Council accused of planning 'hostile' takeover

Reading Borough Council has drawn up plans to take over some neighbouring areas
- Published
A council has been accused of a "hostile act" for asking people living in five West Berkshire villages how they would feel about coming under its authority.
Theale, Pangbourne, Calcot, Purley-on-Thames and Tilehurst all currently sit under the umbrella of West Berkshire Council.
But Reading Borough Council says it wants to take responsibility for them instead, and has launched a consultation.
It is a move opposed by West Berkshire Council, but Reading says it would never have suggested it had its neighbour not announced it wanted to merge with two Oxfordshire authorities.
Reading will now consult with the 32,000 or so people living in the five villages on its western fringes.
It will ask what they think of its plan to absorb them into what it is increasingly keen on calling Greater Reading.
At a meeting to discuss its next moves, Reading councillor Adele Barnett-Ward said they had never planned to be in this position.
"I just find it bizarre - West Berkshire started it. We've just commented on it," she said.
Her fellow councillor Rachel Eden said: "I don't think any of us in a million years would have suggested this proposal if it hadn't been for Ridgeway Council being created out of the ether."
No matter how we got here, the people living in these villages now find themselves in the middle of a war of words between the two authorities.
Over the next few months the people living in the villages at the heart of this political row can expect to be hit by a blizzard of communications.
Both councils will be eager to hear their views and get their points across, no doubt be couched in neutral tones.
But with the leader of West Berkshire Council having already accused Reading of trying to pull off a "land grab" and a "hostile act", and Reading councillors calling its neighbour's behaviour "bizarre", neutrality does not appear to be the order of the day.
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- Published4 June