Copied from Daily Telegraph 23 Jan 2012
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
By Robert Winnett, Political Editor
MORE than 30 Conservative council leaders [Including Martin Hill, leader of Lincolnshire County Council] have written a private letter to David Cameron warning that grassroots support for his re-election bid will be withdrawn unless ministers stop attacking local government.
They warn of anger about the “nature and tone of constant criticisms” directed at councils and urge the Prime Minister to stop “patronising language” being used to attack those “who work extraordinary long hours for our communities”.
The four-page letter sent to the Prime Minister, which has been leaked to The Telegraph, warns: “It is important that you understand how disappointed and even angry local activists are and how many might not be there when we need them as electoral foot soldiers.”
Those who have signed the letter include the Conservative leaders of Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Durham county councils. In total, 31 senior local councillors, mostly council leaders, have signed the document.
Ministers have become increasingly angered by the resistance of many local councils, including those run by Conservatives, to government cuts and calls for restraint on pay and pensions.
Senior figures including Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, and Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, have made outspoken attacks over the cavalier use of taxpayers’ money by some local authorities.
Many authorities are preparing to defy central government by increasing council tax bills.
Some are suspected of attempting to blame ministers for the expected fall-out in forthcoming local elections.
In the letter to Mr Cameron, the council leaders say: “We believe it is essential to bring to your attention our concerns regarding some government policy affecting local government, the rhetoric that accompanies it and the effect it is having on our people.
“Importantly, it is not only the substance of such policy but also the nature and tone of constant criticisms of their work by Conservative ministers that is most worrying.”
They add: “To be clear, we are open to genuine feedback where it can be evidenced that we have fallen short in some way. Our issue is with ill-informed and anecdote-based general criticism and sometimes highly inaccurate personal attacks.”
The council leaders express particular anger at attacks on the pension arrangements of councillors and complain, “there seems little recognition of the efforts of our members”.
“By contrast, members of parliament (including those with other employment), police and crime commissioners and mayors are accorded a status worthy of pensions. This position was not helped by criticisms of the unanimous recommendations of the all-party select committee on local government on Radio 4’s Today programme by the party chairman which appeared to compare council leaders to volunteers running scout troops.”
The leaders also express dismay over the “apparent constant criticism” of local government for hindering economic growth. They say: “Sometimes the criticisms even seem designed to deflect criticism from Whitehall departments.”
The council leaders – who also include the Conservative heads of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Kent, West and East Sussex councils – say they have written to Mr Cameron to urge him to take action.
“We are also worried in the widest context about the impact for the party of any continued weakening in the relationship between the parliamentary leadership and the party’s active local members.”
Tag Archives: DCLG
Threat of revolt wins Tory shires more money
Copied from Sunday Telegraph 20 Jan 2013
By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor
MINISTERS have backed down and promised more money after a revolt by shire Tories against “grossly unfair” cuts in local government spending.
A group of about 120 councils, mostly Conservative-controlled, warned Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, that reductions in spending announced last month would “crucify” rural communities.
The group was considering bringing a judicial review against Mr Pickles’s settlement, which it said would see “predominantly rural” councils receive 3.81 per cent less from central government compared with cuts of 2.05 per cent for urban councils.
Andrew Lansley, the Commons Leader, has signalled that a “correction” will be applied to next year’s spending figures.
Mr Lansley said the difference between spending on urban and rural councils was a “matter of concern”.
Planning minister dipping his fingers in to the infrastructure pot
<em>Yet another short-term, short-sighted proposal from the Minster of Planning Chaos. This government has a lamentable track record of top slicing local government funding – robbing Peter to pay Paul. They now appear to have turned their sights on to privately sourced funds, as a way of bribing communities in to accepting development.
Developers only have so much funding to put into such pots. Taking 25% of any CIL that might be in place, simply means that the funds that should be accumulated to the benefit of the community as a whole will, under these proposals, be partly dispersed amongst pockets of the community, potentially to the long term detriment of all.
New plans to encourage communities to build more homes will be unveiled today by planning minister Nick Boles.
Mr Boles is expected to announce a community infrastructure levy, which will replace Section 106 agreements and raise around £1bn a year from property developers.
Communities that draw up neighbourhood developments and secure the consent of people through a referendum will get up to 25% of the money raised through the levy. The money will be paid directly to town or parish councils.
Neighbourhoods with no development plan will still receive 15% of the levy from developments in their area.
‘The Government is determined to persuade communities to accept more house building by giving them a tangible share of the benefits it brings,’ said Mr Boles.
‘By undertaking a neighbourhood plan that makes space for new development, communities can secure revenues to make the community more attractive for everyone.’
The National Housing Federation’s head of homes and land, Rachel Fisher, said: ‘New developments should take into account the needs of local people, so we welcome the commitment to giving 25% of community infrastructure levy (CIL) money to neighbourhood groups. But it’s crucial that this does not come at the cost of delivering affordable homes.’
Leaders hit back in pensions row
This debate gets more and more surreal at each turn. Eric Pickles kicks things off by claiming that chief executives are surplus to requirements and that elected members should be able to fill the gap. One of his lackeys then goes on record suggesting that elected members are only volunteers and amateurs in the game of politics – ‘professional’ only applies to members of Parliament it seems.
So which is it DCLG? If it is cull the officers and plug the gap with councillors, are we to assume that this is to be done on a completely voluntary basis and for the love of it only?
I particularly like the use of the term ‘prat’ in this case and the pointed remark made to somebody I know well, ‘He’s one of your prats’.
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
11 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling
Council leaders from across the political spectrum have criticised ministerial attacks on councillors remuneration and may launch a legal challenge against plans to restrict access to the local government pension scheme.
The judicial review is being considered by Labour leaders while their Conservative counterparts said had they met ministers no fewer than four times in the past 48 hours to discuss proposed pension changes.
Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democratic and Independent leaders at yesterday’s meeting of the LGA executive were particularly critical of ministers’ language. Local government minister Brandon Lewis, who has proposed closing the Local Government Pension Scheme to councillors, said elected members should see themselves as volunteers rather than professional politicians.
Mr Lewis’ comments, made before Christmas, has already led one leader to accuse ministers of treating councillors with “contempt”. The issue was also raised by Conservative leaders when they met with Mr Lewis on Thursday morning.
On that same day, during an appearance on the BBC’s Today programme, Conservative Party chairman and former housing minister Grant Shapps added fuel to the fire and widened the row by questioning allowances for “volunteer” councillors and likened them to “scout leaders”.
At a meeting of the LGA’s executive on Thursday, LGA Labour group leader David Sparks said it was “extremely important that we do not just roll over on this [pension] issue” and suggested a legal challenge could be made against the proposal.
He called for LGA officials to compile a report on councillor pensions as well as those of other elected members such as MPs and Greater London Assembly members. “I am expecting that the report we get in February will look seriously at the whole issue of judicial review,” Mr Sparks added.
‘Prat’
Leaders from all parties expressed frustration and some anger at ministers’ comments, although there was widespread laughter when Cllr Sparks described listening to Mr Shapps on the radio that morning as “like driving up the motorway and seeing one of those kids in a car who continually sticks his tongue out…[and] you think one of these days you’re going to grow up and be an even bigger prat”.
Turning to LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) and LGA Conservative group leader Gary Porter, he added: “He’s one of your prats and you really have to do something about him.”
Cllr Porter declined to comment on Cllr Sparks’ analogy but he criticised the “language around the debate” and called for ministers to take a more mature approach. “If there is a genuine need to revisit [the pension arrangement] on financial grounds they could do that in a mature, adult way,” he said.
Describing the proposal as “a stupid idea being carried out in a stupid way”, he said he and other Conservative leaders had already seen Mr Lewis and discussed the pension proposal twice on Wednesday and would raise it again in a further two meetings with the minister on Thursday.
Making the argument for councillor pensions and allowances, Sir Merrick said reducing remuneration would adversely affect councillor diversity. “The idea that only certain people of a certain background with a certain financial security can stand to be a councillor is highly objectionable.” He added: “I hope that our representations, particular those made in private earlier today [to Brandon Lewis], will be heard.”
Leaders and elected mayors at the meeting also questioned the distinction made by Mr Lewis between elected mayors, who are judged to work full time and therefore should be eligible for a pension, and leaders, who are not.
‘Hypocrites’
Peter Box (Lab), leader of Wakefield MBC, added: “As an executive leader I am responsible for a multi-million pound business and to say you can do that on some part-time basis is detached from reality.” The truth was councillors passed up career opportunities to be elected members, he said, unlike “many MPs who seem to have two jobs, and Grant Shapps is one, they have got that much time on their hands”.
Accusing ministers of “hypocrisy”, Cllr Box was one of many to make a comparison with MPs pensions and salaries just hours before publication of a survey of MPs showed they felt their salaries should increase by 33%.
Mr Lewis’ criticism of councillor pensions combined with Mr Shapps’ comments on allowances led Hackney LBC elected mayor Jules Pipes (Lab) to question their wider attitude to local government. Shapps’ and Lewis’ comments indicated the government thought councils “with £1bn-plus turnover can be run by an occasional few evening meetings”, he said. This image was “a world away” from the present day when there were “issues of performance that we are held directly accountable for in a way we weren’t 10 or 20 years ago”.
LGA Independent leader Marianne Overton described the government’s attitude as “an attack on the value of democratic representation” while Chris White (Lib Dem), leader of Hertfordshire CC, warned the pension proposal was “the beginning of an attack and the attack will be on allowances in general”.
He also warned that councillors arguing for pensions would be “a tabloid story. Grant Shapps and others will be absolutely delighted if we make a fuss because that is just writing copy for the Daily Mail”. However, he added, “that does not mean we shouldn’t [make a fuss].”
BREAKING: Council tax benefit cuts to double
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
10 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling
Cuts to localised council tax benefit are set to almost double and will reach 18% by 2014-15, it has emerged.
Council leaders learned of a further 8.5% cut to council tax support – on top of 10% already announced – during a meeting with ministers held yesterday.
Sharon Taylor (Lab), leader of Stevenage BC and chair of the LGA’s finance panel said the 8.5% cut in 2014-15, equivalent to £280m, was revealed during a meeting held on Wednesday with ministers and officials from the Department of Communities & Local Government.
“That is not what we were expecting,” she said. The LGA has received verbal confirmation of the surprise cut since the meeting and intends to lobby against the move, she said, which comes on top of a 10% cut due to be applied in 2013-14.
Cllr Taylor said it had been “made clear” in the meeting that the protection of pensioners from council tax benefit cuts would continue. This would mean cuts of more than 18% for other groups of claimants.
The revelation has led to fears that council tax benefit funding will be phased out following its localisation from central to local government, due to take place in April.
Mehboob Khan (Lab), leader of Kirklees MBC, said: “What’s really concerning is the…implications for council tax allowance in the future.” He told the LGA executive, meeting on Thursday, that sources close to the Treasury had suggested council tax benefit “would not be ring fenced” and was “likely to be reduced each year”.
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Extend councillor recruitment drive, MPs urge
Here’s an article that should get some of my regular readers talking, groaning or seething, depending on their view of elected members.
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
10 January, 2013 | By Kaye Wiggins
MPs have called for the LGA’s ‘Be a councillor’ campaign to be extended, warning that too many elected representatives did not reflect their local communities.
The cross-party Communities and Local Government select committee praised the LGA’s campaign in a report about the role of councillors, published on Thursday. The campaign aims to encourage people from a wide range of backgrounds to stand as councillors, in time for the May 2013 local elections.
‘Political row over allowances claim’, see bottom of page
“The Local Government Association deserves credit for its work on the Be a Councillor programme, which is playing an important role in encouraging a wider group of people to stand at local elections”, the report said.
“We would encourage the LGA to expand the programme, under its established branding, to enable it to play a wider role in the promotion of local democracy.”
MPs said it was a “matter of concern” that “the composition of many councils does not reflect that of the communities they serve.”
“It is important to increase the proportion of women, younger people and black and minority ethnic people serving on local authorities”, they said in the report.
The MPs also criticised communities secretary Eric Pickles for his use of terms such as “guided localism” and “muscular localism”, accusing the Department for Communities & Local Government of “an inability to let go of the reins” that was “frustrating and confusing” for councillors.
“We once again urge the government to rein in its interventionist instincts”, it said.
The report also said:
The levels of councillors’ allowances “can be a deterrent to people standing for election”. Councils should be allowed to hand decisions about councillors’ allowances to independent local bodies
Councils should consider providing councillors with officer support to help them to manage their casework
The government should incentivise employers to support employees who were councillors
Councillors should not be blocked from influencing local services that were delivered by external providers
Councils should be allowed to compensate councillors for loss of earnings as part of their allowance
Most councillors were hard-working and committed – but some “do little work and, because theyrepresent safe seats, have little incentive to do more.” Councils should set up measures to deal with councilor under-performance
To read the report, click here
Political row over allowances claim
The committee’s report sparked a political row, after Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps and local government minister Brandon Lewis branded its warning that low allowances could deter would-be councillors and call for councillors to be allowed to be compensated for any loss of earnings that they suffer as a “cynical and sleazy move”. Claiming the cross-party committee’s report had come from “Labour politicians” and pointing to Labour Party rules under which a share of its councillors’ allowances are transferred to the party’s own funds, Mr Shapps said Labour was trying to increase the party’s budget. “Local taxpayers will be shocked to learn that the Labour Party will be quids in from Labour demands for more taxpayers’ money on councillor allowances”, he said.
Mr Lewis added: “Labour are completely out of touch with local taxpayers by calling for higher councillor allowances and defending pensions for councillors.”
However, a spokeswoman for the committee pointed out that the report’s findings and recommendations had been approved by politicians of all parties. Labour MP Clive Betts, chair of the committee, said he was “saddened by the reaction of Brandon Lewis and Grant Shapps who have stoked this negativity and undermined a serious concern of councillors from their own party”.
“Allowances remain low and act as a deterrent for many considering whether to stand for election,” he added. “This is particularly an issue for employed people and those with young families, who lose income when taking time out from work for their councillor duties. The committee therefore called for councils to have the option to have decisions about allowances to be taken out of councillors’ hands and transferred to independent local bodies.
“We also found that people are put off by shallow political point scoring, which makes the response of Mr Lewis and Mr Shapps all the more disappointing.”
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True scale of settlement cuts emerges
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
20 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom
Councils face much higher funding cuts than those announced by communities secretary Eric Pickles, fresh analysis of the local government settlement has revealed.
An LGA briefing on the settlement said council funding would be cut by almost 4% next year and 9% the year after.
The cuts in core government funding for councils stands in contrast to communities secretary Eric Pickles’ claims that local authorities’ ‘spending power’ would reduce by only 1.7% next year.
LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) said the figures showed that local government continued “to bear the brunt of public spending cuts in the spending review period”.
The LGA’s calculations showed that councils’ start-up funding allocation in the new retained business rate funding system would decrease on a like-for-like basis of 3.9% in 2013-14. The following year, while councils’ local share of retained business rates is projected to grow by 3.1%, the revenue support grant which still makes up the bulk of councils’ funding is forecast to fall by 17%. The net effect is for a projected 8.6% decrease in funding.
Sir Merrick claimed that local government’s cuts in the spending review period would now exceed 33%, in comparison to the 28% originally announced.
The briefing also confirmed a number of details from the settlement announcement:
Of the £661m being paid to councils through the New Homes Bonus, £411m would be top-sliced from councils’ formula funding in 2013-14.
The amount held back to fund the safety net has been reduced from £245m to £25m
Twenty areas have been designated as pools for the purposes of top-ups, tariffs and safety net payments. These are: Berkshire; Greater Birmingham & Solihull; Buckinghamshire; Coventry & Warwickshire; Cambridgeshire; Devon; Gloucestershire; Leeds City Region; Leicester & Leicestershire; Lincolnshire; Greater Manchester; Norfolk CC and Broadland; Northamptonshire; Nottinghamshire; Oxfordshire; Somerset; Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent; Suffolk; Surrey; Worcestershire
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READERS’ COMMENTS (2)
Graham669 | 20-Dec-2012 2:40 pm
Pickled is doing his usual act of stupidity, the secondary effects of the crazy cuts in LA funding will last far longer than he is in office.
This charlatan will unfortunately leave a legacy of social damage that will take decades to heal.
patrick newman | 20-Dec-2012 4:04 pm
As predicted we only find out the truth well after Pickles has spoken but I doubt if cares too much about that. A further round of redundancies is inevitable thus putting more pressure on state finances through increased benefits and reduced tax yield. There must be many councillors who feel unhappy about being Pickles’ neighbourhood axemen.
Councillors barred from pension scheme
This should please many of those who see elected members as surplus to requirements and wish to consign them to local government history as a failed experiment in democracy.
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
19 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom
Councillors are to be barred from being members of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), local government minister Brandon Lewis has announced.
In a written ministerial statement made on Wednesday morning, Mr Lewis said that councillors would not be able to join the scheme after April 2014 and that councillors who are already members would not be able to accrue any further benefits after that date.
Mr Lewis said the government “did not believe that taxpayer-funded pensions are justified”.
“Councillors are volunteers undertaking public service; they are not and should be employees of the council dependent on the municipal payroll. They are not professional, full-time politicians, nor should they be encouraged to become so.”
However, the statement revealed that elected mayors would not be barred from LGPS membership in recognition of the “greater expectation than an elected mayor is a full-time position”. The government will consult on allowing elected mayors to remain in the scheme “as a voluntary option (but not as an expectation)”.
The salaries of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Mayor of London and London Assembly Members will also remain pensionable.
Mr Lewis admitted that his department did not hold records on councillors’ participation in the scheme. However, he said that “initial rough estimates suggest that this could save £7m a year in taxpayers’ money”. He said there was “absolutely no case” for increasing councillor allowances to compensate for the move.
Councillors have been able to join the LGPS since 2003. The Councillors’ Commission report found that by 2004, 912 councillors had joined the scheme. However, research from the Taxpayers’ Alliance found that number had grown to 3,527 in 2007-08 and 4,548 by 2010-11.
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READERS’ COMMENTS (1)
Roger | 19-Dec-2012 12:55 pm
Another good example of different politicians in the same government department looking in completely different directions on an issue. One the one hand we have this statement, that members are volunteers and not to be considered or encouraged to be full time ’employees’ of the council. Then you have Eric Pickles telling elected members that they can fill the gap and replace officers culled under hiis ‘modest’ local government funding cuts. Do these people actually talk to each other?
If these sort of petty almost spiteful statements don’t deter the younger members of our communities from becoming councillors in the future, then I’m sure DCLG have more up their sleeves to do the job!
Eric Pickles: a response
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
13 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom
Those that listened to the Department for Communities & Local Government’s ministerial team give evidence to its equivalent select committee on Wednesday will have heard Eric Pickles make the bizarre claim that quoting from LGC is like “quoting from a Labour party press release”.
The thoughtlessness of this comment can be demonstrated by simply pointing out that just a month ago, Mr Pickles’ own department was happy to quote LGC’s research into council chief executives’ salary levels in a press release about ending chiefs’ “golden goodbyes”. We don’t necessarily agree with the policy but were happy for Mr Pickles’ department to quote from our research, just as we were happy for David Cameron to do so last year.
Still, mud can stick. So for the record, let me restate Local Government Chronicle’s editorial position.
LGC has absolutely no affiliation to or bias towards any political party. Our editorial position is that we act as a friend to the sector – albeit a critical one where necessary. Our objective is to report on policy issues that affect all councils and, where we can, to put forward the case for local government to be part of the solution to some of the social and economic issues that the country faces. To do this, our reporters speak regularly with senior council officers, civil servants and local and national politicians of all parties.
Mr Pickles’ comment on Wednesday came in response to a question about DCLG’s permanent secretary Sir Bob Kerslake being branded a ‘doom denier’ for dismissing the LGA’s predictions of a looming financial crisis. The actual “doom denier” label was coined by the organisation’s Liberal Democrat group while the original ‘graph of doom’ was created by Conservative-run Barnet LBC. It was the LGA’s Conservative chairman Sir Merrick Cockell who said that while “denying” the growing funding gap that local government is facing “may be convenient for some”, it is “not accurate to suggest the view is overly pessimistic”. It is hard to see how reporting on this issue is representing the Labour party’s viewpoint.
To be honest, with Labour having not released much policy on local government, LGC has not devoted an awful lot of coverage to the party recently. One exception was when we exclusively revealed Labour councillors’ anger at their party’s leadership for forcing peers to vote against plans to give councils greater flexibility to deal with council tax benefit reforms – again, hardly the stuff of central office press releases.
LGC has, however, been critical of the lack of support Mr Pickles and his department have shown for local government. Our lead story and leader article in this week’s issue give an example of why this is.
But at the select committee hearing, Mr Pickles himself gave an interesting insight into why there’s such anger within the sector towards him. The communities secretary was asked by MPs whether Greg Clark’s decentralisation report, published last week, had implicitly criticised his department by saying “it should come to a more settled but ambitious view of the role of local government and communities and neighbourhoods”. He replied that he had inherited a department that was “the voice of local government within government” and that had changed to being “the voice of the council tax payer, of the citizen inside local government services”.
It is quite right for Mr Pickles to act as the voice of the council tax payer – Mr Pickles’ predecessors would surely claim to have done likewise – but many officers and local politicians now feel that councils do not have an advocate within Whitehall. Mr Pickles’ comment seems to confirm that this is the case. Or at the very least, if there is one, it’s not him.
Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that reports in the press this week that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are planning to oppose George Osborne’s plans to raise benefits and tax credits at a below-inflation 1% have important implications for local government.
If spending on the NHS, schools and overseas aid is to be protected whilst overall spending is reduced, then a decision to also protect welfare expenditure implies extra cuts for other spending departments, local government included.
Councils will be unlikely to sit higher up the pecking order under a Labour administration.
Pickles attacks LGA’s crisis forecast
Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
13 December, 2012 | By Kaye Wiggins
A response to the unwarranted attack on LGC’s editorial impartiality will be posted shortly
Communities secretary Eric Pickles has attacked the LGA’s prediction of a crisis in local government services, accusing the group of being “seduced by statistics” and arguing that cuts to councils’ funding have been “modest”.
Mr Pickles (left) told the communities and local government select committee that it was “utterly ludicrous” for the LGA to predict that councils could struggle in future to fund anything other than social care and waste services.
He made his comments after committee chair Clive Betts (Lab) quoted reports in LGC that Department for Communities & Local Government permanent secretary Sir Bob Kerslake had been branded a “doom denier” for rejecting the LGA’s gloomy projections.
“I think it’s utterly ludicrous”, he said. “The LGA have allowed themselves to be seduced by statistics and have got themselves into a Malthusian fantasy” – a reference to the eighteenth-century scholar Thomas Malthus who argued that population growth would outstrip food supply, leading to starvation.
Mr Pickles said: “I do not believe the modest change we’ve seen means the end of civilisation as we know it. Local government will continue and find more efficient ways of doing things. If they find it difficult to do…new people will come.”
Mr Pickles also told the committee that quoting from LGC was “like quoting from a Labour Party press release”. The phrase “doom denier” was in fact coined by the LGA’s Liberal Democrat group.
To read acting editor Dan Drillsma-Milgrom’s response to Eric Pickles’ comments, click here
Asked whether Greg Clark’s decentralisation report, published last week, had implicity criticised his department by saying “it should come to a more settled but ambitious view of the role of local government and communities and neighbourhoods, he said that he had inherited a department that was “the voice of local government within government” and that had changed to being “the voice of the council tax payer, of the citizen inside local government services”.
Council tax
Mr Pickles also used the hearing to insist that freezing council tax levels was “entirely voluntary”. This week, LGC reported that civil servants in Mr Pickles’ department had discussed delaying the local government finance settlement until after Christmas in order to impose a blanket council tax freeze. He added that the settlement would be announced next week.
Sacking chiefs
Mr Pickles was also asked by MPs about his plans to make it easier to dismiss council chief executives – and said the request to do this came from local government itself.
Asked whether he was worried about chiefs being unprotected against politically motivated dismissals, he said: “I just don’t think local government is like that any more.
“You’ve got to rely on the integrity of politicians to make sure the threat of removals is not used lightly”, he said, adding that the removal of a chief usually meant that the council “goes into virtual stasis for six months”.
He praised David White, chief executive of Norfolk CC, who had stood down with a payoff of “just £35,000”. This was a lot of money, he said, but a long way from the settlements of more than £100,000 that some chief executives had received.
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READERS’ COMMENTS (1)
philcoppard | 13-Dec-2012 4:28 pm
Eric Pickles has previous form with these ludicrous statements.
As previously identified, the man is a clown.
Roger Gambba-Jones 