 Shape the future of your services
We’ve got several consultations and surveys for you to respond to, helping to shape future services and decisions.
You can now have your say via Engage Wokingham Borough on:
 UPDATE: Work with police to crackdown on bike theft
A serial bicycle thief has been sentenced, and three stolen bikes returned, thanks to Wokingham Borough Council’s Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Team and Thames Valley Police.
Members of the ASB Team were patrolling in Wokingham town when they spotted three high-value bikes on communal land to the rear of a council property in Ashridge Road, near the address of someone who was suspected of stealing and handling stolen bikes.
The team were quickly able to identify the rightful owners, a family living in the Wokingham area who had reported the bikes as stolen on social media, so they called the police who came out to recover and return them.
Ashley Reed-Jones, 26, of Ashridge Road, was arrested on Monday, 3 July, and pleaded guilty to three counts of theft at Reading Magistrates’ Court the following day. He was sentenced to 18 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £154.
This related to three incidents in Wokingham town in June, in which Reed-Jones stole bikes worth more than £3,400 from three victims.
 £100 to help with cost of living
Did you know?
- More residents are relying on credit cards and overdrafts to buy essentials
- Paying for food is residents biggest cost of living concern, over energy costs
- Majority of people have not come forward for any help
- Almost all who took the Hardship Alliance’s survey have cancelled memberships, swapped supermarkets, reduced or skipped meals, reduced leisure activities
This is how the cost of living crisis is impacting our area.
People are finding themselves in situations they have not been before.
Thousands of residents will see mortgages rise in the next year. This could create more financial issues for even more people.
If you need financial help now, apply for £100 to help towards food, bills or other essentials using the button below.
Or contact the Citizens Advice Wokingham One Front Door, which can provide advice, information and other support depending on your situation.
 Best times to bake using renewable energy
If you are planning on baking some delicious cakes, homemade bread or even batch cooking a few meals, did you know that you can find out the best times to turn on your oven in order to use less fossil fuel generated energy on the Should I Bake website?
The website recommends baking when more than a third of Britain's electricity comes from renewable energy such as wind, solar and hydro power. It lets you know how much renewable generation there is and shows you the best times to bake each day.
Should I Bake? uses information from the National Grid's Carbon Intensity API to estimate how much of Great Britain’s electricity is coming from renewable (solar, wind and hydro) sources right now and over the next few days. By baking only when renewable generation is high (at least a third of all generation), we can reduce our carbon emissions.
To view the baking forecast, visit the Should I Bake? website or follow The Baking Forecast Twitter account, or if you have an Alexa device you can ask 'Alexa, should I bake?'.
If you cook with an air fryer, oven, microwave, hob or slow cooker, you can find out the typical cost per use and which appliance is cheaper to run on the Energy Saving Trust website.
 Twyford community supports neighbourhood plan
Residents of Twyford parish have voted to adopt their neighbourhood plan, a document that helps guide the type and quality of development that comes forward in future.
At a referendum on Thursday, 6 July, some 1,324 residents voted for it (88.5 per cent) while 169 (11.2 per cent) were against. The turnout was 29 per cent.
This means the plan is "made" and will become part of the formal framework that helps us decide planning applications in Twyford. Before going to the vote, it was subject to consultation and then deemed fit to proceed by an independent examiner.
The plan was prepared by Twyford Parish Council with input from the community and we encouraged residents to play as much of a part as possible.
Finchampstead parish's draft neighbourhood plan will go to referendum on Thursday, 7 September and a neighbourhood plan is being prepared for Ruscombe parish, which was recently consulted on and should go to an inspector soon.
What you might have missed
-
Illegal vapes have been seized from stores in Wokingham Borough, as part of a Trading Standards operation across the wider area which saw 787 illegal items seized from six stores
- It’s Plastic Free July - take a small step to reduce plastic waste this month, for example, switching to reusable cups, avoiding plastic packaging, bringing your own shopping bags or drink bottles and many others
-
Check our jobs board for our latest vacancies, or our third party jobs like schools, carers and more
|
