COUNCILLORS question if the Royal Borough’s “tough but necessary” budget would’ve brought in significant income if hadn’t been for the coronavirus pandemic.

At last week’s cabinet meeting, the leader of the council, councillor Andrew Johnson (Conservative: Hurley and Walthams) announced if it wasn’t for Covid-19, the borough would’ve potential been in a better financial position than originally thought through delivering identified savings.

Dubbed a “tough but necessary” budget, reserves could’ve hit £9 million if it wasn’t for loss of income from parking, leisure, and commercial properties.

However, at a corporate overview and scrutiny panel on September 29 (Tuesday), the leader of the opposing Liberal Democrats, councillor Simon Werner (Pinkneys Green), questioned if it was possible that the council would’ve made a £2.5 million surplus in the budget or if it was a “guestimate”.

The director of resources, Adele Taylor, justified the figure that, without Covid-19, the council was underspending and transforming areas – such as adult social care – to deliver a balanced budget for this year.

READ MORE: Windsor and Maidenhead receives government's housing support grant

She said: “As far as I’m concerned, we had a safe and secure budget as you could have.”

Questions were also raised at the officer predicting parking income would return to normal levels in a matter of weeks despite a tightening of lockdown measures.

The graphs within the report showed car parking income in Windsor would’ve returned to normal by October 7 and Maidenhead to return by November 11.

Cllr Werner said he found it “puzzling” the predictions on the graph seemed more of a guess than an analysis as car parks in Windsor and Maidenhead are nowhere near their level of capacity pre-lockdown.

Ms Taylor said these predictions were based on activity as they knew it in July when the government were opening up the economy more.

READ MORE: Maidenhead community centre finds new home after years of uncertainty

Despite the parking income assumptions being based on evidence at that time, new measures have been introduced such as the 10pm curfew for bars and restaurants which will impact the car parking income.

Adele Taylor said: “We will have to and we will continue to challenge the evidence on which this based – but it’s got to be based on the evidence we know at the time and the things that are happening.

“What I can say at this point of time we were as confident as we could be of the estimates – but it’s always going to be an estimate at that particular point of time.

“Things have changed even in the last few weeks about what things are open and what things aren’t open that may have an impact on that car parking income.”

She added the predictions were never based on car parks being at 100 per cent capacity at all time.