How your council tax is spent
Posted March 2022
Our team of nearly 1,500 staff provide hundreds of services that link together to improve the lives of everyone who lives, works in or visits the borough.
You probably use many of these every day without realising or thinking about how they’re funded, whether that’s street lighting, highway maintenance, drainage, food hygiene, waste and recycling collections, schools, parks, libraries or leisure centres.
We also provide services you may not need right now, or may never need. However, not only are these vital to many residents, including things like social care for adults and children, but this is where most of our money is actually spent.
So where does your council tax money go?
This tax year (2022-2023) we were working on a budget of about £144.6million from council tax. This is how each £1 of your money is split to fund all we do:
- 39p: adult social care and wellbeing
- 22p: children’s social care and safeguarding
- 12p: environmental services including waste and recycling and grass cutting
- 7p: highways and transport including maintenance and active travel
- 10p: support functions like HR, finance, legal, communications, property and democratic services.
- 8p: other frontline services including libraries and community development
On average, more than 60 per cent of the money we receive from council tax every year funds social care for people of all ages across the borough.
If we have a disability or health condition, which could affect us at any time, we might need help to continue living in our community, surrounded by loved ones and enjoying as many of the things we value as possible.
When organised well, social care helps us stay connected to others and allows us to live the way we want, with purpose, connection and dignity, at all stages.
We work with partners to help people use their skills to the full, improving their wellbeing and benefiting others, and unite family, friends and neighbours to help people pursue what matters most.
This involves a wide range of support across many teams like the safeguarding team, who keep people safe, or occupational therapists who help people stay at home for longer if this is possible and they want to do so.
Our voluntary and charity partners include CLASP, a group for adults with learning difficulties, and The Link Visiting Service, a befriending service to combat loneliness.
The difficulties we now face
However, all our costs are rising significantly and we’re having to work out how we can keep these essential services running while ensuring people still live their lives to the full.
We know the cost of living crisis is hitting you, but it’s also hurting local authorities like us as well as businesses. Our energy costs, in particular, are increasing because we aren’t protected by the national price cap.
This crisis, along with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, has put unprecedented pressure on us. We’re also seeing increased demand for statutory services, including for those with special educational needs and disabilities, and this is an added challenge.
Despite all of this, we’re committed to protecting our social care to ensure that everyone remains safe and knows they are a valued member of the Wokingham borough community.
Over the coming months, we'll continue working to provide the most efficient service possible while keeping everyone safe and well, especially those in the greatest need - and we will continue to be open and transparent about how we intend to do this.
Where we can, we will avoid making savings in ways that will directly affect residents. For example, when vacancies crop up in each department, we review each one on a case-by-case basis to make sure we’re operating as effectively as possible.
Our budget for the 2023-2024 financial year will be set in February but the process to set has already started and will be open and accountable throughout. Our Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which meets in public, will consider all the options before any decision is made.
