The council used almost £7 million of money ring fenced for affordable housing as a contribution towards the building of Peach Place’s new ‘key worker’ apartments.

An investigation from the News found that the council will lease the apartments to key workers such as teachers, firefighters and nurses, for a planned thirty years.

Prue Bray, Liberal Democrats councillor for Winnersh, said: “The Lib Dems are strongly in favour of providing housing that is affordable for our residents.

“Funding for affordable housing is limited, and therefore it is really important that the council makes the money go as far as possible.

“These 22 flats have cost £6.7 million – or £304,000 each. That is not value for money – it is above the current asking price of a flat in the town on the open market!”

The council claimed it has the option of ending the lease of the flats at Peach Place at ten year and 20 year ‘breaks’, as well as the option to extend the lease beyond the planned 30 years should it choose too.

Cllr Bray continued: “The value for money gets worse because the Peach Place flats are not being purchased outright but will only be available for up to 30 years.

“We do not believe the council would have paid an outside developer anything like £304,000 per flat for a 30 year lease.

“But of course, this is an internal council transfer -from ring-fenced money that can only be used for affordable housing into the mysterious coffers of the Wokingham Town Regeneration project.

“We are very pleased that this information is now out in the public domain. We argued that it should have been revealed at the time the deal was done but the council insisted it must be kept secret, even though other similar uses of affordable housing money had not been kept hidden.”

The News was barred from information relating to the costing of the entire town centre regeneration programme as the council claimed “disclosure is highly likely to prejudice the commercial interests of this council and third parties.”

The council was contacted for comment regarding the News’ findings.