Fury over cash spent by council

NEARLY £1m – equivalent to almost 10 per cent of the extra funding raised by this year’s massive hike in council tax – is being spent by Cheshire East investigating its own officers, dealing with staff bullying or producing “propaganda” booklets.

Cheshire East will claw in an extra £11.4m from the borough’s residents, after increasing its share of the council tax by 5.99pc.

And it has so far committed – and in part already spent – £879,469 to get its own house in order.

It has also splashed out £41,238 on its newsletter, The Voice – £33,316 on the October edition and £7,009 on last month’s – to tell people how the council functions and what it spends its money on.

Coun Dorothy Flude, (Lab) who represents Crewe, is furious.

She said: “We’ve wasted thousands and thousands of pounds which we shouldn’t be wasting.

“If the Conservativecontrolled council had operated properly from the outset, then this money would be being spent where it ought to be – on children’s services and adult services and on roads.”

And she blasted the Tory administration for adding insult to injury by wasting thousands more pounds on what she termed a ‘propaganda sheet’.

“A previous Conservative Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, quite clearly said councils shouldn’t be publishing these Town Hall Pravdas,” she said, quoting Mr Pickles and his reference to Russian polit- ical newspapers associated with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

A breakdown of Cheshire East’s funding for these ‘extras’ reveals £720,000 for the IDC (investigation and disciplinary committee) which is looking into allegations regarding the conduct of chief executive Mike Suarez and chief operating officer Peter Bates.

Both have been suspended on full pay – the council says suspension is a neutral act taken in the interests of both the council and the individual.

Mr Suarez, who earns £153,000 a year, has been suspended since April last year and Mr Bates was suspended in December.

The council’s former head of legal services, Bill Norman, was suspended in July and resigned in December.

The figure of £720,000 is only provisional, as that is for the cost so far. The Express understands this investigation may even go into the next calendar year.

In October, Cheshire East commissioned a Local Government Association review into bullying, which cost £7,009.

When that revealed more than 200 staff say they had been bullied in the previous six months, the council hired the Sticky Change Consultancy to improve the workplace culture.

That 12-month contract, which has just started, is costing the council tax payer £152,460.

On top of that, Cheshire East has also earmarked nearly another £1m – up to £945,000 – over the next three years for external contracts to boost its communications and marketing services.

‘If the Conservative-controlled council had operated properly from the outset, then this money would be being spent where it ought to be’