At yesterday’s full council meeting Labour councillors voted to give priority to its internal Direct Services works department, even if it could be shown that getting the work done by a local business would be half the price.

It is seldom realised but every council department buys things from other departments. These departments apply a profit – 15-20% is not uncommon – and in some but not all cases may be significantly more expensive than the cheapest of three quotes from local companies outside the Council.

A number of weeks ago at a constitutional working group meeting, our group leader Cllr Amanda Hopgood challenged plans to force all council departments use the council’s own contractor for any project Direct Services were capable of doing. Labour refused to budge on this, so today I called for a vote on it. And all Labour councillors backed their Cabinet – only for some of them in private afterwards to say that I was right!!!!!

So if a council department needs some work doing, knows it would cost £10,000 to go to an outside contractor but is now forced to use Service Direct, they will end up paying more, perhaps double and have £10,000 less to spend on other important services such as highways repairs, adult care, children’s services, youth services or any other important work.

This is not a fit and proper way to run a public service.

What makes this a double disgrace is that by removing any element of competition from the millions of pounds of contracts which will apply, the Council is seriously undermining the ability of our small businesses to grow, damaging the entrepreneurial spirit and growth potential of the County, and creating an inefficiency charter inside the Authority. This will mean less can be done, and Labour will seek to blame the government if they can’t afford to do something.

Please spread this story far and wide so everyone in County Durham knows about these underhand and wasteful practices. In the meantime, we are going to keep looking for a way to stop these practices.