Conservative Wiltshire Council Squanders Precious Millions

Wiltshire Liberal Democrat Councillors have expressed grave concern over the waste and mismanagement of ratepayers' money.

Deputy Group Leader, Peter Colmer reports that, ""We have already seen the damning audit report published by KPMG that raised significant concerns regarding the lack of financial controls during the change from five councils to one", Cllr Colmer added, "And we recently discovered that the Conservatives at County Hall got their cash flow projections wrong by a staggering £12 million last year".

Cllr Colmer also reports that following his questioning it has been discovered that 130 staff have been made redundant at a cost of another £12 million. He says, "Averaged out that means they would have received £90,000 each, although I'm sure that many of the junior officers who have been cut will not have enjoyed that level of pay off!""

He goes on to say, ""Now the council is making another 240 managers redundant at a cost of £5 million, for which they have had to borrow from valuable reserves to meet the cost.""

Cllr Colmore goes on to detail an administrative error in which monies owed to Wiltshire Council as a result of developers not fulfilling legal requirements have gone ignored. To date, the council still cannot confirm how much is owed due to this oversight.

Leader of the Wiltshire Lib Dem group, Cllr Jon Hubbard also has concerns, commenting, "What is really shocking is that Conservative Leader Jane Scott defended paying an extra £800,000 in redundancy to ex-Wiltshire County Council staff, almost doubling what they would have been entitled to under the new rules imposed for council staff. Apparently that was "the only fair thing to do!"

Cllr Hubbard shared his concerns about what he called "wanton waste" within the council following the merger, including "spending £113,827 on replacing existing uniforms with new versions with the Wiltshire Council logo on, and £179,227 on changing the signs on buildings to read 'Wiltshire Council', Cllr Scott's only response was that we should move on from these issues. Of course she wants us to move on - it's an embarrassment to her!"