Council Criticised Over Banners
Oldham Council has been criticised for allegedly “misleading” banners outside the Civic Centre. Local news website i-Royton has reported that the banners “fall short of the guidelines issued by the Advertising Standards Authority.”
Two banners on the Rochdale Road side of the building state that the council “delivers 700 essential services for just £2.56 per day.” However, i-Royton believes the true figure is closer to £13 per day.
The difference is because, in calculating the £2.56 figure, the council has only used the money it receives in council tax. That actually amounts to less than 20% of the council’s total income, which is largely drawn from various government grants. Yet the banners claim that services such as schools, which are centrally funded, are among the “700 essential services” it delivers for “just £2.56 per day.”
Responding to the article on i-Royton, Oldham Council’s Chief Executive Charlie Parker said the banners were intended to improve communication with the public, adding: “As the banner states it is the link between the council tax that people pay locally and the services they receive locally that the public have asked us to make clear therefore it would be inappropriate to use our total budget figure.”
You can read plenty more in the piece on i-Royton here. The site has now started doing news articles to go along with the existing discussion forum, and it’s well worth looking at.
The banners themselves cost £3,683, while another banner on the west side of the Civic Centre cost £3,400. Those figures were revealed following a question at a recent council meeting, and council leader Cllr Howard Sykes said then: “This is just one element of our response to previous criticism of the council that we don’t keep residents informed as to what we are doing.”
Read more from Saddleworth News here.
Author: Jude Gidney - Editor
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How disingenuous can you get? Spending over seven grand on a couple of posters with misleading statistics intended to boost their own ego, is most definitely NOT what is required to ‘keep people informed’. Parker’s comment is quite simply beyond the pale; did he dream that one up for himelf, I wonder? Or was the well-thumbed ‘Book of banal excuses for public consumption’ used once again.
To be honest, I’m so disillusioned with OMBC over such issues as the Crompton Moor fiasco and the removal of Shaw’s rail link to the outside world, that the only thing I would wish to hear in relation to what Cllr Sykes and Mr. Parker are ‘doing’ would be news of their immediate departure.