Buckinghamshire Council is sitting on hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of reserves in High Wycombe, it has been confirmed.

The unitary authority’s High Wycombe Town Committee’s ringfenced reserves are forecast to rise to £815,000 by March 2025, according to a new report.

The council’s struggles to spend taxpayers’ cash is leading to much-needed repairs and worthwhile projects being stifled due to what some claim is a mixture of bureaucracy, and the fact Wycombe does not have its own town council.

Cllr Julia Wassell said the huge pot of unspent cash was an ‘embarrassment’ as the report was discussed during a meeting of the Town Committee on Tuesday night

The Independent said: “It never ceases to amaze me how Buckinghamshire Council is in such a pickle because we haven’t got a town council. Or more to the point, everybody could be making their own decision at a very local, nonpolitical level.”

In High Wycombe town, services such as maintaining cemeteries, recreation grounds and allotments, as well as the issuing of grants to voluntary organisations, are paid for by Buckinghamshire Council.

In other areas, these services would be delivered by the relevant town or parish council, but Wycombe does not have such an authority.

Because the town is unparished, it therefore cannot raise a precept – the additional charge on council tax bills to fund local council budgets.

Instead, Bucks Council charges ‘special expenses’ to residents so it can recover the costs of providing services that a town or parish council would normally provide.

Wendy Morgan-Brown, Bucks Council’s head of partnerships and communities, said the money from special expenses had been ‘historically underspent’ since the formation of the unitary authority in 2020.

She told the meeting the Town Committee was currently ‘constrained’ in advising how the money should be spent.

This is due to a convoluted process in which proposals must be agreed through the budget sub-committee, then recommended by the High Wycombe Town Committee and then sent through to Bucks Council to include in its annual budget.

Councillors on the High Wycombe Town Committee voted to simplify this process at a meeting, before the changes were then passed at full council on Wednesday.

A majority of the committee – which is not a decision-making body itself – agreed to give Bucks Council’s leader and cabinet the authority to vary the use of the special expenses budget during the course of the financial year.

Cllr Tony Green told the meeting: “I broadly welcome the recommendations. It brings the process for this committee basically back to what it was under Wycombe District Council days when it just needed a cabinet member to agree changes.”

However, the Conservative said one issue with the special expenses was that the town committee had to agree to use contractors used by Bucks Council.

He added: “We have changing rooms on the recreation ground in our ward managed by special expenses. It has taken virtually the whole year to get a water leak rectified and the building put back into use.”

Labour Councillor Melanie Smith told the meeting she could see how the changes would give the committee slightly more ‘flexibility’.

However, she added: “It still remains the case that it is a lot of money. It is Wycombe money for people in Wycombe and decisions about how to spend it are not being made in Wycombe.

“They still have to go out into Aylesbury for approval. That is our money for our town and frankly we don’t really get a say in how it is spent, and we never have done.”