Council refuse to claim back £420,000 wrongly paid
Article published: Friday, February 5th 2010
Manchester City Council has overpaid a marketing agency by £420,000 – and declined to claim it back, with a Council executive member saying that to do so would be a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’.
The shocking revelation, made in Tuesday’s Manchester Evening News, detailed that payments were incorrectly made to Marketing Manchester due to an accounting error.
Funding for the regional marketing body was arranged on the basis of Manchester City Council paying 35 per cent of its revenue, with the remaining 65 per cent coming from the nine other councils which form the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA). However this was erroneously reversed with the result that the other councils were undercharged while Manchester was overcharged.
However, according to Jim Battle, deputy leader of the Labour-controlled Council, to try to claw the money back simply isn’t worth the time or effort. He was quoted as saying: “it would be bureaucratic nonsense to chase a few thousands pounds”. But while these pennies from heaven may be inconsequential to the Council, it has opened a polemic on the Council’s management of its finances, with one Liberal Democrat councillor labelling the decision “disgraceful”.
This is not the first time that Marketing Manchester has done well from a Council giveaway. Last year they were a partner in the Christmas period promotion of Manchester as a retail centre, to which the City Council kindly donated £600,000 of public money.
Whether the Council will display such beneficence to those defaulting on their Council Tax payments remains to be seen.
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Comments
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If it was a resident, they’d start bankruptcy proceedings: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8293794.stm
Comment by Sam on February 6, 2010 at 12:52 am
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