Friday, 22 March 2013

LIB DEMS UNCOVER £1MILLION THAT COULD HAVE BEEN USED FOR LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Local Liberal Democrat councillors have become increasingly concerned about the use of money paid to the Council for the benefit of local communities. The council receives money when a development takes place to fund essential local community requirements such as roads, schools and libraries. Frustration with lack of information about this money led to Lib Dem questions at last night’s Wokingham Borough Council meeting.

In his response the Executive member for Highways & Planning provided the following information:
Ward
Receipts
Spent / Allocated
Ward Spend
Twyford
243,000
96,000
74,000
Loddon
224,000
61,000
44,000
South Lake
102,000
32,000
13,000
B&W
194,000
99,000
86,000
Winnersh
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,100,000
Total
2,763,000
1,788,000
1,317,000


Cllr Dee Tomlin (Twyford Ward) is angry “I was horrified to discover that in just the small part of the Borough we asked about, there is £1M sitting in the coffers doing nothing. How can this have happened? Our communities are crying out for things like a library in Twyford and public toilets in Woodley. The Conservatives are always using the excuse that they haven’t got any money and yet here we have £1million that could have been used and hasn’t been. That’s £1million in five council wards. There are 25 wards in the Borough altogether so the Conservatives could be holding onto as much as £5million in total that is meant to be used to benefit our communities.”

 Cllr Tom McCann (Loddon Ward) said “This is information that should be available to the public and at the moment it is not. There are things that our communities clearly need and it is only because the Lib Dems have demanded answers that the public can now see there is money to pay for some of them. And it’s just not good enough that the Conservatives have been sitting on the money for so long. The Liberal Democrats will continue to push on this issue and we won’t let the Conservatives off the hook.”In his response the Executive member for Highways & Planning provided the following information: