The parlous state of Croydon Council’s finances, and the chronic incompetence of the people in charge of them, made it on to national television last week.
Thursday night’s Question Time on BBC1 broke away from its obsessions with Brexit and asylum-seekers to address the question of Council Tax, and the dreadful imposition of 5per cent increases during the worst cost-of-living crisis in 40 years.
Yes! Just 5per cent!
The question was initially directed at Robert Jenrick, the former Tory minister for local government, who stumbled and bumbled a bit.
It was here that Ian Hislop, the Editor of Private Eye, came in.
Armed with a decade’s-worth of reports in his magazine’s Rotten Boroughs column, Hislop referred to misguided local authority ventures into energy companies (Nottingham City Council’s Robin Hood Energy, or Thurrock’s solar farms) and property development (probably meaning Croydon and Brick by Brick, although others have also dabbled in this area), declaring that some had gone “spectacularly bankrupt”.
“And the people who failed the most,” Hislop observed, “are allowed to put up the Council Tax the most.” Jenrick was looking more than a little discomforted at this stage.
“So they don’t stop at 5per cent,” Hislop continued. “It’ll be above that. It’ll be 15per cent. It’ll be 10per cent.”
The host, Fiona Bruce, here mentioned spectacularly bankrupt Croydon’s 15per cent hike.
And Hislop added one final rider. “All I am saying is that there is incompetence here as well as under-funding.”
Read more: Government to write off £540m of council’s debts
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