According to our Love Windsor Community News Poll, most residents would happily pay more council tax if it wasn’t wasted on vanity projects. Currently 55% of respondents say they would you be willing to pay more council tax if it was guaranteed the money would not be wasted but invested efficiently in local services?
When I first started as a Councillor in 2019 there were 25 Community Wardens and the Conservatives had won the elections on the promise of providing more, talk of 36 I recall in 2015.
In September 2019 there was great fanfare as new powers were awarded…
But now we only have 4 wardens as instead of investing in community wardens, the budget has systematically been culled year on year.
In October 2020 we saw the introduction of the District Environmental Crime Officers who flew into Windsor and started fining everyone who was dropping a cigarette butt! I protested at this heavy handed action, suggesting a more consultative approach but that doesn’t work for a private company looking to make a fast buck.
The final budget of this administration saw an announcement of £200,000 for Environmental Enforcement Officers and £240,000 for Police Officers.
What they failed to mention is that the Conservatives had culled the Environmental Health team to the tune of £160,000 before announcing the all new £200,000 Environmental Enforcement Officers!
Lead officers had no idea these announcements were going to be made as the Conservative Administration looked to create fear, fear, fear and follow up with a magic solution to help them win the May elections.
Thing is, all the recent surveys show that the majority of residents feel safe, they are not living in fear. TVP are adding more Police Officers to RBWM anyway, so the extra 4 are a drop in the ocean from a practical policing point of view but they create a president and it will probably cost more in legal fees trying to work out how this joint Police Force is managed contractually, than it does for the actual Police officers!
I challenged the thinking in my Budget 2023 Speech…
I attended the RBWM TVP Conference at Braywick and most of the attendees were RBWM officers or Police, very few members of the public as this is not top of the public agenda and was to my mind, simply an election campaign promise, with more promises to double up next year and spending even more money we don’t have in the budget for this vanity project.
It had been planned that Traffic Wardens, DECOs and Community Wardens would combine as one enforcement team but it seems this is not the most effective way to move forward and alternative arrangements are being made. The new announcements put a spanner in the works, so we’ll have to see how that resolves itself after the elections.
I trust RBWM officers to get it right if we have a new, far more consultative, evidence led administration from 5th May 2023.
The process of how the next budget comes together is over to you. Fingers crossed you make the right decision next week.
Thank you.
Cllr Jon Davey
Clewer & Dedworth West
