Pressure mounting on HBC CEO to QUIT as no confidence petition gathers significant pace....
- hpoolmatters
- Feb 7, 2023
- 5 min read
Pressure mounting on HBC Chief Executive to stand down, after petition calling for a No Confidence Motion in a local borough council attracts hundreds of signatures in just the space of a few hours….
Tuesday 7th Feb 2023 12:28pm
A Council CEO may be forced to step down from her role as the Head of service at a failing local authority if the current pace of signatures being added to a public petition of No Confidence continues at its current pace, as locals say the time for HBC to be declared no longer fit for public purpose "is now"......
It comes as public calls for the struggling local council to be declared an authority with no public confidence are becoming more vocal after cuts to local services have left some departments being run at "dangerously low levels" according to one member of staff & a number of former members of staff claiming the authority "wasn't a safe place to work at".....
HBC's CEO is managing to rake in £174k a year, a salary said to be nearly EIGHT TIMES that of the average worker in the town
Its fuelling calls for the councils £174k a year CEO Denise McGukin to stand down following claims her salary now stands at one of the highest levels recorded for such a relatively “small” unitary authority, with the councils seven most senior directors said to be collectively receiving by way of a salary & pension contributions nearly a million pounds a year, a revelation that’s angered many locals as they find Council Taxes in what’s said to be one of the most deprived boroughs in the country is set to rise again in April 2023 by 4.9%, adding around sixty pounds to the average yearly band A Council Tax bill.
Councillors daren’t mention anything about it even though some of them back calls for it to be declared....
Elected Councillors on the struggling local authority are now said to be keeping very much “tight lipped” over the subject of a No Confidence motion being called into the local council following fears that backing public calls for a motion of No Confidence motion in the local authority would effectively start the ball rolling for the council to be dissolved into another nearby neighbouring local council.
There's also said to be significant concern brewing that whilst the petition of No Confidence is now seemingly gathering what can be described as "significant pace", its claimed the petition could potentially lead to commissioners from the government being appointed to run the local authority in a bid to quell public outcry for the local council to be stripped of its responsibilities, with the likelihood that if such a move was undertaken significant job losses in the authorities seven most senior positions would be very likely & pay offs to some of the councils most expensive senior officers likely to be "substantial", despite their years of failing to run the local council properly.
Council Tax, Bin Tax, & the cuts to local services is now very much taken its toll on the town
Scenes like this one in Middlesbrough are now very much commonplace in Hartlepool with cuts to waste services & changes to the way people can dispose of their waste at the councils waste site all being blamed....
Much of the public frustration being aimed at the ailing local council appears to be over substantial Council Tax increases which have seen the average households yearly council tax bill going up by almost £400.00 a year over the last decade, with swathing cuts to local council services such as garden waste collection services & the closure of a number of community hubs all said to have ripped many local communities apart, leaving it to a number of local charities having to step in to try and fill the void.
Council Taxes will rise to some of their highest levels since the late 1990s
Residents in the Conservative controlled council are expected to see their Council Tax bills go up in April to some of the highest levels never seen in decades, with it being claimed that households have never seen such a sharp increase in household council tax bills in the struggling borough since the late 1990s, where in 1997 according to the government’s own live tables on council tax recorded from 1993 onwards, the highest council tax increase the borough seen was in 1998 at 5.4%, just two years after the former Cleveland County Council was officially dissolved & Hartlepool was declared a Unitary Authority.
However, some have come to claim now that Hartlepool Borough Councils persistent failure to balance the books year on year in terms of its ability to control significant overspending in council departments, payments of “obscene” salaries to its directors & devastating cuts to local services to name just a few had led to concerns that the Authority is now officially no longer fit for purpose in the eyes of the local people, with many now calling upon the authority to be officially dissolved & merged into another local council so long as the move provides better value services than what’s being offered by the local council at the moment. .
Its not the first time Hartlepool Council has faced calls of No Confidence.
Just two years ago, nearly all of the towns outlying Parish Councils were reportedly set to break away from Hartlepool Borough Council in a bid to join another local authority.
Just two years ago, the rural parishes of Hartlepool Borough Council all declared their own petitions of No Confidence in the local authority following extraordinary meetings held between the respective parish councils that lie on the outskirts of the Hartlepool Borough.
It led to a "warning" that Parish Council leaders were to consider breaking away from the borough of Hartlepool in favour of the merger into a nearby neighbouring local authority.
It was reported at the time that officers at nearby Durham County Council has been in "talks" with some parish council leaders over a potential "merger" into the borough of County Durham, however its claimed talks then stalled....
The move however was said to have then got the attention of the then Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government who was reportedly "carefully monitoring the situation", following concerns that should the move go ahead, it would spell the end of Hartlepool as an Unitary Authority, or potentially leading to an investigation over Hartlepool Borough Councils management & governance.
HBC "Independent" (although heavily aligned with the Conservatives) has repeatedly "shot down" calls for the local council to be dissolved into another "super council"
The decision to potentially "pull the plug" on Hartlepool Borough Council as a local authority due to its failing public image is seemingly a subject now that even many of the councils elected members (and leaders) are now unable to dodge, with the towns Conservative Council Leader Cllr Shane Moore (albeit he declares himself as an “Independent”) claiming that he would not entertain such a move of the local council being dissolved into another Teesside “super council” like it was in the 1990s, claiming the system of funding & governance in the former Cleveland County Council favoured other Teesside boroughs, with towns such as Middlesbrough "getting the loaf” & Hartlepool "getting the breadcrumbs”.
"Its had its day" its time to put services back to how they were or shut up shop for good !, say many locals
However when you consider the sheer state of the local services being delivered upon by the local council as it is at the moment, with residents understandingly “fed up” of seeing services being salami sliced away, Cllr Moores claims of the “breadcrumbs” being thrown down to Hartlepool back in the 1990s is in fact & very much visibly history repeating itself, in a town where the local councils now charging top whack prices & residents now cant even get their garden waste bin collected……….. unless they're willing to pay for it themselves in what many claim is now "the last straw", with HBC having so many chances to work for the public, only to hang itself as a monument of abhorrent failure in the eyes of its locals.
The link to the online petition can be found here !
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