A long time ago in the year 2000, in the beautiful Buckinghamshire hills, there was a council. And this council was called Chiltern District Council. Now, the good councillors of CDC wanted to save some money, so they decided to create a trust and hive off their three leisure centres, which meant they could avoid paying business rates. They called their not-for-profit trust the 'Chiltern Leisure Trust', and off it sailed, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Well, not quite.
Four years later, the trust had run up almost £1.2m in debt. More than half of that was owed to the council itself. So the poor councillors were left with no other option than to write the money off. They were very sad, as the amount represented roughly 10% of their council's annual income.
Does that story sound familiar? A little like writing off the £3.4m that Thanet Council idiotically allowed the decrepit TransEuropa Ferries to run up before it went bust?
Well it may not surprise you to learn, then, that one of the directors of Chiltern Leisure Trust was none other than Thanet Council's very own Corporate and Regulatory Services Manager Harvey Patterson, star of my previous post. Not only that, but HP was also Head of Legal Services for CDC during the same period.
So, now you know what Harvey was doing before he was famous!
Click here to read the full story of the Chiltern Leisure Trust debacle on the Guardian website.
15 comments:
I wonder why CDC let him go then ?
They had an attractive vacancy 2008
Fucking brilliant, what a link, we knew the rumour, now we know, it should be on the side of every bus in Thanet. It won't end here.
Can we have another poll on whether readers think he will be found to have seriously failed the Council before his pockets are stuffed full of our cash like Mr White and is paid off by tax payers or vice versa.
PS who recruited him, was it one of McGonigal's cronies, did they get a reference?
One question of the moment, Anon 2.35, concerns an earlier incidence of a pay off. A planning officer about 11 years ago. Was he given severance at a time he was under Standards Complaint along with tory Cllr Bill Hayton ?
Harvey refused to yield primacy for this question to Full Council and also refused to give his opinion on the legal advice given to Standards 11 years ago by his predecessor. He appears to have refused to search TDC records on the basis that if he discovered evidence of crime he would be under no duty to report it to police.
I am afraid that both Cllr Moores and Cllr Hart (who should have ensured full council asssumed jurisdiction over the complaint process) seemed reliant on Harvy to answer all questions whilst they elected silence.
Harvey was given the opportunity to contribute his explanation for inclusion in a report to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Act but he appears to have declined to explain his understanding of law to the reviewing QC. (Unless he chose to contact the QC directly I do not know whether or not he did so) As far as I know Harvey elected silence.
Our Harvey has been keeping the lid on so many things.
Harv seems part of the usual TDC corrupt crew.
Harvey's dancing around the Pavilion and the Manston monitors now.
And if the Port can't attract consultants to improve it - then who came up with the new Port plans and how many staff are we paying for at a closed Port?
We should call for his dismissal on grounds of gross misconduct incompetency. He should NOT be given the tabled redundancy package, outrageous
Is he definitely up for redundancy? Sacking him would be cheaper. Even the CDC contract was lavish: pensions, housing expenses etc etc.
Why aren't these roles outsourced to the private sector?
Clive and Bob are both as bad as each other just covering up the mess. Is it 3 years now with Clive in charge and Bob the same before that? We need a clear out.
Unitary anyone?
Once again Garbled has hijacked this blog.
Dickie old boy, the link is broken. Doesn't go to the right grauniad page.
I works on my machine, dear chap. Perhaps your confuser is banjaxed?
Or is there another Grauniad story on this?
I believe we are paying about 10 people to keep the port open and we now have a project officer doing something and nothing at the harbour office on a grossly inflated salary, apparenltly managing the admin staff is part of the remit. whereas brighton marine with a thousand plus boats on ly needs a staff of 5 , a council run marina needs many many more, on much highrer salaries.
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