Taxpayer Money - Keeping You Them Safe

Council workers are getting free rides on a private, taxpayer-funded bus service because they are too frightened to walk the streets of their own borough to get home.

Staff in Southwark Council’s regeneration department in South London are ferried to the nearest train station every night after work to prevent them having to walk through a rough estate.

This is costing £3900 a week. The residents of the borough? Oh, they can just take their chances...

And it's not as though they'd need to walk, either:

The private bus service ferries staff across two of the country’s most dangerous areas, including the Camberwell and Peckham borough wards of Faraday and East Walworth, where the number of robberies is much higher than the national average.

Yet the council workers could easily catch a scheduled bus – the 343 – from their desks at Chiltern House, which is a 15-minute walk away from the Tube station, just as Southwark Council advises its residents to do.

The council defended its decision because three of their staff were mugged on their way home. The muggers should just apply to the council for jobs - what they do would then be legal, and they'd have even more victims. In fact, a whole borough...