I don’t particularly agree with councils bringing in consultants for advice and it would be nice to hear that this is the result of cost saving exercise. But having seen the council’s efforts on other fronts such as roads, anti social behaviour etc. do they honestly believe that they have required expertise to manage this project – and if so why did they employ and agency to do it for them? and at what cost?

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Bemused > I was under the impression that Transforming Telford had quite a few public officials as part of its board anyway, so it won’t make much difference, but it will save taxpayers a lot of money by avoiding duplication of effort and people.

I do sincerely hope that there was no “golden early-goodbye” involved as part of the original package.

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Rodney – I can assure you that there is no Golden early goodbye – especially for the six who have just lost their jobs. Think about that for a minute and consider how they feel. And for the record, the council have nobody capable of bringing regeneration to Telford in the way that the officers of Transforming Telford could have – nobody employed by the Council is intelligent enough or has enough vision for a project this size. Telford people have just missed out on a fantastic opportunity to bring Telford screaming up to date with the rest of GB. Now, Telford will just be “another roundabout to avoid at all costs”…. just as it was 40 years ago.

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Is this not the same company that started life by calling itself Telford First and then realised that there was already a restigered company of the same name?

How professional are these people if they can’t even get their name registered correctly?

Good job they aren’t wasting any more of our money then!

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this is like Alice in Wonderland – the staff from TT were drawn from people who were employed by Telford and Wrekin Council, who set up the company because they thought it could attract funding more easily than the Council could – are all these people to re re-absorbed by the Council, or are they getting redundancy money, leaving the Council to advertise for the staff they need to do the jobs that were being done before TT was set up?

Come on T&W – come clean on this!

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I can only concurr with “Bemused”.
Who designed that awful Trench roundabout?
That one should have been good for a “Turner Prize”.
I am missing out here, perhaps T&W should have consulted me first?

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Brain2 @ 5 > you are right on all three. It IS a private company. It IS wholly or substantially funded by (council) taxpayers and it DID get a lot of money from the council. Searching the biographies of many of the management may open everybody’s eyes a bit.

local resident @ 7 > Please don’t confuse this private company with “proper” private companies. I have some sympathy for your general argument, but creating private companies with taxpayers’ money is one way that councils can avoid local democracy, by claiming that as a private company, they don’t have to listen to public opinion. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the page on their web site titled “Funding Support”. TT do (did) have a group of salaried employees acting as “The Investment Team”; in return for being paid a shed-load of money, their main job was NOT to achieve funding or investment for projects, rather, simply to direct enquiries to organisations like Business Link and MAS – in other words, paid advisors shunting enquiries to other paid advisors.

oswestrian @ 6 > You’re correct about the past and I’m afraid that you’re probably correct about the future.

Keep an eye on the key players and see where they all are in six months time. I’m pretty certain that they won’t have been allowed anywhere near a proper private company. Once in public sector management, there’s a tendency for managers to forget that the money has to be earned in order to be spent and an even bigger tendency to not know the value of money, or where it comes from. That’s how these projects lead to the gobbling up of so much council tax, and I’m sure that there would be a lot of room for savings without diminishing services.

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I couldn’t care less who is responsible I just wish the revamp would happen faster.

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