Eric Pickles defied by Conservative Kent council

"Kent County Council pays Katherine Kerswell, its group managing director, £197,000, while five directors below her earn more than than £150,000. One interim director is said to be earning £1,100 a day. This is despite calls by Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, for any chief executive on that level to take a 10 per cent pay cut, and for other staff to maintain salaries below the £142,500 earned by the Prime Minister."

Tax Freedom Day

Today is Tax Freedom Day – the first day of the calendar year that Britons stop working for the state and start working for themselves. This year, we've worked for a full 5 months this year to pay their taxes, with every penny earned in the UK between January 1 and May 29 taken by the taxman to support government expenditure.

· Britons have worked 149 days to pay their taxes in 2011 – three days longer than in 2010.

· Regional figures reveal that Londoners have to work the longest to pay off their income tax burden (51days) whilst the Welsh spend the least time paying their income tax (35days)

· UK income taxpayers would have to work for almost a year and a half with all their money going to the government to pay off our national debt.

This means that Tax Freedom Day, the day when people stop working for the government and start making cash for themselves, will come on May 30 in 2011 – 3 days later than in 2010. The main reason for this is that the government has raised VAT, in order to help reduce the UK’s record budget deficit.

New calculations by the ASI also reveal the worrying extent of the UK’s debt. Our burden of debt is so great that UK income taxpayers would need to work for nearly a year and a half (525 days) - with their entire wage packet going to the government, and not a penny being spent on public services – to pay off the national debt.

KCC being economical with the actualité rather than tax payers money

A £200,000 windfall payment to Kent County Council’s former chief executive actually cost the taxpayer twice as much as originally stated.

Peter Gilroy was given the six-figure sum after agreeing to extend his contract for a year.

It was designed to ensure that his pension was not affected by his decision to stay on.

Now KCC’s auditors have disclosed that agreeing to pay Mr Gilroy actually cost £408,000, taking into account relevant National Insurance and income tax contributions.

The revelation comes in a formal report by the Audit Commission that makes a number of criticisms of the authority over a series of six-figure severance payouts to top officers.

The Auditors have been  critical of how the county council negotiated the settlements, saying it failed to properly set out why they were considered value for money.

In the case of Mr Gilroy, who was paid £214,000 last year, the report says councillors were given too little information to allow them to make an informed decision about the proposed payout.

It criticises the council over its failure to assess whether the agreement with the chief executive was value for money, saying no alternatives were explored.

It also says the finance director was not told.

Reasons to vote Green

Disgraceful KCC Child Protection Failure

Kent County Council leader Paul Carter has admitted being unaware of how poorly run the authority’s child protection service is.

Last week County Hall’s most senior politician was forced to issue an apology after a damning Ofsted report rated the safeguarding and looked-after children services at KCC as "inadequate".

Areas of concern raised after a two-week inspection last month include the management and supervision of services, low educational attainment of looked-after children, high number of cases not receiving quality assessments, and social workers with high case loads.

 Cllr Carter admitted he only now appreciated the full scale of the problem."We’ve got some poor management, which the report highlights," he said. So it will be interesting to see what action will be taken over this "poor management" bonuses all round?

"The service is under pressure, but  the report highlights issues that are more severe than I  have been aware of."We’ve got to make sure members of staff are appropriately managed and tasked because there’s an element of people being overwhelmed here."

This from a council that wants to spend our money funding and running commercial businesses, that has bid and won the rights to the new Local Enterprise Partnership scheme.  Yet they can't successfully organise and manage their core services. When will KCC let go of their vanity empire building and focus their time and resources and our money on core services.

Oh by the way it's also snowing again, please let's see if we can avoid a similar fiasco as we had when it snowed last time.

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