Cllr Anne Thompson
The local government finance system is broken, Reading Borough Council’s Director of Finance Darren Carter told a committee of councillors on Monday evening.
He was introducing the Council’s draft budget and financial strategy for 2024-25.
Government funding for councils is simply not keeping pace with increasing demand and rising costs for vital services, the finance chief told us.
This is the sixth time in a row that the Conservative Government has announced funding for just one year for councils.
The constant uncertainty over money undermines effective Council planning.
When the Government announced its 2024-25 funding for councils this December, local authority leaders were alarmed at how low the settlement was.
With the majority of councils unable to produce balanced budgets and meet their core functions at the same time, the government announced an additional £600 million in funding (Reading receives just over £1.1 million).
Better than nothing, but it’s no more than a sticking plaster on a system at breaking point.
Councils across the country are struggling to meet the soaring demand and soaring costs for adult and children’s social care in particular – in other words, care for our most vulnerable residents. But where is the discussion of these issues?
Does the Government have any viable plans to tackle them long term?
Instead of considering how we can look after one another as we grow older, the Government is trying to distract us with culture wars.
Its latest boast is a ban on care workers from abroad bringing their own dependent children to the UK. They expect people to come and care for our children but to leave their own children behind.
This Conservative Government is clearly out of ideas.
We need a general election now. That’s a message I’ve been hearing from many residents in Tilehurst over recent months.
And when should that election be? It makes sense to hold it at the same time as the local council elections on Thursday, May 2.
This chimes with feedback from Reading residents to the Council’s annual budget consultation.
Asked where they would prefer to see cuts in Council services, the majority opted for Corporate Services which includes legal and democratic services, i.e. the costs of holding elections.
Admittedly the costs are relatively small on the scale of the Council’s expenditure, but why pay twice for the huge administrative job of organizing the polls?
The Liberal Democrats are ready. We have three excellent candidates for the three new constituencies that include parts of the Reading Borough Council area: Helen Belcher in Reading West and Mid Berkshire, Tahir Maher in Earley and Woodley, and Henry Wright in Reading Central.
They’re exactly the people we need in Parliament if we’re to start fixing the problems facing our country.
Cllr Anne Thompson is Liberal Democrat member for Tilehurst on Reading Borough Council
