Happy New Year to everyone across the borough! I wish you all a successful 2024, a year of good health and wellbeing. I hope you managed to do something you enjoy during the festive period. It’s over quite quickly and before you know it, its back to business!
Speaking of which, I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to participate in the consultations on the council’s website. We have several consultations currently running, including the budget, local transport plan and housing policy change.
You can find the consultations and tell us your thoughts by visiting our consultations pages. We need to hear from as many of you as possible if we are to truly represent and reflect your interests.
The council’s budget situation is challenging and there are a lot of tough decisions to make. The care and support to our most vulnerable residents, old and young, requiring social care, is non-negotiable and must be prioritised, but still adds to our budget pressures.
Although the current year’s financial position is particularly challenging, we are in a strong place compared to similar local authorities. But I want to be honest and transparent with you. Financially, the next couple of years are not going to be easy, and difficult decisions will have to be made.
A full public consultation on the budget is running until Tuesday 23 January 2024. I encourage all residents to get involved and have your say.
We’ve been visiting a number of places to hear your views on the budget and one of the common themes coming up is libraries. In the budget papers there is a proposal to reorganise library service and customer service teams and close the home library service. While we’re keen to hear your views on that proposal, I’d like to point out that there is no plan to close any of our libraries, reduce their opening hours or stop any of the wonderful activities they do for our community.
You can come along and talk to us about the proposals on:
- Monday 15 January at Birch Hill Library, 2:30pm
- Saturday 13 January at Foxes Den, Binfield, 2pm to 4pm
- Wednesday 17 January at Whitegrove Library, 2pm to 4pm
- Saturday 20 January at Bracknell Library, 10am to midday
Your feedback will help us refine the budget before it is agreed in February.
One of the ways we could save money, is by recycling more accurately. A recent sampling of green bins collected from Bracknell Forest showed 63% of the contents should not have been in the green bin. These items should have been recycled using the food bin, brown bin, blue bin or taken to Longshot Lane recycling centre. Over a year, this could save at least £1m and would be better for the environment.
Certainly something to consider when you next put your bins out.
I wish you a good start to the new year.
Cllr Mary Temperton
Leader of Bracknell Forest Council
