Councils are feeling the pinch. Inflation, combined with rising demand for services and high interest rates, is forcing unpopular savings in public services. In some cases, the financial pressures have been so great that they have driven councils into insolvency, or close to it.

A council that has gone bankrupt serves no one. The government sends in commissioners, who impose draconian cuts in services and increase the council tax by much more than the government's cap, as happened in Slough.

Wokingham has avoided this fate, despite receiving less core funding from central government than any unitary authority in England. We would receive a staggering £30 million more from the government if we were an averagely funded unitary council.

We have survived only because we have bitten the bullet and made vital savings to enable us to remain solvent while continuing to provide help to those who are most in need.

Wokingham Borough Council is committed to do its best to protect core services in the most challenging financial environment in living memory.

We have to make savings in some areas to have enough money to protect the services that affect people's lives fundamentally – Adult Social Care and Children’s Services – and to help those driven into desperate circumstances by the cost-of-living crisis.

I believe that most people will support the idea of making savings in areas that make a less than profound difference to people's lives to avoid making savings where they will cause real harm.