As a former Conservative Leader in Croydon I know that the Conservatives’ calling card in Croydon used to be value for money.
That this is no longer the case has been further underlined by the astonishing news that £ 176,000 of our money as council tax payers has been splashed out on a new sound system in the council chamber.
Conservative councillors’ priorities just seem to be all wrong these days. Here’s just one sad example.
Lollipop attendants, who typically receive less than £4,000 a year, have had £ 60,000 taken from their budget and patrols to ensure road safety for children, as pupils return to school this week, have been axed. By contrast, spending a six figure sum on a speaking system is ok for the Conservative councillors.
The replacement of an already functioning sound system which follows the very occasional council meeting, where the debate in any case rarely raises its game above the exchange of personal insults, reveals a ruling Conservative group that has lost touch with the more pressing needs of us as everyday Croydon people.
There are worse extravagances though.
The new council HQ, dubiously funded off balance sheet in partnership with City private equity and secret, unpublished contractual liabilities for the taxpayer, is about to be opened with fewer actual council services now to be offered from the new palace than existed when the order went in to build the place. £ 3.1 million has been spent on new furniture for the new gleaming glass boxes in “cost a Mint Walk”. The old furniture in Taberner House is good enough for teachers and pupils in schools but not, apparently, for the Conservatives at the town hall.
The council’s debt is ballooning with the Conservatives planning to take Croydon Council’s borrowing to over a billion pounds by 2016 from the £ 154.3 million debt they inherited in 2006. Debt under the Conservatives is up by a factor of over six to reach £ 6,931 of debt for each and every home in Croydon.
Croydon is also the worst borough in England for collecting council tax with the latest government figures revealing £ 43.563 million of uncollected council tax.
Most correspondence these days in the Croydon Guardian from a Conservative point of view comes in the names of people who are not to be found on the electoral register. We, in the Waddon Labour party, take a more mature approach to local politics. We know that an incoming Labour council will need to seek partnerships with local people to deliver services more cheaply rather than having an extravagant attitude to council tax payers’ money building gleaming new offices with unsustainable foundations of a billion pound council debt.
One such type of excellent community initiative that I visited twice this past weekend was the Waddon Enterprise Festival trying through the work of residents to build a stronger self-sustaining community.
Andrew Pelling
Waddon Labour Party
- Send your letters to: letters@croydonguardian.co.uk
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