Fascinating, isn’t it, what happens before and after elections?

Wokingham Borough had local elections this year.  In the run up to the elections the fact that the Conservatives were about to spend a large amount of money (£6 million was the figure given) on Bulmershe School got a lot of coverage in the local press.  The Conservative candidate wrote to the papers claiming the credit and saying how wonderful it was.

Now no-one could say Bulmershe School doesn’t need money spent on it.  All Wokingham’s secondary schools need money spending on them actually, after years of local Conservative neglect and national Labour indifference (only one school in the borough was rebuilt under the Building Schools for the Future programme).   Bulmershe is more deserving than most.  And the situation has been made more urgent by the Conservatives deciding in March that Bulmershe should share a catchment area with Maiden Erlegh, which is “the” school as far as many parents are concerned.    The Lib Dems have been calling for money for Bulmershe for YEARS and we’re still calling for it now.  £6 million would not be enough to give the school a complete makeover, but it could cover a new classroom block.

So £6 million for Bulmershe means wer’re saying “whoopee”?  Well, not quite.  Because, despite all the razzmatazz before the election, there doesn’t seem to be any £6 million.  Or indeed, any extra money at all.

There has been no announcement of new investment.  A senior officer of the council wrote to the press a few weeks ago to explicitly say that nothing had been agreed.  There is nothing in this year’s council budget over and above the usual rewiring/boiler type stuff that comes up for schools every year, amounting to about £150,000 in Bulmershe’s case.   And as the council doesn’t have the odd £6 million unallocated in its finances, there are only two ways to get £6 million – either borrow it, or stop doing something else, neither of which appear to be happening.  I have no doubt that at some point Bulmershe will get some money.  But £6 million now?  No way.

I would even go so far as to say that there never has been any £6 million.  It’s not in any council papers, it’s not in the budget this year, and we have been told that no-one has even asked for it to go in the budget.  Next year, or the year after?  Well, perhaps. But I don’t think that’s what the people who read the headlines in the local papers before the elections were expecting.  They thought Bulmershe was getting £6 million  immediately.

Goodness me, you might almost think the Conservatives talked up money for Bulmershe because there was an election coming!

But the real “Compare and Contrast” is not between what the Conservatives said before an election and what happened after it, but between what they said before the election about Bulmershe and what they said before the election about libraries.

What did they say about libraries before the election, do I hear you asking?  As far as I am aware, absolutely nothing.  But less than a month afterwards, they decided to privatise them.  No consultation, no warning, just a decision by the Conservatives at the May Executive meeting to start the tendering process.

Fancy them keeping that quiet until after the elections!  You might almost think they were trying to avoid losing votes.

But don’t worry.  If it goes according to their timetable, the libraries will be privatised next March.  Just in time for next year’s elections!  By which time we might even know whether Bulmershe is actually going to get any money.

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