What has Labour done with our £70,000?

The Labour candidate is making much of the fact that there has been a delay in claiming recycling credits from the Labour-run County Council. It is clear that the County Council knew all about this, but did nothing to alert Borough Council finance officers.

As a result the County Council has had responsibility for investing an extra £1.2million of taxpayers’ money. The interest on this should have given the County an extra £70,000 to spend in the Borough. Taxpayers have not ‘lost’ this money, as Labour say – it has simply been in the hands of a Labour controlled Council for longer than it should.

So Labour need to tell us - has the money been well invested? Did they get as much interest as the Borough would have done? And how has the money been used in the Borough?

In case Labour’s memory doesn’t stretch that far back, they never claimed any recycling credits while they were in power in the Borough. No claims were made from the time the credits scheme was introduced to 2006, although Labour did set up the system that has failed now. The only claims have been since the Lib Dems took over the recycling portfolio in 2006.