Council Leaders political career now said to be "under significant threat", as proposals for HBC to throw in the bin previous plans to increase council tax by 2.9% which were voted by the council last month could now be SCRAPPED, as the council leader says he now wants to increase it next year to 5%.....
Wednesday 14th December 2022 09:21am
A Hartlepool councillor is said to be “hanging onto to his leadership by a thread” over proposals which would see the council effectively throwing in the bin its previous plans to introduce a 2.9% Council Tax INCREASE next year, only weeks later, for the government to give the council approval to Increase it even higher to 5%...
Cllr Shane Moore Hartlepool Borough Councils Leader reportedly told his plans could cost him his leadership of the local council
Its claimed that Hartlepool Borough Council, having previously undertaken a vote to agree a council tax increase of 2.9% for April 2023, the council now wants to SCRAP those proposals, putting it out to the full council again next year for the 2.9% increase to go to 5%, introduced as part of chancellor Jeremy Hunts Autumn Mini Budget.
The moves reportedly sparked widespread anger in the local community in that the proposals previously agreed for the 2.9% increase should be honoured, with legal experts telling Hartlepool Matters that the local council could potentially find itself the subject of a legal battle in the form of a Judicial Review over the decision if the proposals are given the green light next year, with even members of the public labelling the prospect of the council undertaking such a move as “desperate” & confirming many locals worst fears that Hartlepool Borough Council is in a worse financial position than councillors are admitting….
Its one of the smallest Unitary Authorities in the country, yet has one of the highest senior officer wage bills....
Calls for senior officers to take a pay cut isnt going away......
Hartlepool Borough Council, considered to be one of the smallest unitary authorities in the United Kingdom is said to be coming under increasing public pressure for an inquiry to be launched into the continued “salami slicing” of local government services which has reportedly left the authority running with dangerously low levels of staffing, with staff morale in some of the councils almost ghost like departments said to be “non existent” as staff take on ever increasing workloads.
Staff absence rates at the local council caused by increased workloads resulting in stress, anxiety & depression is also said to be increasing at alarming rates, with the council claiming that the authorities few remaining front line customer services workers are repeatedly the target of locals anger at the state of the local councils few remaining services forcing many members of staff to consider leaving the job altogether.
No longer fit to lead the council some claim !
If Cllr Moore u-turns on this.... it will be the end of his career one source told Hartlepool Matters yesterday
The latest move by the council to effectively "toss in the bin" its previously agreed budget proposals is in turn said to be turning the public against the local council & specifically that of its leader Cllr Moore at levels never before seen , with Hartlepool Borough Council itself reportedly bracing itself for significant public backlash if the plans to increase Council Tax even higher than the agreed proposals made in November are approved.
The local councils already reportedly seen a significant backlash on social media to such an extent that in a recent post seen by Hartlepool Matters, the councils press department had to close down the ability for members of the public to submit comments on its official page after a huge influx of public anger about the running of the local council was aimed at its page.
There's ever increasing calls for HBC's finance director to step down amidst claims he's borrowed the local council into millions of pounds worth of debt through unsustainable borrowing
Cllr Moore's leadership of the local council is now also said to be coming under increasing pressure, where in just the space of a few years, a councillor who was elected under his Hartlepool Independent Union Banner on the promise to freeze locals council taxes has quickly morphed into a councillor who now sees council tax increases to be "unavoidable", with many locals saying its took no time at all for the councils once respected Independent councillor & leader to be corrupted by the poison dripped into his ear by unelected council finance officers who've used the HBC leader like their very own political puppet, using Cllr Moore as the figurehead & mouthpiece to spew out the councils ever increasing litany of excuses of "government cuts" that in reality is an excuse that's long ran out in the eyes of the local people long ago, with anger directed at the councils finance Director Chris Little, who for the last decade has plundered the councils finances into the mess that lies before it today.
The independent council leader Cllr Moore who reportedly earns £32k a year in allowances paid to him is also said to be under pressure from opposition councillors on the towns labour group to look at the "nuclear option" in terms of real savings which could be achieved at the local council, that being senior officer pay & councillor special responsibility allowances onto which HBC paid out over 90k last year to elected members.
Election flyers like the one above is what some so called "independent councillors" are now hoping the public have forgotten about .....
Labour, who lost control of the local council just three years ago claims the councils potential U-Turn is yet more evidence of the conservatives shameful legacy both locally & nationally, with Independents promising to freeze council tax very much a notion they’d hoped the public had forgotten about, with many Independent councillors on the towns council said to be heavily criticised by members of the public for their apparent political leanings towards the majority numbered Conservative Party, who through a precarious alliance with some of the towns so called "Independent councillors" keeps the Tories with a firm hand on Hartlepool Borough Council (at least for the moment that is).....
Its claimed however that the premiership for Independents & Conservatives at Hartlepool Borough Council could be soon about to end, with claims next year’s local elections will see swathes of Independents & Conservatives losing their seats at Hartlepool Council when a third of the political seats are up for election, with Hartlepool now one of just a handful of local councils in the region who still take part in what’s dubbed “the election by thirds system” with Hartlepool seeing a portion of its council elected every year instead of a four year “all out” election.
The council’s plans to increase council tax to 5% next year is poised to see the council going dangerously close to becoming locked head to head against the public on a very tender subject, with Hartlepool said to be one of the highest rateable boroughs in the country, despite the fact that a significant portion of its 93,000 people are now said to be living well below the poverty line, with unemployment levels in the seaside town despite significant financial investment in the area increasing sharply, as the cost of living crisis hits the towns people the hardest.
The councils said to be now left scrambling to find millions of pounds in additional expenditure savings caused by the current financial crisis, where inflation & rising interest rates has seen the councils borrowing liabilities explode into unsustainable levels, despite warnings to the council years ago that taking on such unsustainable levels of borrowing would lead to significant financial problems further down the line.
HBC CEO, Denise McGuckin, who earns £174k a year in salary, nine times the average salary of a worker living in the town...
Its Chief Executive, said to be earning around £174,000.00 including generous pension contributions sparked widespread condemnation recently when she announced that she didn’t want councillors at the failing authority to “look upwards” for savings, pointing to her own salary & that her senior management team who collectively between them cream off nearly £900,000 of local tax payer funds every year claimed that the move by councillors to cut pay at the authorities top table would “damage their morale”, with the public now said to be increasingly getting ever warmer to the prospect that the entire councils senior management team itself now should be dismissed in a public vote of no confidence, with the Conservative / Indi alliance at HBC whilst looking to be "strong & stable" appears to be lacking the confidence of the voting public who appear to be busting at the seams to get rid of it one way or another in May 2023....
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