Where do you start revealing Salford Council's spending over £500 for May 2011? One month's invoices for May 2011 show that, at a time when the Council was literally weeping with remorse over the £40million cuts, it managed to spend £11,719 at the 5 star footballers' haunt, The Lowry Hotel. The money came from the Council's `Sustainable Regeneration' budget and was for `Central S & S Alloc', whatever that means…
£240,000 also went out of Salford Council's coffers for the Manchester International Festival (details here), plus a grant of £133,928 to Sodexo from the Community, Health and Social Care budget, to go with its grant of over £84,000 in January (see here). Sodexo, as we have previously stated, boasts `consolidated revenues of 15.3billion Euros'.
Meanwhile, staff who have left Salford City Council as a result of the cuts will be thrilled to hear that almost £96,268 was paid in fees to jobs agency Meridian Business Support, presumably in commission for finding new staff. This is so gross we have asked Salford Council for an explanation and are still waiting to hear.*
Also blooming under the cuts are Salford's plants and flowers which had over £20,000 lavished on them. Three companies – Brenmo Plants, Impact Plants and Plantscape – shared £10,781, while Seedley and Langworthy In Bloom received £10,000.
Salford's dustbins also did rather well, with The Bin Washing Company being paid £24,000, presumably to, er, wash dustbins…
…And Salford Reds Rugby club received £6000 in sponsorship – on top of all the other payments it's had in loans, revenue and a tenancy at a nice new ground. Talking of which, Peel Holdings - joint owners of the ground for which Salford tax payers have given a £22million loan – is continuing to receive thousands of pounds from Salford Council…
…In May alone, megabucks Peel Media, owners of MediaCityUK, got £1,520 in rent off the Council; its subsid, Peel Advertising, received £1,680 for the `Training of Others' and Peel Holdings itself got £1,400 for `Marketing/Publicity'. Both payments came from our struggling, over budget, Children's Services…
And the Peel-owned Bridgewater Canal Company received £35,672 for `Other Works', while the Peel-owned Manchester Ship Canal got two payments totalling £6,208 for `Principal Road Maintenance'. The Bridgewater Canal's 250th anniversary was enhanced by a new app, courtesy of £28,000 in `miscellaneous expenses' payments from the Council to Imagemakers, via a Heritage Lottery grant.
The Lowry got its, now monthly, £92,708 in `professional fees', plus £1,164 for `provisions' and £1,128 for `hire of facilities'…what's wrong with St Seb's and the Langworthy Cornerstone?
And what's wrong with what's left of Salford Council's in-house marketing department? In May, Lynch Willcox Communications – joint founded by ex GMTV presenter Elaine Willcox and trading as The Marketing Clinic – received £3000 in `professional fees'. Elaine Willcox can currently be seen flogging houses for Seddon Homes at Kersal's Unity Quarter (see here), amongst other developments (watch this space for some further details on this).
When analysing February's Council spending we questioned why marketing company, Countryscape, were paid almost £2000. A commenteer from Countryscape came back and said it wasn't for a Lowry project – but didn't say what it was for (see here). Well, Countryscape received another £5,880 in May. Perhaps the company will let us know this time what it was for – they are a marketing company, after all…
Also back in February, U.R.C. Associates - headed, we believe, by ex Salford City Council Deputy Chief Exec, Mike Shields - received almost £13,500 in fees. The company trousered a further £3,105 for `other works' in May. And Comensura - the `procurement and supply chain management solutions' company – which received £242,000 in fees from Salford Council in April, got fees totalling £501,633 in May. They must be very, very good – whatever it is they do for amost three quarters of a million quid…
And finally, what Council spending trip would be complete without a visit to John Lewis? Certainly not Salford Council's – it spent £1,200 in `Amenities Account Purchases' at the posh person's Poundland.
For full details of Salford Council's Expenditure over £500 - click here
* Update - 21st October 2011
Salford Council has now sent us a comment from Councillor Ray Mashiter, lead member for environment... “We use Meridian to provide extra cover for refuse collection and seasonal grounds maintenance services. They have been used for a number of years.
"We use agency staff to make sure refuse and recycling collections are fully staffed every day to maintain this service for Salford residents. In the peak growing season we use agency staff to supplement our permanent grounds maintenance workforce to deal with the short term extra demand.
"We are working with our staff and trade unions to reduce the use of agency staff with permanent staff wherever we can where the benefits and costs of doing so are proven.”
Salford Star replies: For almost £100,000 that you paid in `agency fees' you could probably employ five extra full time staff to cover all the year round...
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(3).jpeg)
.png)
(1).JPG)
