DEMANDS for residents to ‘make their voices heard’ via a council tax referendum will be brought forward to the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (RBWM).

The independent group, the Borough First, intends to launch and support a petition from next Monday urging RBWM to give residents their say of increasing council tax past the five per cent cap.

This cap, three per cent of which is the adult social care precept, is set by the Government and anything past five per cent will have to go to a local referendum.

This announcement was made by Old Windsor councillor Neil Knowles (Old Windsor Residents’ Association) in a letter sent to the Observer.

In the ruling Conservative’s draft 2021/22 budget, which residents can have a say on via a consultation, they plan to increase council tax by five per cent.

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Some services could be cut or ‘transformed’ in order to save around £8 million, and more in later years, due to Covid-19 and past financial mismanagement.

However, Cllr Knowles said the Royal Borough has benefited from historically low council tax – but costs have gone up and returns from development investments and outsourcing are “not coming in fast” as RBWM needs.

He thinks residents should be treated as “intelligent people who make informed decisions” and be given the option if they want to pay more to maintain services.

Speaking to the Observer, Cllr Knowles said: “We think it’s fairly binary that you either pay more tax and accept things are going to be more expensive from now on to maintain key services or you accept the fact that it’s going to be cut, cut, cut city from now on because that’s all there is left now and there’s precious little to cut.

He added: “We’re never going to get out of this hole unless we do something radical.

“It’s the answer. Maybe not the answer for everything – but it is something where we can all put this to the public, let them decide, and we will support [their decision].”

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If a referendum were to pass, it would affect the 2022/23 budget and not this year’s due to the timescale of setting one up.

The leader of RBWM, councillor Andrew Johnson (Conservative: Hurley & Walthams), said he sees where the petitioners are coming from – but the referendum process is “very rigid” where the council would have to pay “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to hold one.

He said: “If you end up proposing a budget that’s above the cap and you lose that referendum, it puts you in a very, very difficult position indeed i.e., you would almost have to cut services to try and accommodate yourself back within that spending envelope.”

When asked if he would give the petition a fair hearing, Cllr Johnson said: “I wouldn’t ever rule out calling a referendum, that be deeply unwise to do so – but I think it’s slightly premature.

“Until we get this year’s budget approved and we start to see what the numbers are for next year’s budget gap looks like, it’s just a little bit too early to start laying down hard and fast rules that we’re going to have a referendum next year.

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“There is time for that debate – but it is slightly premature because we don’t know what the Government is going to give us in terms of future support or otherwise.”

Cllr Johnson added he and his administration are continuing to lobby Government to potentially raise RBWM’s council tax above the cap.

He said: “I would much rather go down that route than I would to gamble it all on holding a referendum because genuinely I don’t see the referendum as a particularly effective way of getting the additional resources we need.”

Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, Cllr Knowles said he would respect the will of the people.

He said: “I am sure that most councillors’, regardless of political allegiances, would get behind whatever the residents decide.”