Slough council leader's resignation rejected by Labour group amid cash woes

A council report said the authority faced "a financial situation of an extremely serious nature"

The leader of a council in financial crisis has said his resignation offer has been rejected by the Labour group which has instead asked him to "sort out" the issues.

Slough Borough Council previously issued a Section 114 notice, which restricts spending to essential services.

It has estimated a deficit of £56m.

Leader James Swindlehurst said the party wished to resolve the problems rather than run a leadership campaign.

It comes after a council report said the authority faced "a financial situation of an extremely serious nature".

Problems stem from historical accounting errors, huge one-off payments, insufficient reserves and borrowing quadrupling, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

Mr Swindleshurst said: "In the sense of contrition and wanting to take responsibility, I did offer to resign to my group, and they told me that was not something they would agree to.

He said: "They felt the responsible action was to get a bigger shovel out and start doing more work to try to resolve the issues we are facing as a local authority, and help us get on an even keel because creating a political crisis on top of a financial one, with a probably six to eight-week leadership campaign, will just compound the authority's problems and not help resolve them."

Instead he added the group wanted him to "sort out" the council's financial crisis.

But a petition online calling for his resignation, and that of the council's chief executive Josie Wragg, plus a vote of no confidence if they don't resign, has attracted more than 800 signatures.

Petitioner Teresa Munday said: "They [Mr Swindlehurst and Ms Wragg] have proved they can't do what they're saying that needs to be done...

"They got us into this place knowing there were problems, so we need new people to actually change things and get us out of this mess."

Slough Borough Council is the second local authority to issue a Section 114 notice in less than a year, after Croydon Council issued a notice in November.