In days gone by, a few hours sifting through the local council’s annual accounts could reward a reporter with a good dozen or so stories of dodgy expenditure and highlight the quirky sense of priorities at large within local authorities. So we were interested to see if anyone from the local paper turned up at Calamity Hall yesterday to report on the ‘debate’ over Swansea’s statement of accounts; or if something would be printed in advance (or even today) given that the report was published a week ago. They didn’t and it wasn’t.
This is all the more surprising when you consider that three chief officers at Swansea Council were named in the recent BBC Panorama public sector pay report as earning over £100K a year. The council’s chief executive gets more than the Prime Minister and the director of finance isn’t far off.
Yet a reasonably quick scan of the 143 page report nodded through yesterday would reveal that despite his pleas of being “skint”, council leader Chris Holley has allowed the number of managers getting over £60K a year to go up from 38 to 52 - up by more than a third. In fact, the average is closer to £80K, according to the report.
Another little gem to be found is the arbitrary action of writing off around £79,000 owed to the council via one of its arms-length companies. The astonishing reason given is that there are no records of who owes what and that the officers responsible have since left the authority to spend more time with their pensions!
Of course, the past five years under Lib Dem stewardship are littered with examples of how handsome exit packages and/or glowing references have followed a succession of abortive internal investigations into the leisure centre closure, the e-government fiasco (aka Shambles@Swansea) and a virtual meltdown in children’s social services. Even a reconstructed scrutineer like Andrew Davies would lose count of all the financial screw-ups after a while - and that’s probably what the ruling clique are banking on, in a manner of speaking.
It certainly seems to be working as far as the local press are concerned.
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