A massive sum of over £16 million is set to be spent on various projects by Bracknell Forest Council in the coming year.

These projects involve maintaining council owned properties, IT projects and enhancing security measures.

The huge spend was discussed as part of Bracknell Forest Council’s Capital Budget for the 2022/23 financial year.

The £16m figure -£16,346,000 in full- will be spent on a range of council projects, from maintaining its properties to highways enhancements and CCTV operation.

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But not all of that spending will come from the council’s coffers.

Of the £16m plus of spending, £9.3m (£9,309,000) of it will be funded by the council.

The remaining £7m of spending (£7,037,000) will come from other sources, with £1.113m coming from developer contributions secured through Section 106 legal agreements, which developers pay the council to invest in community infrastructure.

But what will all this cash go to?

A sizeable portion of it is due to be spent on planned maintenance of council owned properties.

These works involve repairs, refurbishment and other essential maintenance, and relate to council owned assets such as the Bracknell Leisure Centre, Coral Reef Waterworld, Downshire Golf Complex, and community centres throughout Bracknell Forest.

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The council has estimated the value of high priority works at these sites currently stands at £2.27m.

Money will also be spent on council upgrade projects in this years budget, with an extra £140,000 set to be spent on the  council’s Time Square offices, with the council chamber being enhanced for livestreaming, and other parts of the building being converted into a community hub.

The conversion has not been finished yet despite a projected completion in October of last year.

The spending is outlined in the council document Exec Summary 2022-23 – 261121 Annexe All , where project proposals are laid out.

For example, a £700,000 project was proposed to build safety measures at Garth Hill College.

This has been proposed after an incident where a distressed pupil attempted to jump from the second floor of the school’s atrium balcony, but they were pulled back a staff member.

Therefore, a capital spending project has been proposed to enhance safety measures throughout the college to prevent something like that re-occurring in the future.

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The spending and bidding for these projects to be undertaken was agreed at Bracknell Forest Council’s executive committee meeting on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.

Speaking about the projects, councillor Paul Bettison OBE (Conservative, Little Sandhurst and Wellington) said: “I believe that they [the projects] are exciting for this council.

“The one I’d like to particularly mention are the improvements to the council chamber, so we can continue to livestream our meetings for the public.

“One of the things we’ve all discovered during Covid has been that the attendance of members of the public have almost doubled, and dip into meetings from the comfort of their own home.

“There’s a clear indication from the public that they’d like to continue this ease of access to local government, and I’m really pleased we are able to facilitate this.”

The proposals were unanimously agreed by the executive committee.

Because the amounts being spent and bid for are so high, the council’s capital budget has to be approved at a full council meeting.