Woodside resident Andrew Rendle
Andrew Rendle, a Croydon resident from Woodside, has asked Inside Croydon to publish this open letter to councillor Mike Fisher, the leader of the Conservative group which controls our council.
Take a look at Rendle’s letter and let us know whether you think this local resident deserves to be given a straight answer to such a straightforward set of questions regarding the spending of millions of pounds of public money.
Dear Cllr Fisher
In the light of recent reports of Croydon Council spending £900,000 on office furniture I and other council tax-payers would be most grateful if you could fill in the table below. I’m sure this website or other local media outlet would be happy to publish once finished .
Item Budget Spend To Date
- Office Furniture £900,000
- IT equipment and set up for new HQ
- Telephone system for new HQ
- Wiring for new systems
- Decoration of new HQ
- Printing of stationary & documents with new address
- Cost of redundant stationary documents with old address
- Signposting
- Disposal costs of items not moving to new HQ
- Training of staff in new systems
- Temporary staff working on new HQ
- Estimated lost working hours due to move
- Safety certificates for new HQ
- Moving Costs
- Loan repayments on new HQ project
- Landscaping
- Flooring
- Advertising, PR & Press Releases
- Contingency Fund
Many thanks, I and the rest of Croydon look forward to your reply.
Regards
Andrew Rendle
Woodside resident
The initial response that Rendle received from Mike Fisher, a high-profile public servant – who receives around £45,000 per year in publicly funded “allowances” for his duties as a councillor, remember – was a refusal to answer his letter, referring the enquiry instead to be dealt with as a Freedom of Information request.
Another instance of Croydon’s “Proud to Serve” motto being forgotten?
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Mike Fisher. Shame on you. Let’s have some transparency. What are you hiding?
Mr Fisher seems to forget who he works for. Who pays him? Who elected him? Stop looking after your own and party interests do your job. That does not include spending extremely large sums on furniture when closing down services. Be honest and open and tell us the TOTAL costs involved in the new offices. Don’t hide behind politics.
Mike Fisher told me some time ago that he does not read Inside Croydon, but other people print out copies for him.
He is my councillor in Shirley and I will send him a screen shot of the post.
He will have to answer, one way or another, but he should add the cost of the FOI notice to the list above.
I am disappointed.