To achieve a balanced budget, and start tackling Woking’s huge debt, the borough council need to live within our means, agree a package of support from government and sell assets.

A lot of work has been done in the eight months since government intervention to get Woking’s finances back on track. Inevitably there have been many difficult decisions to make so I am relieved that we have managed to find a positive way forward in many areas.

Public input has played an important part in our work. We surveyed local people on what they value in the summer and consulted on service changes in the autumn.

We made sure to reach those who benefit from lesser-used services and offered paper copies of materials.

It’s been huge relief to keep Pool in the Park open. We have managed this by offering fewer concessions and charging a little more, based on benchmarking with other pools across Surrey.

We can’t run community centres but we have interest from a number of community groups who will take over the centres and keep them at the heart of their communities.

We are working with sports clubs to take over pavilions.

We can’t offer as much day care as before, but it will be available at Hale End Court in Old Woking and potentially at community centres.

Apart from the toilets in the town-centre shopping centres, we will need to close toilets, but again there has been some interest on taking these on.

We will reduce grounds maintenance and street cleaning but required standards will still be met with a substantial budget saving.

Sadly, up to 60 staff of the council will lose their jobs. We are helping and supporting staff to prepare for the future and sharing details of vacancies at other Surrey councils. We’ve been able to transfer some services and staff to Surrey County Council and other boroughs.

We can no longer give grants to local charities and voluntary groups, and this will impact so many groups that offer an amazing service to local people.

We are working with key providers such as Citizen’s Advice Woking and Woking Community Transport to support them to move to a new way of operating.

The Lightbox will get some funds for a year only to move them to a more community-focused facility, saving the council money on having to close and pay the costs of the building.

Doing all of this saves £8.4 million, and if agreed at this week’s council meeting, should enable us to live within our means.

To start tackling the almost £2 billion of debt, government is offering us flexibility on dealing with money we should have put aside for borrowing and to capitalise our debt. This will be discussed at council on March 4.

We will also need to sell assets in a managed strategic-asset-disposal programme over the next few years.