Wokingham’s Liberal Democrat led Council always claims it gets a very low grant from the government and is left to struggle , forcing it to make cuts in spending.
This was not what the independent IFS thought in their review. Looking at the 2022/23 budget figures they concluded that “No local government in England receives more funding to carry out its services relative to needs than Wokingham Borough Council. ” They calculated from comparisons that Wokingham got £261 per head more in grants than its needs.
Core spending power per head is the highest of all Berkshire Councils apart from Slough, and is up 63% since 2019. So there should be no excuse for poor services and no reason to claim they are underfunded.
Nor does the Councillor pleading of poverty reflect what the Council does, as it is making large increases in spending, specialising in wasteful projects and unwanted and risky investments in energy and property.
When the former Leader of the Council Mr Jones said the “government has reduced funding for Wokingham Borough Council by £ 1m” it is difficult to see this figure in the accounts, and it is a very small figure in relation to total spending and total grants. He also thought social care took up 60% of the Council’s allocation. He seems to have missed out schools and education in its entirety to get to this odd figure.
Wokingham has not filed accounts for 2024/5 yet. The 2023/4 annual figures showed total spending of £427 m , up by £53 m or 12.5% on the previous year. Total grants came to £198.7m or 46% of expenditure. There was an additional £93 m of direct government funding of Academies in the area. Schools at 28% of the budget or £120 m was the biggest single spending area, with a Schools grant of £90 m. The Council had £84 m of S 106 developer contribution payments at its disposal. It was “investing” £36.5m within a capital programme costing £73 m.
The Lib Dem Councillors should read the accounts and seek to manage the money better. Their public statements imply they either do not understand the large sums they are handling, or wish to suppress wider knowledge of just how much they spend. I will look at how all this money could be better managed in future postings. I have highlighted before the kind of waste they go in for. There was the £5.5m changes to a roundabout, strenuously opposed by local residents, that entailed painting coloured leaves all over the road. There is the “investment” in a solar farm.
Around the country there is a lack of informed debate about the huge sums Councils control and spend, what they get for all that money and how they could spare the taxpayers some of their large demands upon them.Instead we are told every year there are cuts, when the budgets keep ballooning and the Council tax soars.
May 4, 2025
Not their money so what do they care. They will doubtless continue to piss it away on net zero lunacy, anti nuclear signs, DEI, road blocking, unused bike lanes, motorist mugging, landlord mugging, over paid and over pensioned staff… good to see Nigel Farage warn employees working on diversity or climate change initiatives to seek ‘alternative careers’ – perhaps in pot hole repairs, increasing road capacity, switching off anti-car traffic light or efficient refuse collection?
May 4, 2025
Our council previously limp dump disguised as Independent put a cycle lane in reconfiguring the junction at a cost of half a million
It has been fenced off because it’s so dangerous. Now they’re spending over a million quid redoing the town centre in some ridiculous concrete monstrosity.
We have 5 Turkish barbers and 4 nail bars all opened within the last 2 years
The major retailer has closed and the place is more like downtown Karachi. 14 years of tory failure and 4 more years of 2TK slash and burn. The council is now Reform let’s hope they deliver.
May 4, 2025
The amount of money wasted on absurd junctions, bus lanes, roundabouts, bike lanes, anti-car traffic lights, road blocking islands is absurd especially in Cambridge for example. More to do with cash cow cameras than efficient transport!
May 4, 2025
Quite so on bicycle lanes. I have noticed around where I live how considerate motorists are of cyclists, given the new rules, waiting for sufficient road space to overtake the bikist, giving a wide berth, cycle lane or no.
Sir J. has missed the spending on Wokingham employees and change in number, perhaps since it ceased to be a Tory council. I’d venture to suggest that it was the protest vote against the incompetence of consecutive central government Tory leaders that lost this council with many good Conservative councillors.
May 4, 2025
So Miliband fires the fragrant Mary Archer, one of the fee rather more sensible and knowledgable of his advisors.
He now wants to ban gas boilers in new houses & force them to use expensive to install and use (as they need far expensive electricity not gas) and for them all to have solar cells on the houses. Even if in cloudy northern locations under listed trees or shade from other buildingd and perhaps facing the wrong way!
So that will add about £40k+ to each new build typically 20% up. The solar cell pay back time will probably be never after finance costs, cleaning costs, depreciation, stamp duty, grid connections, insurance increases… plus you get the electricity in summer day time but the heat pump needs in on cold winter days and nights. Total engineering insanity.
May 4, 2025
As you said yesterday the cancelling of many local elections in clearly pro the Pro-Reform areas was wrong indeed appalling gerrymandering. It was done with the connivance of Labour and the Tories.
Reply The Conservative Leader and MPs opposed the postponement. If you wish to criticise the Conservative party find out their policies first. This is not a Conservative party website.
May 4, 2025
Perhaps I am wrong on this if so I am sorry but I understand and suspect there was some behind the scenes co-operation in some regions but not formally from the top I agree!
It seems Robert Jenrick is happy with what Kemi is doing but what is she doing. She seem just to be saying we will not move on Net Zero, on the ECHR, on immigration levels, on size of government, on tax levels… and we will not move to the right. Not that these are rightwind policies just sensible ones.
Moving to the right a bit Kemi would only take you more to the centre given the Socialist Sunak agenda you stick to.
Reply Stop misrepresenting. Badenoch has renounced the past governments failure to control legal and to stop illegal migration . She has made it clear net zero is neither realistic nor affordable. She is working on policies for Manifesto 2028 that will produce very different outcomes in these two critical areas. Read her speeches, not spin in the Times. What matters and what concerns me and most voters is what the government is doing.
May 4, 2025
@Lifelogic – They just don’t get it they lost the last GE because of the directional drift, they also try to hide from us they sat there in cabinet with the collective responsibility to bring about all the ills the country suffers from. It was their choice, they own it – they could have changed everything become conservative but they refused.
I disagree with Sir John there, renouncing what you had the opportunity to change but chose to do nothing makes what you say now meaningless. Not removing other peoples laws when it was your brief to do so, seemingly to keep us tied to the EU says that’s also the opposite of renouncing.
I note that China has been building up it nuclear energy facilities now at 55 plants and 22 under construction. The are also about to open the worlds largest hydro facility. They don’t have a NetZero policy; they have a policy of creating wealth to fund tomorrow. In contrast the UK has a policy of destroying wealth creation, destroying and banning the funding for tomorrow before they have found alternatives.
As now the Previous Team in power chose to strengthen the UK’s decline
May 4, 2025
Interestingly the most dangerous form of electricty generation is HYDRO with millions killed by various barrage failures. We very nearly had a serious incident with that one that failed in Yorkshire (was it?) a few years back
May 4, 2025
From the Telegraph “Kemi Badenoch will not “chase Reform to the right””
We have those that try to be self-reliant, try to pay their own way for now and their future, take on personal responsibility, work to protect their families, their community, their country. As such they serve and contribute to society they make it a better place. Those are the things we attribute to the centre, the mainstream – not the right as those on the left that resort to insulting a whole nation would like to suggest.
We have a Parliament whose majority and personal ego’s think that fighting the people is their duty and anyone that doesn’t like that must be labelled ‘right’.
I am as yet not a Reform supporter, but they are demonstrating they are the centre, the mainstream of the country they support, those are the people they want to work with and for. There is nothing ‘right-wing’ in supporting your society and those that also work to contribute to it.
Labour/Tories/LibDems have talked themselves into being the unified nasty party of socialists, all with the same policies of fight the people, destroy the people, bring them to heel for the sake of personal, very personal, self-esteem. Not one of their MPs have suggested creating a resilient self-reliant community let alone a nation. Or even have a desire to work with the country and its people to achieve a comfortable life for all. Its about punishment, malicious punishment, the taking away a Nations future
Reply Not true. When I was an MP I spent my time trying to get policies that backed and got out of the way of self reliant hard working people.
May 4, 2025
@ Reply – but you were and are a conservative by nature, that is something we haven’t seen in power this century
May 4, 2025
JR did indeed but not the cabinet he also did not vote for the climate change act but alas nearly everyone else did!
May 4, 2025
Robert Jenrick is rather boxed-in while he is a member of the Shadow Cabinet.
May 4, 2025
As far as I can ascertain Wokingham did not take part in last thursday’s local government elections. It seems odd that until you chose retirement from the HoC, they the electorate, should choose you as an MP but Lib Dems as a council. The ennui and laziness towards local elections, that resulted in a 28% turnout for a recent one at Winersh might have something to do with it. I find it odd that 72% of the electorate can’t be bothered to vote.
Let’s see what the Reform effect is in those local seats of government, where they have overall majorities, results in. If it results in financial probity and an easing of the burdon on ratepayers, then it may act as a catalyst among the ratepayers of Wokingham to vote and question those they elect to represent their views.
In my humble opinion, the Lib/Dems are nothing more than a bunch of middle class dilitante socialists. Their leader’s performance at the Post Office says all for me. An alternative to the Consocialists of the Conservative party in the HoC. Those who post 2019 let the people of the UK so badly down by failing to read the label on their own tin.
etc ed
May 4, 2025
As 2 of the Winnersh electorate who DID vote I/we can explain that the poor 28% turnout is due to the general apathy or malaise of the residents watching the antics of so-called respectable politicians ( oops prospective councillors) getting elected by the complacent community. We are bored rigid with the full colour frequent mailings ( who is paying?) of Lib-Dems gazing out at fields about to be bulldozed, or happily looking at a pothole – filled or not (like thousands of others). Yet we read ‘we are winning here’ correct – they are in spite of the shambolic management. Is it any wonder Reform are capturing attention from the people who are still awake?
May 4, 2025
@agricola – and yet a National Media outlet had an interactive graph showing how Wokingham went ‘Reform’
As you infer the Lib/Dems are labour in disguise. People forget this party has nothing to do with the original Liberal Party, it was formed by a breakaway faction of Labour and have remained Labour ever since
May 4, 2025
I think they are left of Labour.
May 4, 2025
Lucy Powell thinks it’s a ‘dog whistle’ or blowing a “little trumpet” to demand arrests and accountability for the rape gangs. Surely this is even worse than Lady Nuggee’s tweet on White Van Man and that other woman who emailed 9/11 was “a good day to bury bad (Labour) news”!
These all show how these people really think, At least the latter two had the decently to resign.
May 4, 2025
She ends her appology:- “This government is acting to get to the truth and deliver justice.” She surely cannot really be daft enough to think this can she? She read chemistry at Oxford after all. She should also be able to work out that the Ed Miliband agenda is totally insane too!
May 4, 2025
The reality is that in general Council finances are Byzantine in their complexity and deliberately kept so by senior Council Officers. Even departments normally have numerous sub-budgets. This normally results in some budgets being underspent with Officers urging Councillors to spend more to use up that budget while simultaneously other budgets being overspent with Council Officers urging Councillors to approve a supplementary budget for such budgets. Then there is the ever changing bases for accounting with reserves often being surreptitiously siphoned off to establish special funds and administrative budgets being switched around from overall administration budgets (when administrative costs become unpopular) into parts of service (such as social services) department budgets .
It is obfuscation on a grand scale, obfuscation mainly to suit and shield the special purposes, special pleadings and special interests of Council Officers.
Meanwhile the vast majority of Councillors have neither any interest in finance nor sufficient ability to investigate and understand, let alone act upon the financial arrangements of their Council. So I don’t expect anything much will change in the majority of the Councils the ‘Reform Party’ now supposedly ‘controls’.
May 4, 2025
As a step towards making Councils more financially accountable, in the event of the filing of a bankruptcy notice, senior administrators should be fired and an election immediately called.
Maybe this will encourage better financial and fiscal decisions ?
May 4, 2025
@oldwulf; Indeed, fired and debarred from ever holding any position that involves controlling or just handling others money! Whatever happened to the idea of imposing personal surcharges, after due investigations, on at fault councilors and executives, and was it ever extended to include MPs and senior Whitehall officials…
May 4, 2025
Very good idea if that includes the senior bureaucrats. It is they who should be terrified of bankruptcy and then the Government grant should be cut each year along with the Council tax (2% per year) until we reach the point where they are just getting by doing ONLY the work Councils are supposed to do.
Education funding should revert to the Education Department, social care to the Health Dept.
It’s ridiculous to expect thousands of councillors to be capable of controlling mega budgets. We can’t find 600 odd capable of doing that to be MPs.
May 4, 2025
@LA; “just getting by doing ONLY the work Councils are supposed to do.”
But who decides what they “are supposed to do”, much of the problem these days has been caused by Westminster piling ever more work on LAs, thus making them do what should be done by and funded from Central Governments (often to deflect scrutiny or criticism), leaving LAs to scrape the barrel or impose higher local taxes so they can sort out local issues their electorate expects.
Reply Many of the annoying things they do are discretionary not mandatory.
May 4, 2025
Sir John Curtice has posted a revealing analysis of the local election results on the BBC website. It reveals how FPTP benefitted Reform because 31% of the votes delivered 41% of the seats. For the other parties the votes to seats relationship were: Conservative 23:29; Lib Dems 17:23; Labour 14:6. He says it also revealed a pronounced correlation with those areas that supported Brexit and later voted for Boris Johnson. Now that Reform control 10 councils they have the opportunity to show what can be achieved to control council spending better than their predecessors. If they demonstrate success it will reinforce their hand in the next GE. Based on your Wokingham example it seems likely there will be low hanging fruit waiting to be removed.
May 4, 2025
Correction: the Conservative vote to seat ratio is 23:19!
May 4, 2025
Wokingham is not alone in suffering from ill-judged spending by the LibDems, my own LA has been NOC (from Con) since 2019 which has given the LibDem group opportunities to cobble together enough support from the Greens and Labour groups to engage in media friendly vanity projects, thus £m’s have been wasted, yet core services (personally agreeable or not) have got worse, and council tax increases have been maxed out.
May 4, 2025
Interesting to see fake news from the Lib Dem’s collide with facts. Council leaders think they can just brazenly mislead and no-one in the populace will ever actually check. It’s the lack of real local level media reporting that allows this, hollowed out by the internet and need for ad revenue and click bait headline social interest or celeb stories.
May 4, 2025
The lack of scrutiny and accountability of local councils lets them get away with appalling waste. Amongst the general public, most people have very little idea where their money is being spent.
As our kind host demonstrates, the true spending figures are hidden away in the accounts, which most people can’t be bothered to examine and may not understand anyway. Councils then produce their own PR blurb, crowing about spending (“investment”) they think is appealing. Scrutiny by local newspapers is no longer a threat: they don’t have the same reach they once had, and are less critical (with reduced circulation, advertising revenue from Councils is evermore important).
Most voters also don’t bother with local elections. Turnouts are often around 30% . Voters usually vote for the Party they’d support nationally, rather than look into what their local politicians are doing.
Until councils are “held to account” they will carry on spending our money wastefully. A network of local DOGEs is needed.
May 4, 2025
The council is set to buy more homes to support Ukrainian and Afghan refugees.
Council leaders have agreed to buy at least one more property, adding to the 17 it already has.
Leader of the council Stephen Conway said it was “immensely important” to support people from both areas of conflict. He added the plans also had long-term benefits because the properties would be returned to Wokingham’s general housing stock once the families no longer needed them. (when might that be? )Since the launch of the Homes for Ukraine Scheme in March 2022, Wokingham has welcomed nearly 500 Ukrainian refugees, most of them women and children.
The initiative involved providing a £200 payment to each refugee arriving under the scheme, and assigning various support workers for the families.
May 4, 2025
Sir John
Wokingham, the Liberal Democrats in a circular from Adrian Betteridge in the last week state “Lib Dem led Wokingham Borough Council has been ranked 5th in the country for getting best value out of every pound, by independent research.“
It goes on to suggest that its roads are well maintained with out pot holes. Try telling that to those that have to travel from the new housing at the old Arborfield Garrison who have to negotiate the pot holes and ruts around Barkham to get into Wokingham or towards the Motorways.
The local Wokingham MP Mr. Jones who lives in the neighboring Labour borough is sadden to hear his local hospital has had its re-development delayed. It would be nice if he had connections to Wokingham and wasn’t so wound up about what his own MP was in charge of.
It would appear now all political groups can make unfounded in reality claims.
Who pays for these proper-gander circulars?
May 4, 2025
@Ian B – the national media is not much better when it comes to strange claims according to one in the local elections this week Reform won control of Wokingham – a excellent job if true, but Wokingham did not have elections
May 4, 2025
This is ‘misinformation’ and I can’t see why ‘the State’ and ‘the MSM’ are exempt from the sanction imposed on the rest of us.
The onus must be on them to prove what they say is true and if they can’t, a stint in Strangeways with those they scammed would be fun.
May 4, 2025
A brilliant analysis which I am sure will be repeated in most Lib Dim councils. I expect Labour councils will be an even bigger can of worms.
Had Labour not cancelled so many elections, I expect that Reform would now be in charge of almost all of them, including Wokingham.
Sir John, you are now in the wrong party. Reform would now be your natural Conservative home, as it would also be for JR-M, Suella, Priti, and Esther and a few more ex-and a few current MPs.
If you want to influence the future direction of the Country, Nigel Farage needs your expertise and experience now.
Reply I offer my expertise and experience free on this website and in the media to anyone running bits of the public sector. I have capacity to advise government and Councils on how to run things better based on experience as a Minister and as past Chairman of two large industrial groups.
May 4, 2025
To reply:- Plus you have a record of getting almost every call right for 40+ years. If only the various governments had done as you suggested over the years.
May 4, 2025
That sums it up, but you’d expect HMG to come down hard on council spending given how the chancellor has hit taxpayers with so much extra tax.
Instead councils run with whatever fancy ideas they can dream up while HMG imposes net0 restrictions and projects. The annual accounts barely tell the story.
There is a lack of concise information about what councils do or the decisions they make. They issue surveys that result in them pursuing their original plans because questions are so vague or deliberately pointed.
When sending out newsletters on what they do councils provide limited information and seem only to make decisions based on net0 rather than logic.
But not to worry – very soon we will be getting our super-councils and there will be no hope of tracking any of the things that are important to us, wokism or wasted expenditure.
May 4, 2025
Our local council also spends a huge amount on social care. Why is it so high?
If someone spends all the money they ever had and put nothing by for their old age, why should other taxpayers have to pay for their care home as well as their own needs. Can’t they GoFundMe with their “I’ve had a hard life” plea?
I advocate that councils should have discretion on care home costs, and for it not to be a statutory duty. Let the voters decide whether that’s how their money should be spent.
Oh and please let’s have an insurance scheme, as no one can be sure whether they would need a care home at all, nor for how long and with what level of care if they do.
May 4, 2025
health.org.uk 11/08/2023 ‘Social health insurance: be careful what you wish for’.
It discusses the situation in Germany, the Netherlands and France.
If such insurance for care were to be established, it is likely it would need contributors to start paying in their 40s to have a chance to be a balanced scheme. Who, when people are likely to still have young(ish) children, still paying their mortgages, possibly saving for their children’s university expenses, and their personal pension, would be willing to save, say, another £100/month for such a care insurance they might not need before 30 or 40 years in the future?
Reply At last something I agree with.
May 4, 2025
Listening to all the political interviews this morning on TV (BBC, SKY & GBNews) all the main traditional parties believed that they won the local elections and that they’re doing great ….they’re all in cloud cuckoo land, they’re not going to change …they just don’t understand the people, the mood of the country or why reform is doing so well
May 4, 2025
My experience tells me Councils must have waste, conflicts of interest, duplication of resources due to undercontrol and overcontrol in some areas and frauds but public scrutiny is non-existent.
You only hear about some of the extremes from investigative journalists and there must be many cover-ups due to the size of the multi million ££££ budgets.
May 4, 2025
Notts CC has recently “invested” in a carbon sink, i.e. it has bought a tract of farmland to plant trees on. Why can’t they just stick to the day job? We have some of the worst roads in the country.
May 4, 2025
because they are really politicians and think they should do what THEY would like, not what the council tax PAYERS want!
May 4, 2025
Agree – councils now do a great many things which I believe are beyond the scope of a council ….its time to fully amend the Local Government Act 2000 ….no not amend but start again
May 5, 2025
J+M / GC: That council also eventually had a failure some years ago with its then council owned energy company & ended up with millions in losses and was not the only council involved with such stuff and also owning companies. Agree GC, there is a need for ‘back to basics’ for councils and get those right to start off with.
May 4, 2025
Seen elsewhere:
‘Serco are to hold an event at a four-star hotel in the Malvern Hills to try to sign up landlords to rent them accommodation for illegal boat people. Apparently, the deal is they will offer 5-year contracts and guarantee they pay the rent monthly, they will pay all maintenance, repair and damage, utility bills, council tax and management charges. It seems that the Government have realised that having over 200 hotels filled with illegal immigrants is unacceptable; it is driving up hotel costs around the country. So, what is the effect on the British people who want to rent? Apparently, councils have run out of properties because they have filled them with illegal immigrants, so they were having to put people into private rents, but these are being forced out as landlords are getting fabulous deals from the likes of Serco (and the three other companies doing the same job). So where are the homeless being put? Well, it seems they are going into hotels. What an absolutely crazy situation.’
May 4, 2025
Why 5 year contracts ????
May 4, 2025
Another LibDem council practising socialist ideals rather than serving the council tax payers who elected them to run their finances. ALL local councils should go through an independent audit as the Reform UK Party has proposed. Only then will we be given the truth. I can’t wait!!
Reply A normal financial audit will not tell you much we do not already know. It is Councillors jobs to expose waste and bad policies, so get on with it.
May 5, 2025
Then it is very clear that those councillors are not doing their jobs. What a surprise!
May 4, 2025
Reform, now that they have taken control of several local authorities, now need to show they can deliver.
I hope to see a DOGE-style exercise, cutting all expenditure on road blockages, speed limits, donations to NGOs and other wasteful activities to zero.
I don’t know if they have any power over their own police forces, but again voters want to see a complete re-prioritizing of activities.
Let’s see if it happens.
May 4, 2025
‘Users of the parliamentary estate have been informed that from tomorrow they won’t be able to charge their electric vehicles in New Palace Yard’s underground car park. The charging points are due to be removed on health and safety grounds following a review by the Safety and Fire teams, and in consultation with the Chair of the Administration Committee’ https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
One rule for them and another rule for the plebs
May 6, 2025
The introduction of a fixed percentage local income tax in all income including benefits using a notional national income per capita for all LA expenditure at local and regional levels would create direct local accountability and introduce a means of national redistribution.
The Swedish Government structure provides a suitable model but we seem intent on creating mayor’s and unitary Authorities with no community consideration and dependent on central government largesse.
May 6, 2025
The local Tories should put your findings in a local newsheet and do a mail drop (like the LibDems do), giving the residents facts and figures. This excuse from local councillors is frequently made everywhere.
Cheshire was told that the blending of three local authorities into two would create a saving of £16m per year, who holds the council and current government accountable for that claim as it was Blears who told us of the savings and more are planned for other councils nearby? There should have been a £240 million saving by now. There have been thousands of new three and four-bed homes built in just one of the towns yet next to no road improvements (more congestion). No new cycle lanes or paths. No roads were widened to allow the passage of people down the High Street, so everyone has to slow down to one lane, causing more delays. The only town centre investment we’re attracting is more low-value large supermarkets and one coffee shop I feel sorry for as supermarkets don’t attract browsers for other businesses they’re in it for themselves with their restricted time limit parking, so no getting your hair done and a food shop.