Dear Fellow Councillors

Today is a sad day for Durham County Council. I have spent months trying to get this council to send out letters to help our poorest residents with the Warm homes Discount. When I finally get told something is being done what do I find out?

I ask to see a copy of the letter being sent out, and find it has the wrong phone number on it! Low income residents, many calling from their mobile phone to an 0845 number at significant cost would then find out they have wasted their time and money.

But if that is not bad enough, worse still, many residents will then phone their energy supplier as they should have been advised and find that as of the end of January it has stopped taking applications for this winter! Scottish Power for example have now stopped.

All this means that any letter sent out now is too late for many of our hard suffering residents. Why on earth didn’t someone listen to me last year when I brought this up in full council?

Why did officers not take this on board in December? Indeed why have our Cabinet members done nothing to act on this? We are leaderless and rudderless as a council.

This council behaves like an ignorant dictatorship. Today is another of those days when I truly wonder: What is the point of being a councillor on this dreadful authority.

To say this council is run by muppets would be an insult to Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

It is utterly shameful that because of this council’s incompetence £4m is going unclaimed by our poorest residents. £135 missing from the pockets of up to 35000 households across County Durham.

I am truly distraught by this utter shambles of an administration.

Kind regards

Mark