I keep hearing from the Lib Dem Council that Wokingham gets little money from central government. I will use a few blogs to set out again what Wokingham Council is receiving from government. These are often areas where I have put the case for more funding to government.
The biggest sum of money the Borough never mentions is the £167,979,385 of grant to run our schools. Education represents around a half of the Council’s spending and all the main costs are covered by government grant. Why do they forget this? The current year money is up by more than 7% on the previous year.
In addition this year there is an additional £4,555,857 of Additional grant , £1,480,767 to cover extra pay rises this year for teachers and an extra £552,039 to cover additional pension contributions.
Wokingham will also receive a general pupil premium of £3,982,757. There is an extra £1,048,340 for sports.
There is a grant of £2,386,368 to cover the costs of free meals for infants. There is £510,885 for the National Tutoring programme. There are payments for the Coronavirus recovery programme of £816,058. There will be additional money later this year under these last two headings.
There is also £10,823,438 of capital money for schools. to improve and expand buildings.
It would be good to hear a bit more from the Council about how this money is being spent and some recognition of these substantial national grant sums.
May 19, 2024
And still the roads are a mess with potholes galore
How much of a grant do they get for roads?
May 19, 2024
An amazing amount of money! Yet all one ever hears is that the Council is cash strapped. The mind boggles.
May 19, 2024
They are, they lost millions gambling when they shouldn’t have.
As a result they issued a Section 114 notice. Effectively its bust.
£1.2 bn deficit
May 19, 2024
I think it should be said that this is not some grant from central government it is our tax payers money.
Effectively higher council tax. The government has no money which seems to be forgotten by Politicians and others most of the time.
Anyway a bit of related topic – the yellow brick road at California Cross Roads a £6.5million spend. It seems that the idea was initiated by the conservative council at the time and tied in with some development grant specific to cross roads. The real issue is that this money could not be spent on anything else. So spend it on a nightmare for local residents.
or loose it. The Lib Dems are guilty of not fighting to spend the money elsewhere and spending £6.5 million to cause the local community to loose or spend extra to compensate amounting to another sum in the region of millions.
So this is how Central Government controls Local Government finances.
So for example if not all the money is spent on actual sports needs and there is money over it may be necessary to have a tennis court in the middle of the cross roads so the money is spent. There are seats at the cross roads so while all the traffic is piled up we can watch a tennis match too. This seems to be how Politics works for all the major parties.
Not much common sense on display. Spending money on pot holes not very image building for the party
Reply Conservatives lobbied against this proposal and Conservative Councillors voted against. The money was not pledged to this particular unpopular and damaging project.
May 19, 2024
Funny not the same story from the labour side of the council. But I guess to be expected. So if not pledged where would the Conservative Councillors spend the money? What did they propose the money be spent on instead ?
Reply It is Lib Dem, not Labour, doing the damage.
May 20, 2024
with respect Sir John you have nor answered my question.
I agree it is the Lib Dems who have implemented the project. But the info I have received indicates the conservatives had some passed involvement in how this project started before the Lib Dems had control of the Council. If the money was not ring fenced for work associated with the development of Gorse Ride, then what did the conservative council, when in power, propose it should be spent on ? Again the info I have received – it was a case of spend it on the cross roads or loose the funding. This is also tied up with the developers conditions put in place by a Conservative Council.
Reply Conservatives opposed this scheme. Councils can usually choose how to spend developer contributions. Never a good idea to spend money on something that makes life worse and annoys so many people.