The new Labour administration at the Town Hall have been left a £5,300,000 bonus according to Liberal Democrat councillor David Franks. That’s the amount of unallocated money he says is left in the pot thanks to Liberal Democrat careful monitoring of the public money the Council handles.

In a letter to his fellow Liberal Democrat councillors David Franks says:

“Labour councillors have had two weeks now to find out what is going on and it will certainly have been a priority for them to take a close look at the Council’s finances. They will have discovered that in contrast to the mess they left us to clear up, we left the finances healthier than they have been for years.”

“Thanks to Liberal Democrat careful monitoring of the public money the Council handles, Labour has a £5.3M bonus to play with in their first few months in office. That’s almost half a swimming pool.”

“This gives Labour a much better chance of being able to deliver on the very extravagant promises they made during the election and one of the key tasks for us in opposition is to carefully monitor Labour’s handling of the Council’s finances.”

The last meeting of the Council’s Executive on 10th April approved the Council’s management accounts for the 11 months to February 2007. These transferred under-spends of £3.7M to reserves and identified an additional £1.7M of likely carry forward requests which will not necessarily have to be approved.