What a Waste

A Letter to the Editor from Brian TYLDESLEY, who writes to share with us his letter to his local ‘rag’ about how business is conducted by public servants in the District of Richmondshire, North Yorkshire.

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Dear Editor,

On Friday 22 March 2013 you ran an article that stated that Richmondshire District Council (RDC) had lost over £500,000 after unfairly dismissing a Care Worker.

I outlined to William Hague, my MP, that I was not happy that RDC had lost this money; he forwarded my email to Tony Clark, the General Manager of RDC, for a reply. Mr Clark did reply to Mr Hague simply saying that I complain too much so he was not going to address the issues that I raised, Mr Hague has accepted that as a professional answer.

I then contacted my District Councillor who told me that it was not her responsibility, and if I wanted an answer I should write to Mr Blackie “Leader of RDC”; he did not reply at all.

The bottom line now is that RDC has lost a sum of money between £500,000 and £1,000,000 and no-one wants to give the public an explanation. I calculate that this has cost me and every home-owner in Richmondshire between £20 and £40. In a year’s time these Councillors, and our MP, will be writing to us asking us to vote for them; but today they simply ignore us. Many of our Councillors belong to and represent “Main Line Political Parties”, these parties say that they are short of funds and are asking people to join them. How can you join a party or vote for a Councillor when for over a year they have refused to address this serious issue.

Several years ago, RDC upgraded some properties in Gayle; they made such a mess of it that the Council asked their own Scrutiny Committee to review, they produced a 29-page report that said, in summary, that “planning of the project was very poor . . . . . .the system failed from every angle”, and based on tha,t the D&S ran an article headlined “Gayle Housing Fiasco”, the following week Colin Dales “Assistant Director” of RDC replied that he had done nothing wrong; today, if I read communications from Tony Clark and my own District Councillor, they both maintain that RDC did nothing wrong: in that case the Scrutiny Committee itself must be wrong, and incompetent.

What we really need is a fully impartial investigation into the dismissal of the Care Worker; who did what and when; should anyone be disciplined or sacked?

Then we should have another investigation into the Gayle housing upgrade and establish if the Scrutiny Committee’s report is correct or did RDC do nothing wrong, that is, what would normally be done in a professionally-run private company.

Regards,

Brian

Brain TYLDESLEY. Middleham. 22nd March, 2014.