Councils quarterly expenditure sheet that Hartlepool Matters has seen shows eye-watering sums shelled out on areas where savings could be made through means testing some council services....
Over £135,000.00 spent on Taxis & home to school transport services has been revealed in the councils latest financial report.....
Huge sums of money spent on just one council service is coming under the spotlight, after frontline services are expected to be stripped even further, as local councillors are set to be told to find millions of pounds worth of savings….
Hartlepool Matters has found that Hartlepool Borough Council's eye-watering expenditure continues at a staggering pace, despite increasing budget pressures when recent published data shows the local council, for just the latest financial quarter alone, spent £135,373.66 on Taxis paid to various providers with the highest payment found to be £36,104.00 paid to a local business.
The staggering amount of money paid by Hartlepool Borough Council just in this area alone is said to be raising concerns that upcoming plans to strip back front line council services even further will go nowhere near addressing the councils' massive impending financial catastrophe, whilst huge tax payer sums like these are paid in transport costs, with payments just this area alone estimated to be costing the local tax payer around half a million pounds every single year, with calls for councillors to investigate just how such large sums of public money are being shelled out on just one service & for such a small unitary local authority….
The majority of the payments were found to be paid to just one single local company, with payments as low as £600.00 being made all the way up to £36,000 in payments recorded on the councils' expenditure sheet….
In addition to the huge sums of money paid out by the local council in the form of taxi services & home to school transport, Hartlepool Matters found that representatives of the Tall Ships Races International Ltd also had their taxi fees covered to the tune of £1086.98 paid on the 6th September 2022..
According to Hartlepool Borough Council's most recent published expenditure report for the latest quarter, passenger transport is broken down into the following categories......
DSG High Needs Passenger Transport Children & Families Cultural Services
The bulk of the payments were assigned to the general Passenger Transport category where some of the highest payments were shelled out, Children & Families was next followed by cultural services, where Hartlepool Matters found the payment made in respect of the taxis used to ferry directors of the company Tall Ships International Ltd…
The staggering amounts paid out in just this area of the council's expenditure sheet equates to around £1400.00 PER DAY forked out on taxis alone by the local borough council..
Nearby Stockton Borough Council found itself previously coming under intense public scrutiny over its own payments made for the same services when a local newspaper published that the nearby local council was shelling out almost £50k PER WEEK on taxis to take youngsters to & from school..
In July 2022, The Gazette Teesside reported that Middlesbrough Council spent on average £32,900 PER WEEK on running 458 of its pupils to & from schools in taxis.
Hartlepool Matters understands that local councils are statutorily required to provide transport & assistance to eligible students & to safeguard those who are deemed to be “vulnerable”…
However, the sheer costs involved are raising the question as to whether the local council actually needs to spend such eye-watering sums of money in the current climate of local government cutbacks & whether the Home to School service scheme needs to be means tested making some households pay a percentage of the costs to cover the service, especially when many critics have claimed that no such council service really ever existed years ago when people had to walk to & from school (& that included some even with disabilities), begging the question as to whether the local councils increasing expenditure on such services now needs rapid overhaul in the manner of tightening up the eligibility criteria for such an expensive commissioned service, particularly when demand on local services is increasing…… but simply no money left to fund them, as the local council repeatedly tells the taxpayer as a justification as to why council taxes are having to be increased year on year....
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