By Cllr Jason Brock
December is a month that most of us – and for mostly positive reasons – look forward to the end of. Certainly, I think we can all agree that it will be nice to see the evenings begin to slowly creep lighter again.
It’s also a month with a slightly quieter calendar of formal Council meetings, allowing some time to prepare reports for the very busy run of meetings across January and February as we work towards setting the Budget for the year ahead.
As is now usual, Policy Committee will in a couple of weeks consider an update on our Medium-Term Financial Strategy (as the three-year forward budgeting plan is, not very catchily, entitled).
What is unusual is the sheer uncertainty as to the economic climate in which we are operating. Even in the tough years of the austerity decade we generally had some certainty around the challenges that we would face over the following 12 months.
Now, the difficulties in both the national and global economy mean that we cannot truly foresee the headwinds we’ll face and, consequently, must prepare the Council to be flexible as scenarios demand.
It’s more than a shame that, in this context, the Government won’t even publish the provisional finance settlement for local councils until the week of Christmas.
Over the past few years, Labour councillors have applied themselves to rebuilding the Council into a financially robust organisation. We’re now better prepared than a great many local authorities to weather an economic storm – as is demonstrated by the comments from the Leaders of Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire councils in recent weeks – but we always have to give careful thought as to how we can balance our wide range of responsibilities.
Social care costs, for example, could quickly overwhelm us if we don’t maintain either our work to support families at an early stage or our efforts to keep older residents living independently in their own homes. And unlike the county councils I’ve mentioned, we also perform that work alongside the routine services like bin collections, park maintenance, and environmental health work.
Challenging times also give us a renewed focus to keep prioritising and pushing forward those projects that deliver meaningful benefits for residents.
I know lots of residents are looking forward to the imminent opening of the new Palmer Park pool and leisure centre (including, quite charmingly, some individuals who have consistently voted against it on the Council).
Similarly, it’s great to see the renewed Reading West Station starting to take shape, work starting on new active travel schemes, and even more roads being resurfaced across the town.
At the same time, I’m really pleased that Reading Labour is driving new projects to improve lives in our town. Most notably, we’ve recently allocated funding towards a further 87 Council homes across the borough – increasing the scale of our Council building programme, which is already the largest in a generation.
This includes some sites which have been historically rather frustrating for some of us, including the long-empty plot on the corner of Dwyer Road and Burghfield Road.
Whatever the next few months bring, we’ve always been clear on the aspirations we have for Reading, and we’ll continue to pursue them. Our town will, I’m entirely sure, continue to be economically successful, but I want it to share that success better and to keep offering more for every resident.
Cllr Jason Brock is the leader of Reading Borough Council and ward member for Southcote
