Congleton Constituency Labour Party are calling on Cheshire East Council to end waste, extravagance and incompetence. They have cited thirteen cases of poor stewardship that have cost council taxpayers millions of pounds. Residents in are rightly outraged at the catalogue of waste, extravagance and incompetence and we are demanding that the council gets better.
Council taxpayers money is being poured down the drain, or quite literally into a big hole in Lyme Green just outside Macclesfield. It is a matter of shame that we are most likely to read about the antics of this disgraced council in the pages of Private Eye magazine, where their poor stewardship is regularly lampooned.
What Cheshire East gets up to might make us a laughing stock, but it is no joke to local residents. The money wasted could have repaired our potholed roads, improved services and saved jobs. These are serious matters and we want to know what the leader of the council is going to do to address them before even more money is wasted”.

 

Symptoms of a sick council:

Waste

• Tory-run Cheshire East Council blows £810k on Lyme Green waste plant fiasco. They pay consultants £1,500/day, totalling £100k, to find out what had happened and then refuse to publish the report.

• Council forks out £19m in redundancy pay to 1,170 workers, then spends £25m on temps to plug the gaps.

• National Audit Office blasts the Tories’ weak political leadership and criticises value for money in Sept 2012.

• Council refuses to release a report on the Bewilderwood project in Tatton Park. The Information Commissioner compares Bewilderwood with Lyme Green and orders the report to be released.

Extravagance

• Chief Executive appointed at outset on £230k / annum.

• The Chief Executive pockets a £93k severance pay-out after just three years in the job.
 
• Tory leader says they’re “reaching for the stars”.
 
• Interim Chief Exec gets £64k for three month contract, which was renewed without advertisement or interview.

Incompetence

• Charges on pavement cafés imposed then reduced- the tables are in, out, shake them all about.

• Tories preside over the car parking charges fiasco. Congleton town suffers 30p per hour, everywhere else in Congleton constituency is free.

• Dial-a-Ride merry-go-round: Pensioner’s free bus passes made invalid on dial-a-ride; service subsidy cut and the dial-a-ride charity forced out; service handed to a private company with bus passes re-instated.

• The former Tory portfolio holder for ensuring landlords know their legal duties towards the safety of tenants is now a convicted criminal landlord.

• Council failure to draw up a Local Plan leads to a deluge of speculative house building applications on greenfield sites.

• Councillors claim 52p per mile petrol allowance, 7p above the HMRC recommended rate. Labour Councillors voluntarily claim the lower taxman approved allowance.