Why Reading Borough Council wants to expand its borders

BBC News

14-07-2025

If you live on the western fringes of Reading - in Calcot, Tilehurst, Theale, Pangbourne or Purley-on-Thames - you currently come under the umbrella of West Berkshire Council.West Berkshire empties your bins, runs your schools and - perhaps most importantly of all - sets and collects your council tax bills.With the government planning a major revamp of local government in the next few years though, some councils will have to merge with others to survive. Others will look to expand their own boundaries to become big enough to meet the government's new population criteria.That's why Reading is looking to swallow up these five Berkshire villages, a move that would add about 32,000 extra people to its current population of roughly 175,000.Labour wants smaller councils like the six we have in Berkshire to combine with others so they have at least 350,000 people on their books. It says fewer, bigger councils would be cheaper for taxpayers while improving services at the same time. Even the county's most populous council area though, West Berkshire, has only around half that number.
Nothing's yet written in stone but the Royal County's other councils, including Reading, would have been forgiven for thinking West Berkshire might have been looking to join with them as they started to draw up their re-organisation proposals.To the surprise of just everyone outside the council's top brass though, West Berkshire decided in the spring it would rather merge with the Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire councils instead to create a brand new authority - Ridgeway Council. Reading's now reacted to this idea by saying it wants to absorb the West Berkshire villages of Purley-on-Thames, Calcot, Pangbourne, Theale and Calcot into its own authority. It has to get permission from the government to do this and is planning to ask for formal permission to bring them under its control in the next few weeks. Reading Borough's leader Liz Terry said: "There is no doubt many residents on the western fringes of Reading look to the town, whether for work, transport connections, higher education, shopping or to use other facilities."In that respect, these are already suburbs of Reading and clearly fall within its economic catchment area."While Reading will inevitably loom large in the lives of the people who live on Reading's western fringes, many will no doubt feel a natural affinity to the more rural nature and feel of West Berkshire. As for what West Berkshire's councillors will make of this blatant land grab - that will become clearer in the coming days. But if they'd been hoping they'd stolen a march on their neighbours with their Ridgeway plan, they may just need to think again.
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