Letter due to an £1.8 M Black hole

This letter is due to two Staple Tye Councillors being also responsible for running this town.
Are we going to have service cuts?
Are we going to have less money to do things in Staple Tye due to this error?

Dear Sir



As a Harlow Councillor I am still in shock at the news that our Labour-Liberal Democrat Administration has managed to run up a £1.8 million deficit in their 2007/8 budget without realising it.



Last Thursday the Joint Leaders of the Council took a bloody nose for the fact that this should have been known long ago and residents could be facing cuts in services.



Labour’s previous Leader, Councillor Kevin Brooks, was right to say he had grave concerns that the Budget Working Group had not met for a year.



From out of the mouth of one of their own most prominent members comes proof that this administration has been negligent. It must be a bitter consolation for Councillor Brooks to leave us in January knowing that he has been proved right, but in doing so he has condemned his own side.



Yet what did we hear from his colleagues he leaves to lead us? Their new leader, Councillor Durcan, was heard to say, “I’m bored,” while forced to listen to his shortcomings at the Council meeting last Thursday. Then he too refused an apology to Harlow’s residents and taxpayers, just as his Liberal Democrat partners had refused to apologise over the closure of Harlow Pool.



Well, just as Conservatives had to apologise for the Pool closure, I am prepared to do what Councillor Durcan finds himself unable to do, and apologise to our residents and taxpayers for this series of disasters once again enveloping the tragedy that is Harlow Council.



Apart from that, all I can say to residents is what Conservatives in Harlow have been saying for the last ten years, the answer is in your hands, and will be again at the ballot boxes next May.



Yours truly,


Lee Dangerfield
Councillor Staple tye

Letter to the press

Dear Sir,



I was Present at last Tuesday’s Environment & Community Committee and was sad at the news regarding Harlow Pool.



I was 10 before I learnt to swim and spent hours in Harlow Pool playing catch-up to my classmates. I was lucky to have friends in Harlow Swimming Club, who helped me with this important aspect of life.



My thoughts are with those now in the situation I was 26 years ago and how this could affect their lives. If no alternative provision can be found, how many 8 and 9 year olds could arrive at secondary school without basic swimming skills? So I was pleased to see the Conservative amendment got the support it deserved and officers will be looking to find a partner to contract the supply of this service for all who want it, at other pools nearby, with transport included, at the same price as a swim at Harlow Pool.



I also want to know how we got to this situation in the first place. There has obviously been a lack of investment, but what surprised me was that both joint leaders have been conspicuous by their absence on this issue, both in person and in press comment.



Only recently you could not keep them quiet about the Council’s rise from poor to good, but sadly luckily the auditors just missed out on the three stories that have now hit the headlines. First the Playhouse budget fiasco, followed by the pool farce, and now the budget crisis. There is a familiar smell of decay about Harlow’s Liberal-Labour Administration that reminds me of the whiff around the Labour Government as it spirals from blunder to blunder in its inevitable demise.



I am glad the Council’s Conservative group also forced through the creation of a working party to find out how and why this service got into the state it has and make sure this never happens again.



Yours truly,



Lee Dangerfield