The sound of summer… the Flat Iron pub being flattened (see here), Littleton Road and Top Streets houses crumbling (see here) and Seedley Primary School being trashed (see here)…in one July month Salford Council paid out £136,366 to demolition companies, as the wrecking ball continues to swing in Salford.
Meanwhile, it's the prestige projects that continue to rake in the public money…Our multi-billionaire `friends' Peel Holdings got a `miscellaneous grant' of £87,926 towards Media City, plus £1,720,000 towards its loan for the joint venture Barton Stadium, home to Salford Reds.
The Salford Reds Foundation pulled in £17,000 and Swinton Lions got £3,600
sponsorship from our ruby loving Council. Salford's biggest footy team, Salford City FC, got nowt, as usual…
Talking of `prestige', The Lowry got its monthly £92,708 in `professional fees', the big pink thing known as Salford Innovation Forum received £17,106, also in `professional fees', and that multi billion euro corporation Sodexo trousered yet another £82,529 in grants.
Our favourite spend of July was £4,800 to Amion Consulting which advised on the Greengate re-hash and boasted on its website that it undertook "a Green Book economic appraisal which was instrumental in the justification of additional public sector financial support from the Northwest Regional Development Agency towards the project".
Amion's `economic appraisal' was obviously spot on 'cos it also states that "the associated commercial development remains some way off". And as we all know, part of the "associated commercial development" that is "some way off" includes the `ugly sisters' buildings which could rely on Salford Council coughing up to £2million a year, as it's underwritten the rents on the privately owned yet to be constructed monstrosities (see here)…
Another top bit of spending in July was £3,045 to Ufi Ltd for a Customer Satisfaction report, for what we don't know. What we do know is that Ufi. and its Learn Direct brand, was a charity set up by the government in 1998 to `use new technology to transform the delivery of learning and skills'. It's just been sold to private equity company LDC for around £40million. LDC's own `customer satisfaction' rating must be sky high amongst its share holders – the education organisation turned over £140million last year…And now it's been privatised. Nice.
Meanwhile, NSL Ltd, which does car parking and stuff, another privatised public service, got a whopping £83,000 for `consultancy/contract work' – that's probably why Salford's car parking charges are about to go through the roof – again. And a company called MPSS got two payments from the Council's Chief Executive budget totalling over £25,000 for `consultancy/contract' work. Which might be good but we'll never know as the company doesn't appear to exist (well not in Google-land, anyway). Maybe it's been demolished with everything else…
And finally, Mersey Ferries picked up over £3000 for…just guessing…an executive tour of the Manchester Ship Canal showing southerners how great everything is?... `Look! That used to be Salford!'…
Full details of all Salford City Council's spending for July 2011 available by clicking here
(1).JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(3).jpeg)
.png)
(1).JPG)
