It’s been quite a while since my last blog post, mainly due to work and Council commitments so I thought I’d kick off again for with a review of the highlights of this evenings Full Council meeting.

The meeting started off on a light hearted note with the Mayor of Reading announcing a competition to name his mascot, with the profits going to his nominated charities of Sue Ryder Care and Diabetes UK, as well as announcing the Mayor’s ball.

The evening took a bizarre turn on the most inane report of the evening, namely to hold an extra meeting in december to decide what will happen in regards to the Civic HQ relocation. To provide some background a number of Councillors are appointed to the Civic Board, at the last meeting it was agreed by all parties, including the Lib Dems, that an extra meeting was to be held. For some reason only known by themeselves, the Lib Dems decided it was best to have half the meeting this evening and amongst other things:

• Asked why the process was going so slowly
• Asked why they could not delay the meeting until January
• Asked why there was no purpose of the meeting (I’ll leave people to look up the item linked above so see the purpose of the meeting, I felt it was pretty clear)

We then had the bizarre moment when the Lib Dem group decided to vote it down, despite having previously agreed to it.

Later in the meeting we got down to a motion on 10:10, which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. A very worthwhile motion which has had full support from sides both locally and nationally. The most amusing bit of the motion was when Labour Cllr Hoskins pointed out the light had been left on in the Lib Dem group room. A rather sheepish Gareth Epps then went down to go and switch it off, but then had to make an embarrassing reappearance a few minutes later when he needed to pick up his keys, as they had locked the room with the light on!

The penultimate motion of the evening was one of the most interesting. Conservative Councillor David Stevens introduced a motion that a £3.5 million “windfall”* should be kept in the balances during this year, in order to be used to try and help reduce Council Tax increases for next year.

Labour took exception to this motion and amended it to enable them to overspend on this years budget and use the windfall to pay for it as they see fit, after all it’s only our hard earned money. A lot of mudslinging then took place, Tory cuts vs Labour efficiency savings, Tory cutting budgets for the elderly and children’s services - something we’re all to aware of with Gordon Brown’s politics of fear.

The Labour amendment then passed with Lib Dem support, although I’m not sure they read the full amended version - here are two key extracts…

This Council notes:

“…. instruct Directorates to implement the measures necessary to seek to ensure overall net expenditure for each Directorate is kept within the Approved Directorate Budget…” (This was in the original Conservative motion, and a direct quote from a cabinet meeting two weeks ago.)

and resolves:

“That the ‘windfall’ be kept in balances during 2009/10 to enable the Council to minimize the need to increase Council Tax when setting the 2010/11 Budget, subject to its use to cover expenditure incurred above the approved budget…”

Hmm, so two weeks ago Labour is instructing Council officers to stick to the budget, and then this evening Labour and Lib Dem are instructing Council officers to stick to the budget as well as saying it’s ok to overspend on the budget. Clear joined up thinking.

* After a court case it was decided that local Councils could reclaim overpaid VAT. This is a one-off exercise in which Reading Borough Council claimed £3.5m

Filed under: Local Politics