RBWM's finances: former Tory leader's view

The former Conservative leader of the council has urged that the Liberal Democrat-led council ‘think bigger picture’ and use caution when seeking Government financial support.

In the wake of the CIPFA report detailing RBWM’s financial problems, the council leader and deputy leader had strong criticisms for Tory administrations gone by, blaming staff cuts and governances issues for its current sticky situation.

Andrew Johnson, who led the Conservative council from 2019 to 2023, said that although it was tempting to ‘play the blame game’ and ‘talk about historic issues’, ‘we are where we are’.

Mr Johnson said the ‘real focus’ was starting an early discussion on the ‘tough decisions’ RBWM has said it will have to make to get out of its financial hole.

He added that the Lib Dems should ‘be careful’ what kind of help they ask for from Government – as he doubts it will come with no strings attached.

The CIPFA report is set to be discussed tonight (October 30) at a council cabinet meeting. Read the current administrations views on its problems here.

Reserves and accounting errors

The Lib Dems have lamented the £16million’s worth of accounting errors as ‘shocking’ and blamed this on poor financial governance by the former administration.

Mr Johnson said: “You can only generally take decisions on the facts that your officers present you with.

“If you're given certain assurances, you can challenge and scrutinise them, but fundamentally you have to accept a lot of those as given.”

Mr Johnson said his administration had begun work on trying to fix financial issues towards the end of his time as leader.

“It took a long time to get historic accounts closed off – I think the 2019/20 ones only got closed off finally after the local elections, which is quite ridiculous,” he said.

“This took an awful lot of the limited finance team’s time and effort.

“I think it highlights the very thin financial model that RBWM has been run on for a very long time. There's not a lot of resilience in there – I think everybody knows that.”

Staffing

Another criticism of the Lib Dems was a ‘salami slicing’ of officer roles within the council, denting its effectiveness at spotting and fixing problems.

Mr Johnson recognised that was an area of his administration ‘that did need strengthening’ but that it was a matter of priorities.

“The key challenge we always had was, how do we meet this continued growth in adults' and children's [services].

“By default, it meant other non-frontline areas were kept leaner than we'd have liked.”

There was an attempt – Mr Johnson said that two or three years ago, his council put into the budget around £400,000 to build up a reserve for employing certain officer posts and investing in back-office activities, such as legal.

But ultimately, there has long been challenges in recruiting and retaining staff because of the size of the council, he said.

“Bigger authorities can pay more than RBWM," he said. 

“You've got to pay the market rate, and we can't always afford to do that.”

Developer agreements

Though the Lib Dems think that contracts and agreements between the council and developers benefited developers more than the council or RBWM's residents, Mr Johnson still believes RBWM ‘got a reasonable return'.

“Any sort of public/private partnership has got to withstand various market cycles. In the good times, it's good, in the bad times it's got to endure those difficult market conditions.”

He believes the way forward now is to approve the golf club planning application.

“The thing I can't get my head around is the outline planning application has been in for a very long time and hasn't been determined yet,” he said.

“No one seems to be asking the question of why it is taking so long - it’s a relatively straightforward application.

"The longer that's delayed, that has a knock-on impact on being able to start the development, and ultimately the council getting the capital receipts through the door.”

He added that if RBWM does not resolve the application quickly, Angela Rayner may intervene, as she has in the Holyport studios decision.

"The real risk is that she'll turn around and say, actually, you're not delivering enough homes on that site,” said Mr Johnson.

He felt that it might be part of the conditions of the Government helping RBWM that Ms Rayner may insist that RBWM 'massively increase' the number of homes placed on the golf course.

"A lot of people will say 'that's outrageous,' and it would be. But if you're knocking on her door asking for a bailout, it always comes with strings attached.

"The Lib Dems needs to be slightly careful what they ask for. They may find the price of a bailout is quite a high one."

Transparency

One criticism the Lib Dems levelled against the former Tory administration is that it was not transparent about its problems.

Mr Johnson said that as the four years of his term wore on, his administration ‘became increasingly transparent’ – and he also questioned the transparency of the current council.

"If they really want to be transparent, perhaps they ought to start publishing some of the minutes of the meetings that are held with CALA and Countryside around the joint venture decisions,” he said.

He also thought it was time the Lib Dems gave residents an early indication of what ‘tough decisions’ it is thinking of making.

What should RBWM do next?

Mr Johnson believes it is time for ‘a bigger picture discussion’ about the future of RBWM.

RBWM is one of six small unitary authorities, many with their own challenges.

Overspends in adult social care, for example, are related to RBWM’s size – the local authority is ‘essentially just too small’, he said.

“It was clear during my time as leader that in the long term, it's an unsustainable business model. It's not big enough to get those economies of scale you get with a larger authority,” he said.

There is speculation that local government reorganisation is on the table across England, he added – which may affect RBWM.

"If I were a Government minster, I'd be looking at these six relatively small councils and thinking, 'They're not in the long term a viable financial model in their own rite. Why don't we just merge them all and make all the problems go away?’"

"I think that's going to be the price of any real discussion with Government. I suspect that's where these discussions are going to end up leading to.”

Former leader Simon Dudley's view

Leader of RBWM from 2016 to 2019, Simon Dudley, said it was clear in his time that ‘financial controls in RBWM were not as good as we would have wanted.’

However, he stands by his administration's council tax decisions.

“Each household will be thousands of pounds better off today because of those [council tax] reductions,” he said.

“It would be a shame to see the current Liberal Democrat administration fritter that all away due to their incompetence.

“In January 2024, I wrote to the Advertiser to express my concerns on how the Liberal Democrats and their independent councillor partners were making decisions in respect of the development of Maidenhead Golf Club (MGC) which would cost local taxpayers in the region of £80million.

“These specifically related to only developing 1,500 homes not 2,000 and increasing the percentage of social housing within the overall element of affordable housing.

“If MGC is correctly developed the vast majority if not all RBWM debt (which was about £70million when we took control in 2007) will be repaid. That is what RBWM councillors should get on with.”