29 August - “Town hall chiefs are the real looters”
“Town
hall chiefs are the real looters” was a headline in yesterday’s Sunday
Telegraph. Quite strong stuff but perhaps not undeserved. The voters in council
leader Teresa O’Neill and councillor Craske’s wards seem to think the same with close
to 100% of residents ready to
sign the petition in favour of government Minister Eric Pickles’ plans to slow the gravy train.
The Telegraph went on to say “Our prisons may be bulging with teenagers who
walked off with trainers and TV sets which didn’t belong to them. But while our
government is still having to borrow £3 billion every week to cover the
shortfall in paying for our bloated public sector the most blatant looting
epidemic of all appears to rage on wholly unchecked”.
In the preceding week The Daily Telegraph shed a little light on the mysterious
organisation behind the chief executives’ pay bonanza. It is called SOLACE which
doesn’t stand for Society of Looters and Criminal Extortionists as you might
expect and exists to hike up local government pay rates. Not only that, it is
partially funded by local councils. Grant Shapps, the Housing Minsister is
reported to have said a few days ago “I fail to see the business case for the
public funding a body that has acted as a broker for local authority chief
executives helping to bump up their pay as they move from council to council.
There is an urgent need to rein in excessive chief executive pay packets and
exercise some restraint, which is why I am calling on all public bodies to cease
funding SOLACE.” Bexley council leader Teresa O’Neill, as we know from her numerous statements
on the subject, strongly disagrees with sentiments like that. But probably Mr. Shapps
will prove as toothless as ministers Eric Pickles and Bob Neill have been in tackling councils that do
the opposite of whatever they recommend. (And will minister James Brokenshire
prove any less toothless in combatting his local police force when they are intent on
covering up a crime, one might ask.)
SOLACE : Society of Local Authority Chief Executives.