Failures to control spending by council chiefs have been blasted as ‘unforgiveable’ as the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead seeks a bailout from the government.

Liberal Democrat council leader Simon Werner accused his Conservative predecessors of setting a ‘fake budget’ last year. But Conservative councillor John Story blamed accounting errors on senior council staff – and accused the Liberal Democrats of being slow to take action.

Councillor Werner said: “I don’t need to rehearse the terrible circumstances that have led the council into this position. A combination of decisions in the past to reduce council tax, the massive buildup of debt by the previous administration and the fake budget last year.”

Councillor Werner added that finance staff had recently conducted the first ‘detailed balance sheet reconciliation’ in three years. This involves matching spending records with the money in the council’s accounts.

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He said staff found ‘a number of massive historical discrepancies’ and that the council’s reserves – pots of money saved to cover extra and unforeseen costs – were far lower than thought.

He added that not doing a reconciliation before was ‘just unforgiveable – it’s like not checking your bank account against what was actually spent.’

But Conservative councillor John Story said the responsibility for this lay with the council’s previous chief financial officer.

He said: “I know there are some who are still convinced that the reason for this is that last year’s budget was fake – that the figures in it were in fact fictitious, they were made up.”

He said the legal duty to make sure budgets are robust ‘lies not with politicians – the politicians have nothing to do with it – but with the council’s officers and specifically with the chief financial officer.’

Councillor Story pointed out that the council is on course to spend £10 million more than the Liberal Democrats have budgeted for this year.

He said the new council leaders ‘didn’t get on top of the numbers quickly enough.’ He said a spending control panel – set up last October – should have been launched ‘the moment you came into office.’

Councillor Story said a transformation programme to make the council more efficient was set up in April – ‘nearly a year after you came into office.’

He said this created an ‘unfortunate impression that for a large part of last year the council froze and costs were simply allowed to escalate freely with little action being taken.’

Liberal Democrat councillor Julian Tisi said action ‘was taken almost immediately.’ He said the spending review panel was brought in ‘very early on’ and that the council had been working on its transformation programme ‘for some time.’

The debate happened at a meeting of RBWM councillors on Wednesday July 17.

Councillors voted for senior staff to negotiate a deal for exceptional financial support from the government in consultation with councillor Werner, then report back to the rest of the council.

Conservative councillors voted against this, with Tory group leader Maureen Hunt raising concerns that the rest of the council would ‘have no knowledge of exactly what is going on’ in talks with the government.