Lib Dem leader praises party’s progress
THE leader of Wokingham’s Liberal Democrats is delighted with the increased representation of his party within the council chamber.
Cllr Clive Jones said: “We’ve had some very good majorities, we had a couple of tight majorities, and won 11 seats.
“In 2019, we made eight gains. We were very, very pleased to get them, and we’ve held them all, which is a really, really good result. We’ve made three other gains, so we’re very, very happy.”
The gains are in places where there has never been Liberal Democrat representation before – Barkham, Wokingham Without and Shinfield South. And Cllr Jones says the party aims to build on this result next year.
For now, he is focused on running the borough council for the next 12 months. They are one seat short of a majority, will they be able to form an administration?
“I am very confident we will,” he said. “We are very happy, as we said all through last year, to work with other political parties and groups.”
He also called for a mature approach from the Conservatives.
“I’ve been following on and off Wokingham politics for nearly 40 years. This has been the most negative campaign from an opposition there has ever been,” he said.
“It would be really good if we had some grown-up politics, rather than what we saw last year, which was opposition for the sake of opposition.
“It was really disappointing to learn that the Conservatives were going to disrupt council meetings. They told us last July they made a mistake in letting everybody know that’s what they were going to do, and the public didn’t want that.
“They want councillors to be working together.”
Cllr Jones’ first priority when he became leader last year was to write to government minister Michael Gove over housing numbers in the borough – an election pledge.
And he is intending to write again as his first priority this year.
“We will let him know we are still in control of Wokingham Borough Council, we still have to have the conversation with him that he promised us. His junior ministers have been pushing back a little bit, probably because local Conservatives have been telling him not to talk to us.
“We want to have these conversations, because we have some very good ideas on how Mr Gove can get housing numbers down in Wokingham, and in his Surrey Heath seat. We want to be sure he understands it all.
“Some of the vibes coming from his department are that we can get rid of the 5% buffer in housing numbers and take into account our over delivery. That will reduce housing numbers in Wokingham’s next local plan by around 2,000.”
Another priority for him will be to talk to the government about local government funding in a bid to end Wokingham’s label of the lowest funded unitary authority in the country.
“The average unitary authority gets around £30 million a year more than we do, that is not fair. Even if they would give us £30 million every few years think of what it could do for children’s services, for adult social care and for statutory services such as potholes. If there’s a pothole that has to be filled, it’s a statutory service, and we have to do it. If we had that £30 million we could have all the potholes covered and a lot of resurfacing done.”
He added that the result not just in Wokingham but across the country is a positive one for the Liberal Democrats.
“We are steadily building across the country, like we have steadily built up in Wokingham over the last five or six years.
“We’ve gained several hundred new councillors, gained extra councils in
Berkshire, I’m delighted we have a proper group on Bracknell Forest council.
“The political landscape in Berkshire looks very, very different.”
He continued: “The really exciting thing for me is that two of our gains, and a number of good majorities are in the new Wokingham parliamentary seat.
“That makes me, as far as I’m concerned, the favourite to beat John Redwood at the next general election.”