Slough Borough Council ‘does not have the confidence of its residents’ the Government has said – as it announced plans to keep the council under supervision for another two years.

A new Government report on the council’s recovery from bankruptcy says the council is a long way from being back on stable footing, and that there is still ‘too much volatility’ in its finances and its leadership.

It adds that the council ‘does not have the confidence of its residents’ and that there is ‘low morale’ among its staff.

The Government appointed commissioners to oversee the council after it went effectively bankrupt in 2021. The intervention was supposed to end in November this year.

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But in their latest report published on Tuesday (October 22), the commissioners said they want to extend this until November 2026.

In their report the commissioners say the council ‘will need to demonstrate that it can live within its means’ before they can allow it to operate independently again.

It says this means the council has to deliver its programme of selling off property to cover its debts, and ‘further drive down costs’ by improving productivity and efficiency.

The council said earlier this year that its target of raising £600 million from property sales is now ‘unrealistic’ meaning it may have to make ‘difficult decisions’ about funding for services.

The report also says the council needs to develop a new way of working – known as an operating model – that is ‘affordable and effective’.

Early council plans published last month suggested that in this new way of working, residents would have to ‘do more for themselves’. They said the council would be ‘smaller’ with a ‘more limited range of services’.

But the commissioner’s latest report said the council was ‘far’ from achieving these aims. It said: “There is too much volatility in its financial position and little work has been done to design and implement a new sustainable operating model that reflects the reality of its future financial constraints.”

The report also said that, with the council’s Conservative leadership in a minority, it is ‘vulnerable to destabilising changes’.

And it hinted at friction between the council’s senior staff and that there had been ‘significant churn in the senior leadership that has created a high degree of uncertainty within the council’.

It said: “The organisational leadership of SBC is not collegiate and is therefore not providing the clarity, environment or stability that the council needs.”

It added that a recent staff survey had ‘demonstrated low morale and a lack of confidence in the senior organisational leadership’.

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However the commissioners also say that recent changes among senior managers will start to bring improvement. These include the recruitment of ‘a new, senior interim chief executive’ Will Tuckley in March this year, as well as other ‘considerable new leadership talent’.

The Government says deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is ‘minded to’ extend the Government’s intervention at Slough Borough Council for another two years.

Responding to the report, Slough Borough Council leader Dexter Smith said he welcomed the extension. "As council leader, I asked for this, supporting the best value commissioners’ request to continue working with us," he said.

“The situation we are dealing with has been years in the making and so it will take years to resolve the debt, to get the council living within its means, and to deliver best value services. Now we have the extra time and help from government to do that.”