Richard Clewer: The Lib Dems’ fuzzy logic is letting Wiltshire down

Cllr Richard Clewer is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Wiltshire Council.

The dust is just about settling at Wiltshire Council following the May 2025 local council elections.  We now have a Council with no overall control and an extremely tight electoral arithmetic.  The Liberal Democrats have formed an administration with the backing of some Independents but the balance in the chamber is so tight that no-one can accurately predict how votes will fall.  So far the Conservative group has been working constructively with Reform, Independent and Labour councillors but it is honestly a struggle to work constructively with the Lib Dem administration amid claims that ‘they won the election, so will do what they want’.  The actual numbers are Lib Dem 43, Conservative 37, Reform 10, Independents seven and Labour one.

The change in focus of the council is becoming increasingly concerning as far as my group are concerned.  The last Conservative administration ran the council along some very clear principles.  We focused on Prevention and Tackling Deprivation through the lens of our very different places and through partnership working.  That preventative approach allowed us not only to improve services (receiving Outstanding OFSTED, Good SEND and Good CGC inspections) but also to save money whilst making residents lives better.  Over the course of the last four years Conservatives added over £56 million to the Council’s reserves whilst also investing an additional £23 million into preventative highways maintenance.

Since taking over in May, the Liberal Democrats have spent almost £12 million that I would not have done on a range of non-essential or poorly thought-through projects.  Most of that has been ‘hidden’ from the public through the use of ‘part 2 papers’, which removes the public scrutiny that is essential for a healthy democracy.  At the same time they have overseen a budget overspend so far this year of around £10 million, only partly offset by higher interest payments as rates have remained higher than expected.  Instead of taking the actions that Conservative administrations of large councils have taken for years, working hard with officers to reduce deficits and control spending, the extra £10 million appears to be being accepted and ‘baked’ into budgets going forward.

We are yet to see what the budget proposals for 2026 are, but it is pretty apparent that instead of focusing on prevention and controlling costs, the new norm is to accept them.  We have already seen proposals to close Household Recycling Centres and decrease rubbish collections to a three-weekly basis.  There is a consultation coming proposing charging for parking in the early morning and evenings, perfectly designed to wreck the evening economy and kick hospitality harder in the teeth.  Spending on consultants however seems to be rising.

What is even more worrying to me is the complete lack of strategic focus of the new Lib Dem/Independent administration. Instead of the clear policy focus which we provided, they are now running Wiltshire Council on the basis of three words ‘together, open and fair.’  This may sound good but it is the sort of fuzzy logic that has brought down Lib Dem councils across the country.  Instead of being ‘Open’ they are making more and more financial decisions behind closed doors. You cannot be ‘Fair’ to everyone when you are looking to close some recycling centres and not others.  As for ‘Together’, apparently they are going to consult on three weekly bin collections to understand residents’ views which sounds great but the savings are already factored into the medium term financial plan.

You can’t run a council by being ‘Fair’ to everyone, you should try to be ‘Open’ but that isn’t a strategic direction but rather a basic way of behaving.  You certainly can’t bring everyone ‘Together’ especially in a world of increasingly fractured hard line positions on topics from Climate Change, the use of cars and immigration. More importantly there isn’t an ounce of strategic direction in any of their new plan.

In April we still had a Conservative strategic approach where services would be preventative, aimed at stopping problems from becoming difficult and complex by acting early, improving people’s lives and saving money.  We now have government through a word salad of a community centred plan which has no strategy, no direction and no chance of delivering the sort of focused, cross department and agency working that actually improves things for our residents.

It is really quite depressing to watch the new administration and new cabinet tear up everything that made Wiltshire Council one of the most successful in the country in the space of a few short months.  To make things worse, not only are the new cabinet inexperienced but they are often absent.  When I led Wiltshire Council there would always be cabinet members at scrutiny committee meetings.  We had a recent waste scrutiny, looking at the third largest spending area of the council where not a single Lib Dem cabinet member turned up.

We will not take this lying down, we are trying to convince the Independents and other councillors to remove the Lib Dem administration before it is too late.  I don’t know if we will succeed but if things stay as they are I weep for the future of Wiltshire and its residents.