Council tax freeze and increased parking charges to come as district council approves budget

The council will axe 23 jobs, which it says along with other internal efficiencies will provide 75 per cent of the £5.6m it needs to save next year to combat a reduction in central government funding.
The rest - £1.25m - will be found from cuts to frontline services, including reductions to the Corn Exchange’s funding, £40,000 from the road safety budget and passing the funding of public toilets over to towns and parishes.
A combined total of £690,000 will be slashed from services to vulnerable young people, support for disabled children and supporting people in need of care, while £100,000 will be removed from the public transport budget.
Sunday parking charges will rise from £1 to £1.50 and opening hours of seven libraries across the district will be reduced despite petitions and more than 300 public responses - although the cuts will not be as severe as originally proposed.
Despite this, the Conservative-controlled council defended the budget and insisted it was “good news” for the people of West Berkshire as it represented a zero per cent rise in council tax.
Council leader Gordon Lundie (Cons, Lambourn) said that the council had “listened to the public” after cutting £700,000 less from services than it originally proposed to.
However, opposition leader Jeff Brooks (Lib Dem, Thatcham West) slammed the move and said the cuts in services to vulnerable young people would see “life affecting and detrimental outcomes” for some children.
He added: “The Corn Exchange is the jewel in our cultural crown - and we believe that it is central to a vibrant night time economy.
“If it fails to attract high quality performers providing high quality entertainment then it will die by degrees and we can’t afford to let that happen.
“These are mean and unnecessary savings.”
The Liberal Democrats then presented an alternative budget which they said would have maintained essential services for rural communities, protected vulnerable young people and kept funding for theatres and public toilets.
The Liberal Democrats said they would have funded this by removing the one month council tax free period on empty homes, replacing some full-time staff at Shaw House with volunteers and scrapping the £33,000 the council will spend on training managers next year.
However, the alternative budget was unanimously shot down by the Conservatives.
Mr Lundie accused the Lib Dems of “leaving out the very things that matter most to them” and labelled it a “truly alternative budget that tinkers around the edges.”
He added: “Four months ago Councillor Brooks said it was the most severe set of cuts he had seen in his twenty plus years as a councillor. This alternative budget doesn’t highlight that and I really expected more.”
The council will no longer press ahead with its original plan to cut funding for school crossing patrols after almost 300 people signed a petition against the move and has scrapped plans to cut funding for gully empyting and winter gritting.
It also said it would allocate around £1m from its reserves to repair the damage caused by the recent floods and kept to the promise it made last month to transfer some of the funding it receives from central government on to towns and parishes.