SOS: Save our Slough from Bankruptcy

"Action is needed on many front to clean up the mess created by Slough's councillors: Slough Council is effectively 'bankrupt' " said Matthew Taylor Chair of Slough Lib Dems.

In a letter published in Slough Observer on 6 August 21, Matthew explained there was some good news from the recent meeting of Slough Council, but many troubling concerns remain.

"The bad news is that at the political level, despite the apologies, there is still too little recognition from Labour and Tory councillors of the depth of their failures in policymaking and oversight. The threat of a £174 million deficit in Slough Council's budget by 2024/5 didn't just arise overnight.

The widely supported petition calling for the Leader of Slough Council, James Swindlehurst, to resign, had also stated 'We want an inquiry to know how and why Slough is in this financial mess. We want to know what will be done to ensure it doesn't happen again.' Sadly, this part was missing from the motion the Tories proposed at the meeting of Council on 22 July.

Yet in many ways, this was the key point. Yes, the new Finance Officer is doing a good job in identifying the technical failures, but what lay behind the policy and oversight failures is the key question?"

Having set out some details of potential reasons for these Labour and Tory failures in his letter (see link below for full details), Matthew concluded: "If the Labour and Tory councillors are not willing to learn lessons by agreeing there should be a full inquiry into what went wrong, then it's time for a complete change on Slough Council."

Matthew Taylor's letter published in Slough Observer, 6 Aug 21: Action needed to sort finance mess