Advertiser review of the year 2025: January

Hope was on the horizon of the new year as the derelict café in Kidwells Park – dubbed ‘an advert for decay’ – began a new chapter.

It was taken over by Jason Gratton, who’d been running the pavilion in Oaken Grove Park for seven years.

No such hope was to be found in the wake of what turned out to be a long-running saga surrounding the Holyport roundabout.

Work to improve this ‘trouble spot’ mini roundabout promised seven months of disruption.

From the outset, various people said the £1.3million project would be a ‘waste of time’ – that it might still not be safe after all the work and there might be a need to change it again.

As rubbish as some thought the end result was, they might have preferred it to the actual piles of rubbish that were plaguing the town centre.

‘Disgusting’ piles of it had sprung up in Maidenhead – as did the pressure on the council to fix the problem.

Residents were promised a new crack team dedicated to tackling the overflowing bins and strewn waste.

Such blights usually cause residents to ask ‘Where does my council tax go?’ – and they would have especially wondered this at the beginning of the year.

A war of words raged over council tax and the RBWM’s (ultimately doomed) proposal to put it up by a whopping 25 per cent. At the time, the Borough was insisting that nothing else could save it.

Council tax wasn’t the only tax on people’s minds.

A dozen tractors trundled their way through Maidenhead to protest the Government’s changes to inheritance tax, which left many farmers feeling milked.

The farmers may not be swimming in money but there was plenty of swimming in January as the yearly Swimarathon returned to make a splash.

This year marked its 40th year, welcoming more than 100 teams, the Maidenhead Lions mascot and the town’s MP.