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inside the town facing a 25% council tax hike

A 25 per cent hike in council tax would add further pressure to many residents’ finances, leaving some unable – or unwilling – to pay, locals said

Some residents opposed to Windsor and Maidenhead council’s plans to raise council tax by 25 per cent may protest the increase by not paying it, locals told The i Paper.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (RBWM) is one of a number of local authorities considering a council tax rise beyond the current 5 per cent limit.

Local authorities must seek government permission or hold a referendum if they want to raise council tax above five per cent.

In RBWM’s draft budget includes, there is an Exceptional Financial Support request to be able to raise council tax by an additional 20 per cent above the current limit of 4.99 per cent.

Requesting government permission for this, as well as an application for a £60.3m loan, reflects “the level of support needed to make the council sustainable and rectify £30m of historical accountancy errors”, it said.

In Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Locals told The i Paper they may protest if council tax is hiked to 25 per cent (Photo: Tom Pilston)

If unable to secure the level of support its applied for, the Lib Dem-run council said issuing a statutory Section 114 notice, which means the council is effectively bankrupt, is almost inevitable.

Mother-of-three Tara Wise, 35, said the proposed 25 per cent council tax increase had her questioning where else she could cut back if the hike is approved.

‘It’s unfair and it just makes living harder’

“It’s awful. It’s unfair and it just makes living harder,” she said. “Everyone’s already struggling as it is. It’s hard to know where now, at this stage, you can cut back.”

Ms Wise said she was unhappy with services supported by council tax, citing poor maintenance and potholes.

“I just don’t see what they are doing with it and what the reason is to increase. They haven’t really justified it,” she said.

Pensioner Steven Levene, 71, and his wife, Susan, 70, have already suffered a hit to their finances by losing the winter fuel allowance and would face another blow if the plans go ahead, he said.

Tara Wise and her son in Peascod Street in Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Mother-of-three Tara Wise does not think the local authority’s proposed council tax hike is justified (Photo: Tom Pilston/i)

On average affected households could face an annual increase of £450.

“If you take that and the £200 for the fuel allowance, that’s £600. So that’s a big hole out of my pension,” Mr Levene said.

He added that he signed the petition protesting the hike but “petitions never seem to work”.

Ms Levene said: “We’ve had other things taken away from us as pensioners and you just wonder how they got into that situation whereby they have to put it up that much.”

Steve and Sue Levene in Peascod Street in Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Steven Levene said he and his wife are facing another blow to their pension income after losing out on the Winter Fuel Allowance (Photo: Tom Pilston)

Asked about criticisms the council had mismanaged spending, Mr Levene said: “It’s the money they haven’t spent… the roads are just horrendous, especially around where we are.

“The actual maintenance of anything in the high street. It’s not too bad here litter wise but Windsor just doesn’t seem to be the same anymore.”

The town has not escaped the wave of high street store closures which have swept the country as empty retail spaces cannot be ignored on a walk through Peascod Street, from where Windsor Castle’s towers can be seen, and the adjacent roads.

Figures shared this week revealed the vacancy rate for shops in the town centre had risen and currently stands at 11 per cent.

Steve and Sue Levene in Peascod Street in Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Susan Levene wonders how the council’s finances ended up in such a state (Photo: Tom Pilston)

Rose Gosztonyi, 29, said rate of the rise was “very significant”, especially when coupled with the other high costs of living.

“I think that it would be very unattainable for a lot of people,” she said.

The sous chef added: “It’s just sort of adding more and more and then also with the minimum wage only about £11 an hour – I’m only making just above minimum wage – it’s just the increase in costs with everything at the moment and then also not the increase in wages.”

Ms Gosztonyi, who lives in a home which she shares with two others is already cutting back because of heating bills, choosing cheaper and lower quality groceries and clothes, and having to wait longer to build up the money to afford certain purchases.

Rose Gasztonyi in Peascod Street Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Rose Gosztonyi, a sous chef, said affording the increase would not be manageable for many (Photo: Tom Pilston)

“[It] just makes everything much more difficult, especially for people in the winter and also for single people who are on single incomes” she said.

Mother-of-one Vishnupriya Aruldeva, 42, said parents in a Facebook group, where she first learned of the planned council tax rise have been heavily criticising it.

The accountant failed to see the need for an enclosed cycle park next to Windsor Leisure Centre as “nobody seems to be using it, it’s empty most of the time”. She added that she thought the money, allocated by Active Travel England via central government, could have been better spent elsewhere.

Another Windsor resident, who only gave her name as Lindsay, described the council tax hike as “ridiculous”, adding she had witnessed council contractors “sitting at the top of Hemwood Road for an hour and a half every day, because they finished their shift early, we’re still paying for them”.

“It’s ridiculous. Because the council haven’t spent their money correctly, everyone else has to pay for it,” she said.

Narinder Singh, 45, said he faces an increase of around £400 a year in council tax costs as is home is in Band D.

Narvinda Singh in Peascod Street in Windsor town centre were there is a proposal to raise Council Tax by up to 23%. 30/1/25. Photo Tom Pilston.
Narinder Singh said people will stop paying the council tax if it they are hit with a 25 per cent increase (Photo: Tom Pilston/i)

The gas engineer said: “Increasing council tax with the cost of living is inappropriate. There’s kids to feed, families to feed and there’s all these rising costs – like gas, electric and insurances are going up – and obviously the cost of food is still increasing.

“They’re demanding all this extra money but the roads are still unfixed and bins are not being emptied, and bins [are collected] every second week. Why am I paying 25 per cent more?”

Mr Singh said the council was wasting money on “unnecessary monuments” which “no one really cares about” and should allocate more money to tackling homelessness.

“They’re focused on tourism when you should be caring for your own residents first.”

The father-of-four said he will have to make “significant cutbacks” if the rise is approved.

“I’ll have to make significant cutbacks on a lot of things, it could be food, their clubs and stuff like that. It’s just not feasible. It’s not a viable thing.”

And he said some families will not be able to cover the cost of the increase at all.

“People are going to stop paying council tax and then what are they going to stick all these hundreds of other people in jails? The jails are already full.”

Locals ‘up in arms’ about proposed 25 per cent council tax hike

Tory Cllr Sally Coneron also said some locals are “up in arms” about the proposed increase and had voiced plans not to pay it.

Speaking to The i Paper on Wednesday, Coneron said: “I had a message from someone last night who’d seen the recent media report and said to me, ‘we won’t pay it, our friends won’t pay it, our neighbours won’t pay it’.”

She said taxpayers in the borough should not be forced to foot the bill for the “failure” of the council’s Lib Dem leadership.

“That is absolutely not an option for us as far as we’re concerned,” she said.

“We don’t really think that the residents of the Royal Borough should be forced to pay the bill for the persistent weak control and political failure of the Liberal Democrat leadership currently.”

Coneron suggested the council should have foregone works to upgrade a roundabout at the junction of the A308 Windsor Road and Holyport Road, estimated to cost £1.3m and funded with grants from the Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership and Community Infrastructure Levy, as well as implemented a hiring freeze to help restrict unessential spending.

“When you’re going through something where you’re potentially about to go bankrupt, to have 22 job adverts advertised for staff seems to me absurd.”

She added: “The jobs that need to be filled need to be only ever be the absolutely essential ones.”

School teacher and health and social care worker vacancies are among those currently listed. But Coneron said she struggled to see the essential nature of some roles advertised at this time such as one for an ecologist.

The full-time, permanent role is to ensure planning application are compliant with legislation and policy with regards to ecology, according to the council website, and listed with a salary of £36,433 – £40,401.

Benjamin Elks, grassroots development manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Given what we know about public sector productivity it’s clear the council could and should have been doing more on improving the efficiency of its services and the productivity of its workforce.”

He added that RBWM should “consider ways to increase productivity that would allow the council to reduce its staffing levels, and in particular the number of staff on large remuneration packages”.

Elks said the council should also be reviewing its portfolio to identify whether it could sell off any assets.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, which has been campaigning against the increase, is calling on Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner to tell the council to hold a local referendum on the increase instead.

The i Paper contacted RBWM’s leader and deputy leader, who did not respond to comment but referenced a December statement from deputy leader of the council and cabinet member for finance Cllr Lynne Jones.

The authorities considering raising council tax above 5 per cent

Windsor and Maidenhead’s request for is the highest among a number of councils looking to exceed the standard limit.

Hampshire – 15 per cent

Bradford – 15 per cent

Newham, east London – 10 per cent

Cheshire East – 9.99 per cent

Birmingham – 9.99 per cent

Slough – 7.99 per cent

Cllr Jones said “despite the significant action we’ve taken over the last 18 months to grip the financial situation we inherited, the borough’s unsustainable low level of council tax income combined with high levels of debt” had left it with “no choice” but to ask the Government to permit the 25 per cent rise.

Under the previous Conservative leadership, council tax was cut and frozen. RBWM’s most recent annual auditors report, carried out by Deloitte, noted its relatively low level of council tax income, reflecting historic decisions not to increase council tax by the maximum permitted.

Jones added that the increase will enable the council to “replace services that were historically stripped out – like maintaining our streets, trees and play areas, and support more of the borough’s most vulnerable residents”.

Improvements to public services are something every Windsor taxpayer who spoke to The i Paper was in favour of.

However, they remained unconvinced about what additional value they would get in exchange for paying a much higher rate.

Mr Levene said: “I’d just like to know what we’re going to get extra for the extra money.”

“I think that they should be very transparent with people,” Ms Gosztonyi said. “If they want them to pay that much more, then they need to be transparent about where it’s going or whose pockets it’s going into.”



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