LETTER: Scrutiny process is welcome

There were a number of letters in last week’s paper criticising me for correcting figures quoted in a previous article, ‘300k High Court bill for council tax payers’.
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Oct 2015, 08:33 BST

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement.

Your lettersYour letters
Your letters

Let me be clear. I welcome our Scrutiny and Overview Committee looking at appeal costs, and the extremely important issue of thousands of pounds of tax payers’ money being spent on fighting developers.

It is important that we keep our expenditure to a minimum and do not waste council tax payers’ money on hopeless cases. I was not objecting to the process of scrutiny, I was correcting inaccurate information. Unfortunately the errors keep being repeated.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

For example, last week David Shipton stated that in Quarter 4 of 2014/15 £347,619 in adverse costs were awarded against my department on planning appeals.

This is not true on two counts. Firstly, the figure is for the entire year and secondly it was not awarded against the council. It included all of the costs we incurred in fighting appeals.

So please, let’s have the debate, but let’s use correct information.

CLAIRE VICKERS

(Con, Southwater) Cabinet Member for Planning and Development, Horsham District Council, Chart Way, Horsham

__

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be among the first to know what’s going on.

1 Make our website your homepage at www.wscountytimes.co.uk

2 Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wscountytimes

3 Follow us on Twitter @wscountytimes

4 Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

The County Times – always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.

Related topics:High Court