Agenda item

The Leader made the following statement:

“During the first four months of this Administration, we have found some very difficult financial issues that we as an Executive will have to deal with.

The previous Administration used £2.2m of reserves to plug the gap they had in this year’s budget. They chose to raid reserves rather than take tough decisions like increases in car park charges. Taking £2.2m from reserves for the current financial year meant the general reserve forecast was reduced to £9m at 31^st March 2023. Dealing with the revenue shortfall like this means the hole remains for the year 2023-24. This has to be addressed by this Administration.

We can’t use general reserves again because this will reduce them to below £7m which is something our finance director would not allow us to do. It is of course something that we would not want to do. We don’t want the government to be crawling all over us like they are in Labour controlled Slough and Conservative Thurrock.

As well as these shortfalls left by the previous Administration there are other serious budgeting issues. 

• 18 bus services were not properly budgeted for after Sept/Oct    
• There was no provision to complete the Winnersh triangle Park & Ride – the previous Administration knew about the overspend of £1.3m for six months but did nothing and certainly didn’t budget to finish the project.
• There is no specific provision in the budget for food caddy liners and they thought they could buy the same number of blue bags this year for the same price money they spent on them last year. No thought of inflation and no thought of increases in oil prices, of course the bags are made from oil. 
• There is a projected shortfall in the car park revenue budget of up to £800,000

All these issues together with the long term impact of COVID-19, Brexit, rapidly escalating costs and interest rates give us, the new Administration unprecedented challenges to deal with.

We don’t want to increase car park charges, but there is no alternative, more of this issue later in the agenda.

I have been in meetings with council leaders from all over the Southeast of England and they are having the same issues that we are having with increased demand for services and dealing with inflation. One Council Leader with years of experience said the current round of budget making was, and I quote, terrible, terrible, terrible. They had not known a year like it when there were so many budget deficits as a result of emerging financial pressures.

Many additional ways of reducing costs or increasing income will need to be considered across all Council services, in addition to raising car parking charges, to ensure our financial viability and enable us to deliver the vital services needed by our residents. These will be presented to Overview and Scrutiny over the coming months, and I need to stress that this work will be extremely challenging.

It’s just as well we are running the Administration now. We will not hesitate to take difficult decisions to keep our budgets balanced.”