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| Mr. Geoff Alltimes, Council's former CEO. H&F Conservatives spent over £7000 on his goodbye party. It is also estimated that he received a £270,000 tax free lump sum pay-off and will receive a £104,000 annual pension. |
This year, the Borough’s residents will hand over between £747.74 to £2,243.20 to Hammersmith and Fulham Council in Council Tax – depending on the banding of their home. They may have to add extra payments for parking, parking fines, meals on wheels and even for using fitness trainers in our local parks. H&F Conservatives has consistently added record hikes to these stealth taxes. All of us know these are difficult times of austerity. Or so we thought…
Yesterday, the Council reported that the Borough’s ruling Conservative Councillors spent an incredible £7,184.00 (excluding VAT) of tax payers’ money on a booze-up. The party began at 4.00pm in the afternoon on Monday, October 31st and it took place in the Assembly Hall in Hammersmith Town Hall
I find it genuinely hard to fathom why the Conservative Administration spent that amount of money on a shin-dig. This year the Conservative/Lib Dem government has slashed funding to Hammersmith and Fulham Council by a record amount. Our local Conservative councillors called for even more cuts and to show the way, added an extra £1 cut to every £3 cut by their government. That meant that £33million was slashed from front line services or added as stealth taxes. Sure Start nurseries are a pertinent example as many up and down the Borough found that their budgets were dropped from over £450,000 a year to just £19,000 a year. Think what an extra £7,000 could do for any of those facilities. Indeed, think what an extra £7000 could do to significantly improve any of the many reduced services. Consider that an average Band D council taxpayer will pay £1,121.60 then almost six and a half Borough households have had their payment for this year thoroughly wasted paying for a get-together.
The reason given for such extravagance is that it was a retirement party for Mr. Geoff Alltimes, the Borough’s former Chief Executive. I have nothing against people putting their hands in the own pockets and having a retirement party after work hours. I am sure that is what will have happened often during the last two years for many of the 296 H&F Council staff that have left because of redundancy or retirement. But Mr. Alltimes has already been treated extremely generously by this Administration. He was remunerated almost £300,000 a year; his annual pension is estimated to be £104,000 a year and he is also estimated to have received a tax free, lump sum payment of £270,000 as part of his leaving package.
I think we should get the money for Mr. Alltimes' leaving bash back. I can picture some Sure Start nurseries that would happily welcome it.
3 comments:
Why didn't Alltimes refuse to have this money spent on him? He put together a £33 million cuts package for his Tory bosses to sign off this year but he still did not think to object when they suggested spending £7000 on his goodbye party. Talk about smug indifference to the harm he has done. It is personified in this act.
That is disgraceful. Alltimes was the chief Executive whose job it was to stop politicians squandering our money. He should be ashamed of himself for allowing tax payers to fund his goodbye party.
Absolutely appalling. How on Earth the H&F Conservative Council can go on cutting and encourage more cuts nationally when they waste such an exorbitant sum on a leaving event for an already all too well paid individual is beyond me.
To think the Conservative opposition to our Council here in Ealing complain about every pound our Labour run council dare spend - maybe they should be looking at their own party in a council they all seem to look up to (H&F).
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