Tuesday, 5 July 2011

So, Mr Halliday, What Do We Pay You For?

A council chief admits taxpayers’ money has been wasted trying to get a man to pull down his house.

After a Freedom of Information request by the Gazette, Tendring Council has admitted it spent £14,000 on legal fees in its latest case against Zippy Moonflower, of Wix, at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Does that name sound familiar? Why, yes, of course it does…

And Mr Halliday’s excuse? Well, it’s pretty much ‘Big boys did it and ran away!’:
Mr Halliday said he was not made aware of the cost before the court case took place as he only “signed off” on overall budgets.

“I don’t get that level of detail and only see the overall budget,” he said.

“There wasn’t the need for extra money for the court case in the current budget, so it didn’t come to me.

“It was a decision taken by others and it’s not a decision I was aware of, which is a worry in itself for me.”
And what are you doing about it? Who has lost their job? Has anyone been disciplined? Sent for retraining?
“I haven’t made any decision on spending more money on the process and it wouldn’t be right to comment further on something that’s ongoing,” said Mr Halliday.

“But I’m very much of the opinion it should be done speedily.”
What should..?
at

6 comments:

  1. Kevin B5 July 2011 at 12:11

    Fear not Julia. An independant enquiry will be set up and lessons will be learnt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mr Glum5 July 2011 at 16:35

    I like this blog, but please can you stop always reverting to questions like "Who has lost their job?"

    Sadly I get the feeling that is your answer to all problems. Perhaps it would it make you happy to have people losing their jobs all over the place, but is there anything else that could be said?

    Speak now, blogger!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Captain Haddock5 July 2011 at 17:45

    Halliday .. obviously a graduate of the Gordon Brown school of leadership & responsibility ..

    ReplyDelete
  4. blueknight5 July 2011 at 22:05

    Not that far from Dale Farm. Just thinking the bulldozers could have a little practice on the way to the big one........

    ReplyDelete
  5. nightlurker5 July 2011 at 22:55

    Mr Glum,

    It's not that we would like to see people unemployed. But that if more Public Servants were in fear of losing their job and/or pension then maybe they would think more about the consequences of pissing taxpayers money (local and national) up the wall on stupid projects and actions that were never going to achieve anything, other than ridicule and waste of money.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JuliaM6 July 2011 at 05:58

    "...and lessons will be learnt."

    Oh, no doubt!

    "Sadly I get the feeling that is your answer to all problems."

    Consequences - that's the answer. Without them, what's to stop this going on and on and on..?

    As nightlurker points out, nothing so far has worked, has it?

    ReplyDelete