Maidenhead & Windsor

The Maidenhead Royal Borough is facing probably its biggest ever challenge following the government's grant settlement for the next financial year.

Maidenhead Cllr David Eglise, lead member for resources, said the news came as no surprise since the government had already indicated its grant level for 2007/08 at this time last year – but the actual amount was even lower than anticipated and the indications were that the Royal Borough had been allocated the second lowest increase of any unitary council in the shire counties.

The Maidenhead grant settlement, announced by the government on Tuesday November 29, gives the borough a total of £15.87 million in Formula Grant, just £230,000 more than last year which equates to a 1.4% increase at a time when inflation on local authority services is running at over 4%.

Cllr Eglise said: "This presents us with one of the biggest resource challenges we have ever faced as we balance the increased demand for council services – especially for the more vulnerable members of our community, for improved transport systems and with the need to find environmentally friendly solutions for dealing with waste – against the financial reality of diminishing resources.

"To say we are disappointed is the understatement of the year. Reform of local government finance is long overdue and we look to the publication of the Lyons Report in the hope that it will recognise and tackle the financial challenges of providing services to meet the increasing expectation of local communities."

Cllr Eglise said the new settlement made the Maidenhead Royal Borough's continuing modernisation programme more relevant than ever.

He said: "Over the past three years the Delivering Excellence programme has been geared towards making our local services more efficient, changing the council to smarter ways of working – for example, through the customer service centre – and achieving better value for money and cost effectiveness in the way be buy goods and services.

"This approach is giving us a head start on coping with yet another derisory grant settlement and we will continue to seek ways of becoming even more efficient in the months ahead. However, it is very depressing that the government continues to pay scant regard to the needs of its local communities and put pressure on services that are often lifelines for the growing numbers of older people and the most vulnerable."

Cllr Eglise said it was much too early to say what effect the settlement would have on next year's Maidenhead council tax but gave his assurance that any local increase would be kept to the absolute minimum.

This is the second year that funding for schools has been allocated under the Dedicated Schools Grant, separate from the Formula Grant for all other council services.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead