Recently there have been a range of announcements of new funding for Wokingham Borough from the Conservatives in Central Government.
This targeted investment across Wokingham is great news. Here's just a handful of examples of the support for our local communities from the Government.
Bus services
This week, the Department of Transport awarded Wokingham Borough £401,322 to protect and improve bus services in our area. This continues the support provided by the Government since the pandemic to help bus services recover from reduced passenger numbers. If allocated correctly and used to improve viability, as we planned with the Swallowfield and Arborfield route, this could be a lifeline for some of our non-commercial bus routes.
Roads
Back in March, the Government gave the Borough an additional £589,200 to help maintain our local roads. Oddly, the Council’s Liberal Democrat-administration welcomed the additional money and claimed that it wasn’t enough – but kept the spending on road repairs at the same level as last year and have been repairing fewer potholes.
Active travel
Wokingham Borough has been awarded £606,215 from the Department for Transport's Active Travel Fund. Instead of spending this on actual improvements to our cycleways and paths, we are worried that it will be swallowed up with design work and analysis which delivers no benefit.
Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
Following significant lobbying of the Government by the previous Conservative administration and local MPs, new funding has been awarded to support children in the Borough with Special Educational Needs.
Wokingham MP, Sir John Redwood, has especially campaigned for more SEND places in the Borough to give parents and pupils greater local choice where they need special support. He met with the Education Minister to discuss this further last month.
The Department for Education (DfE) has agreed new funding for Special Educational Needs provision with the Council set to receive £20 million over the next few years, until the 2028/29 financial year, to improve SEND services.
DfE has also approved a bid from the Council for funding for two new SEND schools. This extra provision is good news for the children and parents who, in the future, will not need to travel out of the Borough for school.
Supporting those in need
Since the pandemic hit, the Government has provided regular funding to Wokingham Borough to help families who are struggling. Recently, the Department for Work and Pensions provided an additional £1million for our area. The Household Support Fund is there to help people with costs, and it’s also helping to pay for free school meals during holidays. The Household Support Grant has enabled the Council to fund energy saving packs for residents struggling which included air fryers, slow cookers, heated blankets, thermal clothing, draft excluders, and LED lightbulbs.
Despite being a relatively affluent area, the Borough has pockets of deprivation, where a helping hand can make all the difference. The Council should support residents in difficulty and work towards reducing poverty. To that end the previous Conservative administration set up the Hardship Alliance, and we are proud of the work the Alliance has achieved.
Refugee support
The Government has awarded £3.1 million to Wokingham Borough Council to purchase 17 homes to help combat the housing shortage for those under the Ukraine and Afghan resettlement scheme.
The Lib Dem administration don’t seem to want to shout about what the Government is doing for Wokingham Borough, and they have not always been transparent about where this funding is coming from.
Local Government Funding
The main funding from Central Government is partly determined by relative need which estimates the funding requirement for each local authority in England based on factors such as demography and deprivation. The formulas, largely inherited by the Conservative Government, also consider how much income can be raised from Council Tax.
Plans to review how funding is distributed were opposed in 2019 by Labour.
It is a point regularly made by the Liberal Democrat administration that our Borough is the lowest-funded per head compared to other local authorities. We don’t blame them. It has been a point made by many Conservative councillors.
We will always champion Wokingham and will continue to campaign for more funding. Sir John Redwood has been particularly vocal in this campaign highlighting in Parliament that Wokingham had a “bad deal under past Governments and is still getting a bad deal.” He regularly calls for more money for roads and schools.
But do you think a Labour or Liberal Democrat Government would reallocate significantly more money to Wokingham Borough? There will always be Local Authorities who receive more funding and some who receive less.
In 2021 Wokingham Borough was ranked the most prosperous place to live by the Legatum Institute. The average salary of someone living in Wokingham is higher than average for the South East.
These projects set out above would not have been possible without funding from the Conservative Government.
