Council lays out its budget plans

Authority faces a financial deficit of £307m

Slough Borough Council has laid out its plans for its 2022/23 budget – acknowledging the ‘serious’ state of its finances and need for ‘extraordinary support’ from central Government.

The council faces a total financial deficit of £307million.

As such, Slough council will have to borrow or sell assets, to the tune of about £600million, in order to allow it to continue providing key services.

The council wrote that there was ‘clearly a risk that the current budget may prove difficult to deliver.’

The council’s capital programme, spent on projects to improve and maintain the borough’s infrastructure, is £219million for 2021/22 to 2026/27.

Because of the council’s extreme financial pressures, the capital programme has been ‘led by the need to minimise expenditure that is not externally financed.’

£202million of this will be funded from grants and other sources, leaving £17million to be funded by borrowing.

Previous years’ capital programmes have been ‘ambitious’ and were 'heavily dependent on borrowing'. Overall borrowing rose fourfold, from £170million in

2016 to £760million in 2021.

The cost of this level of debt was ‘significantly under-reported’ in previous budgets.

The 2022/23 programme includes £29million for new highways schemes, a £20million loan to enable the recladding of Nova House and £105million on the council’s housing stock.

A further £11million is being spent in children’s services – including the schools’ modernisation programme and the expansion of the special schools’ provision.

Around £5.7million is allocated to modernise the council’s IT infrastructure and improve the council’s resilience to cyber attack.

In addition, Slough’s council tax is set to rise by 2.99 per cent in 2022/23 – generally the most a council can raise a council tax in any given year.

This is made up of 1.99 per base council tax rate and a one per cent ringfenced for adult social care, known as the social care precept.

It raises the Band D (average household) council tax to about £1,535 for 2022/23 – an increase of about £44 a year.

The council’s budget reports will be considered by cabinet on Wednesday before being proposed to full council on Thursday.

They will also be discussed by the scrutiny committee at their meeting on Tuesday.