Government accused of breaking Covid cash promise
THE Government has broken its promise of reimbursing councils for their pandemic expenses, said the leader of the borough council.
Cllr John Halsall told Wokingham.
Today that the Government has shifted its position on financial help multiple times — with Wokingham now receiving the least help in the country.
“We track our expenditure changes everyday, and submit them to the Government every two weeks,” explained Cllr Halsall.
“Our original prognosis was that we could recover the money spent.
“Then we thought we could recover the money spent on behalf of projects directly related to the Government actions.
“But it changed frombeingwhatwas actually spent to being formulaic.
“We will not be recovering all income or expenses lost in the borough.
“Once again, we are the lowest council to receive funding support. But the promise was that it would be reimbursed.”
Cllr Halsall believes the deprivation model used to judge financial need was not a good measure for the nature of the pandemic.
He said: “I feel that the formula based on deprivation is an inappropriate measure for Covid-19.
“Wokingham has a high demographic of older people, and we know that older people are suffering more deaths and more costs associated with Covid-19.
“So I can’t see how deprivation is a good model to use. It will have a significant negative impact on financial reserves.”
Now, the council is working out how theywill top-up their reserve funds and maintain its services.
This topping up is proving a challenge, as the council relies heavily on housebuilder contributions to fund new infrastructure projects.
“We are nowworking out what the recovery plan needs to be,” said Cllr Halsall. “It's particularly important because we’re a borough suffering a huge amount of development. And we were at the peak of development when the emergency hit.
“In order to sensibly carry out development, infrastructure must be laid first. And we borrowmoney to build the road in anticipation of funds from the community infrastructure levy (CIL) and Section 106money.”
But last week, the Government announced that developers could delay their CIL payments, in order to get the propertymarket back on track.
Cllr Halsall said: “There’s big money at risk — approximately £60 million, and developers are alreadymaking noises about reducing their CIL.
“We will have to review the capital budget, and we are desperately trying to get the attention of the Government to understand our predicament.”
And now, the borough is being targeted formore development.
“Some developers are saying they can’t fulfil their commitments, but are already submitting planning applications on the grounds of speculative development,” he said.
“Our five year land supply is short because developers aren’t developing.
“Instead, they’re asking for permission to build more.
“This is not what the planning process was intending to achieve. We’re trying to get a temporary change in rules.
“Housebuilders are a powerful lobby to the Government, and as the leader of a borough council, my voice is small in comparison. But I'm going to keep shouting and screaming, and we will fight our corner, and never give in.
“We have built as good a team as we possibly can to fight appeals.”
And as construction slows across the borough, this causes further complications for the council budget.
“All these things are holistic, the finances are based on a number of things working in conjunction with one another. Due to the scale of development in the borough, this has had a huge impact on the budget.
“Our task now is to recast what we’re doing. We need to look at sources of income, whether grants or third party revenue, we need to reduce costs, and we need to see what we can do with our assets.
“We now need to absorb, digest and understand the situation to recast our policies accordingly.”