Salford City Mayor, Ian Stewart's public promise that his Spirit of Salford event last summer would cost the city's council tax payers "not a penny" has already come back to haunt him, after the Salford Star revealed in July that a Freedom of Information (FOI) response showed it had made a loss of £17,161.
The evening concert, which saw Salford singer Ren Harvieu headlining, sold only around 200 tickets out of around 500 that were on sale, while public money was spent on fireworks and bottles of champagne for bands (see previous Salford Star article – click here).
Salford resident, Anthony Dowd, was also interested in the costs and submitted an FOI to Salford Council, including a request for the number of Council staff who worked on the event and their total wages. The reply came back from the Council "21 and none of them were paid".
Anthony wasn't happy with this at all and asked for an `internal review' of the Council's response, adding that, if the staff were given time in lieu for working on the event then the response was "disingenuous, as a value IS attached to their time..."
Today Salford Council admitted that staff were given time off in lieu... "The initial answer provided answered the question that you asked" stated the Council "I can
confirm that council staff who volunteered to help at the event were not paid. They are, however, entitled to time off in lieu equal to the length of time they spent at the event..."
Which is the same thing as being paid, meaning the losses for the event were even greater than cash-strapped Salford Council admitted.
"It's typical of the response you get from Salford City Council" says Anthony "They try to cover up everything they do for no reason really."
Indeed, Anthony is having a long running battle with the Council over Freedom of Information requests. Apart from those that have been refused he reckons he's currently got a dozen outstanding. Meanwhile, according to the What Do They Know website - which catalogues only FOI requests which are sent directly through their organisation - there are twenty `long overdue' requests dating back to last January. The Salford Star also has a FOI request overdue.
Anthony asked the Freedom of Information Commissioner to investigate Salford Council's attitude towards FOIs and information in general...
"The Commissioner asked me to provide information which I did but said they were not interested in anything beyond six months, which I thought was strange because surely the longer it's going on the worse it is" he explains "Salford Council has never answered any of my FOIs on time, which is ridiculous..."
...And when the Council does answer Freedom of Information requests, how many of those responses are designed to pull the wool over residents' eyes?
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