A County Councillor has unearthed information suggesting the cost of putting together a contract for street lighting in Durham and Stockton could be enormous and has been covered up.

 

Councillor Mark Wilkes, who is also Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate for Bishop Auckland has discovered that the Council estimated a cost of £4.7m for wages and consultants to set up a Public Finance Initiative. This could include as many as 6080 officer work days costing £2,925,274 and 1208 consultant days at a cost of £1481 per day (£1,790,198).

 

Mr Wilkes commented “This could be a disaster for taxpayers in County Durham. The Lib Dems are fully behind improving our street lighting but this contract could saddle County Durham with hundreds of millions of pounds of debt and push up council tax even further.”

 

The proposal suggests replacing the majority of streetlights in County Durham over a five year period. Estimates in the document sent to Dept of Transport suggest that changing streetlights would save £219.4m in accidents and £37.9m in crime, yet the report going to Cabinet next week contains none of this information or the information to back it up, indeed Mr Wilkes believes that an original document intended for Cabinet appears to have been changed, removing much of this information.

 

“For Labour to suggest savings on this scale without backing them up is irresponsible. To not involve elected councillors is a disgrace. We might be up to our ears in debt nationally because of Labour but I refuse to accept this happening in County Durham.

 

“We could find the Council doesn’t have the money in future for a vast range of services including improving road safety or crime reduction because of a document hardly anyone has seen.”

 

Mr Wilkes who says that he has been refused permission to see the whole document was even more surprised at who else hadn’t read it:

 

“I was shocked to be told by the Portfolio Holder for Finance that he hadn’t even read the Expression of Interest document sent to the Dept of Transport. You would expect senior politicians to have more input in a £125m contract.”

 

It was recently announced that Harrow Council in London has shelved plans to commit to a similar initiative citing it as being irresponsible in the current economic environment.

 

Mr Wilkes further added: “If this gets passed through Cabinet I will be asking for it to be referred to Scrutiny so that some serious questions can be asked and answered at this early stage. Like for example how on Earth it can cost £4.7m just find out whether we should go ahead with this.”

 

“I do wonder if this Labour Cabinet has a clue what it and its council is doing in the name of the people of County Durham. Residents can be assured that the Lib Dems are doing everything we can to bring Labour to account.“