The government must ‘seriously consider’ lifting the 5 per cent cap on council tax increases to allow local authorities to raise more funds, the councillor in charge of spending in Windsor and Maidenhead has said.

Independent councillor Lynne Jones said rising costs in social care and homelessness accommodation meant councils across the country are struggling with their finances. She said the government should consider letting councils raise more from council tax in its autumn spending review this month.

Councillor Jones said: “It’s clear that many councils are struggling to provide services within the current funding and in my view central government will have to give serious consideration to lifting the council tax cap.”

Councillor Jones made the call as she told other leading councillors at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead of a predicted £12 million overspend in this year’s budget at a meeting on Wednesday October 2.

A council report on the Royal Borough’s worsening situation says it is down to ‘pressures in children’s and adult’s social care and temporary accommodation’. It notes that these ‘match what is being seen across Berkshire and the wider country’.

But councillor Jones says decisions to keep council tax down by the council’s previous Conservative leaders had made the Royal Borough’s situation even worse.

She said the effects were that the number of council staff needed to manage finances was reduced, while government funding was cut and demand for services increased.

She claims the councils’ previous administrations tried to make up for this by paying for day-to-day spending from the ‘capital’ budget used for major infrastructure works.

And she added the council then stopped funding on maintenance of lampposts, fences and trees for years after public finance watchdog CIPFA said it could no longer pay for this from the capital budget.

Councillor Jones said: “Historic decisions to reduce council tax have seen officer capacity decimated and necessitated service budgets being cut way beyond efficiencies due to the increase in statutory demand for social care and housing.

“Once council tax was capped at the unsustainable level brought about by decisions for votes from 2010 to 2016 at the same time as government funding was decreasing the following years were just political and financial survival by any means.”

She added that the decisions had left the council with debts of over £200 million that cost it £13 million a year in borrowing costs.

Councillor Jones’s claims come after finance staff found holes in previous years’ budgets that reveal the council has less money than previously thought.

They say balance sheet reconciliation – which involve matching spending records with the money in the council’s accounts – had not been done since 2021.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead applied to the government for ‘exceptional financial support’ – a bailout that will likely involve selling properties – in May this year.

Councillor Jones said discussions with the government ‘are ongoing’.