which has significantly benefited from this approach. Long may it continue.  I commend both John Kaiser and Graham Ebers for taking this significant and positive step.

 

Some Members give me the feeling that they are confused between the revenue and capital account.  There are those, who have long experience of private sector IFRS, indeed lecture others, and assume that public sector conventions are the same. They are not.  Grant funding sometimes determines categorisation. i.e. if the grant says its capital it is capital and if the grant funding says it is revenue – it is revenue.

 

Nevertheless, our fiscal rules are to maintain our revenue reserves – indeed this budget sees them increased back to over £10m which we regard as prudent.

 

Our Council tax proposal is at 1.99%, below inflation at 2.7%; in addition, we have taken advantage of the 2%, which is ring-fenced for Adult Social Care. It is instructive to note that whilst most town and parish precept increases are in line with inflation or below, Liberal controlled Earley Town Council is pushing their precept up by 10.4% making it up to the second highest precept in the Borough.  Twyford Parish Council by 25% where two Liberal Councillors hold sway.  Wokingham Town is increasing its precept by 4.5%.  Woodley Town Council’s precept of £112.88, the lowest precept for Woodley since 2008/9, but is still suffering from £114.65 precept they inherited in 2014/15, after 40 years I believe of Liberal administration.  A too familiar tale I feel.

 

The Medium Term Financial Plan should be read in conjunction with the Community Vision and Corporate Delivery Plan, which I will be proposing shortly.

 

Our central mission is to keep our residents safe, secure and happy and to provide the very best services that we can.

 

We are all of course acutely aware of the pressures we have faced in Children's Services over the past years with an increase of 164% in children on protection plans and a 44% increase in children in care.  This budget not only provides the resource needed to meet these unavoidable costs but provides investment to enable our community to receive a Children's Services offer rated as “Good” for the first time.

 

The Revenue budget also adds an additional £4.8m into Adults Services for our increasing elderly population.

 

It also contains additional capital financing costs that will enable £9m extra borrowing for the surfacing of our roads.

 

Our proposed Capital Programme is a budget which invests £185m in roads and transportation, which includes tackling congestion on our roads.  It is a budget which invests £50m on Climate Emergency.  It is a budget which invests over £70m into improving services for our essential frontline of Children’s Services, Adult Social Care and Environmental facilities across the Borough.  It is also a Capital Programme that provides over £200m on regenerating our Borough, providing homes and enabling the Council to generate valuable income streams from its expanding Commercial Agenda.

 

Capital borrowing is asset backed.  As a local authority, we have recourse to funds from the Treasury fixed for the duration at the time when the debt is contracted.  As we had originally predicted, debt peaks in 2022/23 but declines rapidly thereafter.  This debt is not to fund spending but to purchase assets which remain and appreciate and generates much needed income for services.  We have not predicted any asset sales.  One of our largest debt is due for our purchasing of our social housing, whose asset value is many times the debt we incurred and allows us to retain all the rents we collect from our residents to be used to maintain their homes to decent standards and finance additional social homes.

 

Wokingham consistently ranks amongst the top ten most desirable places to live in the country.  It is known as the Silicon Valley of the UK.  It is one of the lowest areas of deprivation, which is a credit to the efficacy of the Council, its Officers and Members.  Yet its success raises concerns.  Having a low level of deprivation results in the lowest funding of any unitary in the UK for both the Council and one of the lowest for GP surgeries, if not the lowest.  We have the dubious honour of being, I understand, one of the highest vehicle concentrations per household in the UK.

 

Being a very desirable place to live,we are a prime target for developers.  Whilst there is always the talk of a slowdown, it seems that there is no real problem with selling houses at a premium in the Borough.  The only protected land is the small amount of green belt in the northern parishes.  The high retail price of houses compared to the average income within the Borough drives the Government to instruct us to build some 800 homes per annum for the foreseeable future when the Office of National Statistics growth of the Borough is expected to be around 450.  Mr Mayor, I fundamentally disagree with the Government’s approach and agree with our residents that we should be obliged to take a very much lower level of housing perhaps even lower that the Office of National Statistics growth.