Wellington is a town with a lot of potential and it is indeed dying – no doubt about that. During a recent visit, I was astounded at how many of the shops have been turned over to charities by landlords, due to lack of people willing to establish businesses there. A shame really, because as a counter-point to the dismal concrete centre in Telford, it has the potential to be a pleasing destination in its own right, not just for shopping. It needs help and it needs it fast.

Unfortunately though, D. L Barnett’s cry-for-help letter perpetuates the majority of the public in not understanding the basic fundamentals of such council-led projects, (no offence intended D.L Barnett).

They’re not initiated for the good of the tax-payers at large, they’re really schemes to spend budget money in any way possible in order to get more money from central government and increased council tax in the future, perpetuating the income stream that allows local government managers to be employed at ever-increasing salaries.

Publicity-rich, results-poor projects such as this are part of the reason that Mr. Eades had to recently announce that, regardless of increased government funding and the fact that recession makes “consultants” cheaper to hire, it would be impossible not to raise council tax this year, (an incredible statement given that David Cameron had only just suggested helping taxpayers by freezing council tax, paid for by making projects such as this more efficient and less wasteful).

And what’s this with consultants anyway? In the old days, councils (or boroughs), had “borough engineers” who were competent enough to handle these projects by themselves, using in-house council resources. Nowadays, the first thing that highly-paid council managers seem to do when the possibility of work is mooted is lift the phone to the nearest consultant for advice. When I rang TWC highways department a year ago to ask questions about the certain aspects of the design of the “new, improved” A442, I was referred to “the project consultants” as it seemed that the actual managers in the highways department had found it necessary to bring people to advise them on how to paint lines on roads and stick up some speed limit signs!

In the “old days”, a manager in charge of a council department would have been ashamed to bring in people to tell him how to do his job. It would damaged his credibility. Nowadays, lifting a phone to do so seems to be the only qualification actually needed, no matter how qualified they are in the first place.

This reinforces the view expressed recently in letters that councils seem all too ready to add a layer of administration or contractors between them and their “clients”, (the public), leading to a detachment from the need to actually provide a public service. As long as it doesn’t detrimentally affect them directly, they’re no too bothered.

The other point to bear in mind is that TWC are now in the process of creating a grandiose scheme for the “regeneration” of Telford, with leafy lanes, continental style cafés, biomass centres, etc – in effect, fluffiness all round. No bad thing as an intention; God knows Telford centre’s been a concrete wreck since the beginning. But it seems to me that to gain the craved recognition for that envisaged project, TWC bosses would not really want Wellington to receive the glory or, indeed, the resources.

No, D. L. Barnett, what we all have to understand is that the important thing is that the publicity at the beginning of these projects is for the aspiration – which is what actually gets the money in, not the end-result.

Bet you that business rates in Wellington will rise in 2009 though.

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