Following the Plan and Fixing the Mess

The Liberal Democrats welcome the clear majority vote to approve the 2025/26 RBWM budget at Full Council on Wednesday 5th March 2025.

This budget represents the next phase in our plan to fix the mess, restore financial stability and make the borough cleaner, greener and safer. This administration is getting on with the job and delivering for residents.

The approved budget includes growth in services to meet demand, and addresses many problems that the current council inherited:

• Adding inspectors and contract managers to check that contractors are completing work to the right standards.
• Maintenance budgets for our playgrounds, streetlights, trees and road signs, stripped out by previous Conservative administrations, are being restored so critical work can be planned and carried out, reversing the deterioration of these important parts of our environment in recent years.
• Children’s services are establishing a brand-new in-house children’s home in the borough this year, mitigating some of the external pressures the service faces from private care providers.
• Building on the successful delivery of Mosaic, the new management system for Adult Services, the team will leverage its powerful tools for reporting and forecasting, along with automated invoicing, to maintain a tighter grip on the finances. We are investing in additional staff to support more people being cared for in their own home for longer, and we are continuing to reduce reliance on expensive agency staff by improving our recruitment and retention offering for permanent roles.

The council’s finance team is being strengthened, along with other critical central services, to provide an appropriate level of support for all the council’s resident-facing services, which should prevent recurrence of the major issues we saw from the previous administrations.

For the first time, the council has a clear and approved plan for paying off all the council’s debt by putting aside the correct amount each year through the Minimum Revenue Provision, and will use the sale of assets to speed up repayment. In contrast, the Conservative plans for paying back debt were based on fantasy and included, as CIPFA said, “wildly optimistic” amounts of income from the sale of assets.

The council’s finance team is being strengthened, along with other critical central services, to provide an appropriate level of support for all the council’s resident-facing services, which should prevent recurrence of the major issues we saw from the previous administrations

We are progressively moving away from the days of the pseudo-balancing of budgets and are heeding the lessons from history and the failures arising from short term decision making of previous administrations. We have corrected £30m of accounting errors, setting the record straight. We have improved governance and transparency throughout this administration, and we will drive further improvement by tracking the delivery of savings, transformation projects and the implementation of CIPFA and Audit recommendations through enhancing existing reporting mechanisms.   

From discussions with government regarding the council’s financial situation and this budget, it is clear that they recognise the structural budget deficit caused by years of council tax cuts and increased borrowing. While we have been given permission to raise council tax by 4% above the referendum limit of 4.99% (a total of 8.99%) and received provisional agreement for our full Exceptional Financial Support request of £103m, the borough currently receives the lowest level of government support of any local authority. The Leader and Deputy Leader will be writing to government to request a review of the level of national funding allocated to RBWM as part of the forthcoming three-year settlement.  

This budget will enable the Partnership Cabinet to continue to work closely with officers to drive the improvements the Council desperately needs by following our Financial Improvement and Sustainability Plan. We are strengthening the council from the ground up, updating processes, reinstating critical roles and, importantly, tracking and reporting progress to residents regularly in our spirit of openness and transparency. This budget is the next phase in fixing the mess and delivering for the borough’s residents.

Windsor & Maidenhead Liberal Democrats 
6th March 2025