Green councillors have condemned Lancaster City Council’s proposal to spend £100,000 on the Centros public inquiry into the canal corridor development (see news story) at a time when the Council is trying to save £1.7 million in next year’s budget.
In agenda documents for a Cabinet meeting held earlier today prepared by the Council’s Corporate Director, notes to the draft budgets state the proposed inquiry “will have substantial financial implications for the Council. Initial estimates are around £100K but given the timescales, this has not yet been built into the draft budget.”
Coun John Barry proposed at the meeting that councillors should consider options that would include spending less money, but no councillors from any of the other parties would second the proposal.
The proposal comes as the Council continues to struggle with the fallout of £6 million losses from its investments held by Icelandic banks, the report noting some amounts will be recovered, but actual amounts and their timing are very uncertain, and this will vary for the different banks involved.
“The Council is in a budget crisis and has already cut services such as the Dome and the Youth Games and will soon be making proposals for much wider cuts in other services,” says John. Yet at the same time, they are quite happy to pay expensive barristers thousands of pounds a day to defend a development that is unpopular and may fall victim to the credit crunch. It seems to me that councillors have lost sight of what their priorities should be.”
“We have a large planning department and they should be perfectly capable of appearing before the inquiry – at no further expense to the taxpayer.”
“The city council is sleep-walking into spending £100k on fat cat barristers and expert witnesses to bolster the flawed case for the canal corridor development at the public inquiry,” added Bulk Ward councillor John Whitelegg. “Given the choice of spending this money on front line council services or barristers there should be no argument. We need the services and not the barristers.”
• View the full Cabinet Agenda and Documents
• View the GF Capital Report Cabinet 200109, item 9 relating to the proposed costs (PDF)