At the Finance, Policy and Resources Committee (FPRC) meeting on 29 January, members approved the 2024/25 Capital Programme Budget which now has £181K allocated to ‘Pools on the Park – group exercise studio’.
Cllr Gareth Roberts
So as I mentioned, we have three members of the public who wish to address the committee. The first is Mr. Baker. OK you have three minutes Mr. Baker from now.
Martin Baker
Good news! As a result of this committee’s decision on 23rd January, there is now £181,000 allocated for the group exercise studio at Pools on the Park. I’m sure that the 72 residents who wanted this new facility will be delighted.
The council’s three and a half year project to steadfastly ignore the wishes of 371 residents on a leisure facility that we pay for could not have been achieved without the full co-operation of the council staff involved. Special recognition must go to:
Director of Finance, Fenella Merry for her work on Capital Programme budget naming and a non-existent budget reallocation request that appeared to be for just £12,000 but was actually for £181,000. Congratulations Ms Merry!
Monitoring Officer, Abdus Choudhury who sat on numerous overdue corporate complaints for weeks before finally issuing a list of one paragraph responses, that intentionally misrepresented those complaints in order to justify NOT investigating them. Well done Mr Choudhury! Not here tonight.
Chief Executive, Mike Jackson. On 4th January the Health Suite Action Group sent you an open letter but we had no acknowledgement nor response. Apparently it sat in your spam folder for 11 days. We were then told that it had been passed to Leisure Directorate who would be in touch “shortly”. Guess what! We’re still waiting, 8 weeks later. Despite repeated requests, you’ve also been unwilling to meet us to discuss this matter. Well done Mr Jackson for such a sterling effort!
Then it’s time to recognise the councillors – yes all 54 of you. Since the council cannot be trusted and remains unaccountable, the 371 residents that I mentioned earlier have had to rely on YOUR scrutiny, YOUR integrity and YOUR courage.
And unfortunately for all of us, you’ve been a complete let down.
At the last meeting, I spoke to you about the non-existent budget request. You were all given five background documents and fully briefed on the situation. There was NO excuse for approving a non-existent budget request! It was truly alarming to see what councillors were willing to go along with, just because your party expects you to toe the line.
Sadly, the opposition party councillors have not fared much better I’m afraid.
It is very telling that the opposition party is only willing to call for a “lessons learned” audit even though it is blantantly obvious that the council has achieved its desired result by breaking its own rules and then either ignoring or gaslighting residents when we ask rather awkward questions.
Mistakes were NOT made. It was not an ‘unfortunate sequence of events’. Every single action that led us to this point was perfectly aligned towards the desired outcome.
I will close by asking two questions:
I’d like to ask Councillor Roberts to tell 371 residents why you allowed a non-existent ESCSC budget reallocation request to be brought to the last committee meeting and then I’d like to ask the remaining members to tell us why you voted for it.
Thank you.
Cllr Gareth Roberts
Thank you Mr. Baker. The way we do things in these committees is the members of the committee who ask speakers questions as opposed to the other way round.
Does anybody have any points which they wish to raise as questions to Mr. Baker?
Nobody. Thank you very much for your time this evening.