Sustainability and innovation

Royal Borough: Council blueprint will set out key aims

A corporate plan outlining the Royal Borough’s key priorities over the next five years could be given the green light next week.

The plan aims to look at the borough’s biggest problems and decide where the local authority wants to focus its resources from 2021 to 2026 to improve residents’ lives.

The council says it wants to ‘create a sustainable borough of innovation and opportunity’ with priorities including helping 2,000 households into new and existing affordable homes, building quality infrastructure that can support neighbourhoods and tackling climate change.

Council leader Andrew Johnson described fighting global warming as a ‘fundamental part’ of the local

authority’s plans over the next five years.

But in a cabinet meeting last month he said creating a strong economy had to come first.

Opposition councillors, including Clewer and Dedworth West representative Wisdom Da Costa, have urged the council to go further in its efforts to right climate change.

Cllr Da Costa said every decision made by the council from now on should consider the environment first.

In Tuesday’s full council meeting, due to take place at Maidenhead Town Hall, councillors will also discuss proposed changes to the way the council’s development control committees operate.

In June, the council agreed to go back to a system of having two separate panels to make decisions over planning applications in Windsor and Maidenhead.

But since the move, the local authority has faced difficulties due to councillors not being allowed to sit on the committees as a substitute if they do not come from a specific ward in each respective town.

The rules are now set to be changed which will allow councillors from any area in the Royal Borough to act as a substitute on either panel if the normal representative is away.

Tuesday’s meeting will start at 7pm.