Scrapping Telford council HQ ‘will cost £800,000′ claim
Friday 24th June 2011, 7:00PM BST.
Plans to scrap the building of civic council offices in Telford will leave a £800,000 hole in the authority’s finances, it was claimed.
The controlling Labour group announced it would not be building the offices as part of the £250m Southwater development when it came to power last month.
But outgoing leader Councillor Andrew Eade said it would have saved taxpayers £800,000 a year in rentals and other lease agreements.
New council chief, Councillor Kuldip Singh Sahota, described it as “nonsense”.
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Am I the only one fed up with these councillors’ petty squabbling? Do any of them actually care about Telford?
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In a word NO. all they care about is inflating their ego’s and claiming as much money as they can.
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at full council on thursday this was the only thing the conservatives were interested in. They donnt want to know about child poverty, deprivation and many other issues.
Its time Andrew Eade moved onto a topic of some importance.
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Just to add, we have already spent £2 million on this and the car parking for staff would’ve cost a further £5 million. Mr.Eade not only neglected to tell us this, but went on to say that it wouldn’t cost the tax payer a single penny. £7 million is not a cost free issue.
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John, how much child deprivation could be dealt with by that £800,000? Do you think?
The trouble is councillor Sahota is stuck with a policy arrived at by someone else. He has to carry the can.
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how much would £7 million tackle matt? But then again, eade never gave the £2 million to Brookside he promised in 2007 did he.
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What has happened on Brookside since I left to merit £2million spending on it?
Left there to return to Bristol in late 1987, just after the great gale had hit the south of England.
We now await the rain forecast this week, and wonder if there could be a repeat of the July 2007 event lower down the Severn!
Incidentally that event did have a “precedent” there was a similar flood in July 1875.
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Eade knows that there is fierce resistance to the scrapping of the Civic Offices scheme from some officers of the council and he is hoping for a U-turn from the new Labour administration. The he can publically claim a “victory”.
For Labour to undertake such a U-turn would be suicidal, in much the same way as it was for Eade’s regime to pin everything upon the Southwater project in the first place.
Eade and his dwindling band of Councillors only remain as a consequence of the Tory core-vote. Eade’s instinct and actions, both as leader and in now opposition, have only ever appealed to this narrow constituency. He was always unsuited to be leader of Telford & Wrekin. In the Civic Offices, he gave Labour an issue which galvanised their core vote on the doorstep and encouraged disillusioned Labour-leaning voters to turn out for Labour this year in a way that they did not in 2007.
Elsewhere in England, the Tories did reasonably well on May the 5th. In Telford they were decimated. Andrew Eade and his Civic Offices project were the cause of that and it is testament to the abysmal political qualities of those that surround him that he remains Tory group “leader” at Telford & Wrekin.
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i think andrew eades argument has been rubbished by a simple look into the finances, the conservatives were doing a Glazier at Man U or like the Liverpool FC deal, basically financing the whole thing of debt and borrowing, not good
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