RBWM Youth Council

Every year the youth council writes to lead councillors and officers to ensue that young people are being represented.

You can read the Youth Council's response to the RBWM Draft Budget for 2025/26 below:

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Dear Councillors and officers of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead,

We are writing to you today regarding the council's Draft Budget Consultation for 2025/2026. As part of our work we have reviewed the Budget Documents and invited Ellen McManus and Cllr Jones, the lead member for finance to one of our meetings. Youth Councillors have also completed the consultation on RBWM Together as individual residents of the borough. We have sent it to all schools and asked teachers to encourage young people to complete the survey. We have also promoted it widely on our social media channels.

Thank you for the effort that has gone into producing the budget consultation materials. However, we do have some concerns regarding the accessibility of the information provided this year. Compared to last year, the booklet feels less detailed, and the absence of the supplementary booklet outlining key proposals — something we found very helpful last year — may make it harder for residents to fully engage with and understand the budget. We are concerned this could leave some members of the public unable to form a clear view of the proposals and their potential impact due to a lack of clarity around proposals. We believe enhancing the readability of the booklet and reintroducing a supplementary document would help residents fully engage with the consultation process in the future.

We hold deep concerns about the proposed 24.99% council tax rise in a single year, particularly the significant impact it will have on families and, crucially, on young people. While we understand the financial challenges the council is facing and the need to address the current situation, we are frustrated by the burden this increase will place on families who are already struggling with the cost of living. We appreciate the £2m set aside in the budget to support the borough’s residents on council tax reduction, but recognise that this will not adequately compensate for the potentially devastating consequences this increase will have on all of the resident’s cost of living.

We urge the council to carefully consider the detrimental effects this will have on residents and explore alternative measures to reduce the impact on the most vulnerable and the wider community, and explore the alternative of a 10% council tax increase over two years to decrease the burden on the public.

Although it does not form part of the budget we would like to express our support of the decision taken by cabinet on the 29th of January to allow for a Council Tax rebate for Achieving for Children Foster Carers with children placed with them. We hope this will allow for RBWM and Achieving for Children to be able to recruit and retain foster carers in the future, therefore not only saving the council money from expensive private placements but also improve the experience of foster children in the borough.

Furthermore, we are troubled by the increase in some room hire charges in our community buildings going up around 5-10%. This could potentially prevent the running of important youth projects and services that benefit from the use of council and Family Hub spaces, such as the Number 22 counselling service. We do understand that council buildings do need to move towards a more income generating model to avoid the selling of these important assets, particularly when it comes to Family Hubs, but we hope you will reflect on the benefits that these projects and services have to our community when examining the consequences of these increases.

Whilst reviewing the proposed fees and charges we are happy to see that most charges are not being significantly hiked up. We are also happy to see that some parking charges are being reduced slightly (Stafferton Way and Windsor Leisure Centre). However we do raise concern that even the relatively small increases to parking when compared to recent budgets will cause further revenue reduction the council is already having to realign the budget due to the parking income being achievable in 2024.

We would also like to highlight our concern regarding the significant increase to the non resident in fact right of burial. An increase of 141.8% seems out of place and excessive. We understand that this is likely due to the already known lack of burial spaces available in the borough but this increase aimed at mourning parents seems particularly excessive.

We are glad to see that more funding is being allocated for street lighting maintenance as this is an issue that we have highlighted and advocated for in the past. However, we hold some concerns over the reduction of hours that lights will be used and the reduction in brightness, as we are worried this may hold negative impacts for the safety of our youth. The Safe Project survey found that only 25% of young people in RBWM felt safe after dark, and we are concerned that a reduction in street light hours will only decrease this number.

We hope you take the contents of our letter into consideration when finalising the budget and would welcome some feedback on our letter. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to have our voice heard and invite you to work with us to create more accessible material for next year's budget consultation.

Kind Regards,

Youth Councillors

RBWM Youth Council

youthcouncil@rbwm.gov.uk