Slough Budget Setting meeting: Tory budget defeated! Lib Dems set out their alternative budget proposals
3 Mar 2026
After last week’s Tory Budget was defeated in the annual budget setting meeting of Slough Borough Council, Slough Liberal Democrats have called on the Tory administration to ‘think again’ before the budget is put to councillors for a second time on Thursday 5 March.
“If we are serious about fixing our finances, and restoring trust, then we must be honest about what has not worked. We put forward serious proposals about ways we can do things better as a Council, restoring trust in ourselves and delivering value for money to our residents. However, this is the Tories’ mess and it's theirs to fix.” said Councillor Akram.
The alternative proposals Liberal Democrats put forward at the council budget setting included:
A reduction in cabinet members: from eight members to four (£55,892)
Addressing the failure by the administration in recovery resulting in costly best value commissioners (£600,000.00 per annum)
Deleting special responsibility allowances for some of the committee chairs and vice chairs (£17,527)
Deleting three political group support officers' posts (£640,000 over a council term)
In total, the complete savings package the Lib Dems are proposing amounts to a saving of £2,058,419 for taxpayers.
Back in 2023, Councillor Waqas Sabah attending Cabinet, raised concerns about extending the legal services contract. At last week’s budget meeting, Councillor Sabah reminded the administration that the council had failed to bring back in-house legal services and criticised the council continuous overspend of approximately £3m through HB Law services. “Why do we have a full-time monitoring officer and head of Legal who’s paid over £100,000+ yet the legal function is with someone from HB Law? The HB Law contract is not financially sustainable and not best value.”
Other Liberal Democrat councillors attacked the council’s poor record on temporary accommodation, asset management as well as transformation. Figures show that 1,300 households are currently housed in temporary accommodation in Slough. “It has been disappointing to discover, after research and enquiries, that the rates paid to agencies and landlords for housing our residents are not disclosed. This raises important questions: How do we procure these landlords and agencies? What key criteria are used in this process?” asked Councillor Mohammed Nazir.
Similarly, Council Zaffar Ajaib also drew attention to the council’s failed transformation plans citing since March 2021, there has been an increase in interim staff and workforce numbers (as of March 2025: 1,058 permanent members of staff and 343 interim) which is far above the national average, “Slough’s core spending power has increased. Revenues have grown by £69m since 2022/23 up till now, yet we still lack control over our spending and innovation remains limited”.
The Lib Dems also continued their calls for better community asset management with demands to roll-out the council hub strategy, to all parts of borough, operating as preventative, community-led and accessible buildings for all local organisations to use and run more effectively than the council does.
Councillor Akram finished by saying, “If the Tories want to pass a budget through, my door is always open to consider our alternative budget proposals”.