So the Town Council accounts didn't come out too well!

I see the Town Council ran into a number of criticisms over the way the Town Council is run. According to the News and Crier the Town Council was criticised over:


Grant Thornton said: "The reporting of the financials in a timely, reliable and meets the needs of local people." I've been going on about the bad service St Neots residents have been receiving since the start of this blog back on 3rd November 2010. What I said back then was: "What I found by reading this was a whole bunch of meetings had taken place without the agendas being published on their website." It never got much better than that with missing meeting from the website throughout the year. The Town Council knew there was a problem and did nothing about it.

Grant Thornton said: "The non-existence of a medium term plan." The Town Council used to have a forecast in the first Forward Plan. But the Liberal Democrats messed this up. What I said about the first Forward Plan was: "The budget forecasts was a load of muck and could never be relied on. I do realise that this is a forecast. A Council cannot just make wild budget forecasts. Changes in the budget forecast and other variations must be able to be identified and reported. This didn't happen."

Grant Thornton said: "Not publishing the key financial documents on its website." The Town Council replied that the website was being rebuilt. But what the Town Council forgets is this was the case during the 2009/10 financial year. 6 months on from the end of the financial year and the Town Council is only now rebuilding the website. - Shockingly bad excuse.

Grant Thornton said: "The Forward Plan has only limited details of future financial plans."
This is what I said on my blog back on 20th August 2010 after finally finding a "Forward Plan": "The second missing section is the forward financial projections."

What really puzzles me is Cllr Chapman and his rants.

With the building of the ECC there would be a change in the balance sheet as the Town Council took on a loan of £450,000. The £120,000 budget savings mainly came from a cut in staffing levels - some of which were to the detriment of the Town Council. What I can't fathom out is the following:

Except this was for the 2009/10 accounts. The residents of Love's Farm and Eynesbury Manor weren't actually annexed until the beginning of 2010/11 financial year. So Councillor Barry Chapman is spinning false information.

snrednek says: The freedom loving Liberal Democrats aren't so freedom loving when it comes to communicating with residents. They would rather have robes for the Town Mayor than a properly functioning website communicating with and informing residents. Under the Liberal Democrats this Town Council has had a bumpy ride. Whilst many of the problems were inherited, it was their inaction over resolving these problems that exacerbated the situation. This report only confirms what I've said in another blog entry, that this Liberal Democrat run Town Council is rudderless and leaderless.