Tameside, in Greater Manchester, has been a
one-party state and Labour controlled since 1979 - some forty-five years. In
that period, the council has veered from one calamitous scandal after another.
The Manchester Evening News once dubbed Tameside Council the "Laughing Stock Council." It
has also been called the "Lambeth of
the North."
In the 1990s, we had the scandal of Tameside Enterprises Development Ltd (T.E.D.L.) which led to jobs for the boys and bills for the taxpayer. T.E.D.L. went bust in 1993 having incurred debts of over £2 million. It also led to a police fraud investigation. The council had transferred its 12 elderly people's home to T.E.D L. as well as its employees. When the company secretary of T.E.D.L. - whose wife was a Tameside Labour councillor - was asked why the company had run into financial problems, he said that elderly residents in the homes hadn't been dying fast enough. The company's financial secretary - who was also a Tameside Labour councillor - was also found to have had no financial qualifications even though he'd been given a reference for the job, by the then Labour council leader, Roy Oldham, an Ashton freemason.
We've seen the scandal of Russell Scott school in Denton where TMBC paid Carillion £2.7m to refurbish the school that finished up being unusable and unfit for the school children. The building was structurally unsafe, the playing fields were water logged and the school class rooms were flooded with sewage. They're now talking of having to rebuild the school. The governors of the school claimed that Carillion owed the school £100,000 for energy costs.
Carillion was the councils 'preferred developer' and was given contracts to provide school meals in the borough and to run the council's estate and management services. When the council transferred its estate and management services to Carillion in 2011, the public were told by councillor David Sweeton, the executive cabinet member for business and community development, that it would protect jobs and services and cut costs. Carillion was also given the contract to build the £48 million Tameside One building in Ashton town centre. The school meals contract that Tameside Council negotiated with Carillion came in at 26 pence per unit more than the central government gave to schools to provide them. This left schools in Tameside having to dip into their own budgets to make up the difference at a cost of over a million pounds a year. It was reported that the council officer who negotiated the school meals contract finished up taking a job with Carillion. When Carillion collapsed in January 2018, leaving the building unfinished, the council had to bring in the contractor Robertson Construction Group which required an additional £9.4 million investment. Tameside Council have spent over £13 million on fixing defects in buildings worked on by Carillion, including 24 schools.
The national Labour Party and have now taken over control of Tameside Council and its Labour group and have appointed a new Labour leader for the council. For too many years, Tameside Council has resembled a family affair with husbands and wives on the council, brother and sisters, and mother's and sons. The Labour council has been politically incestuous and incompetent! They need to clean up their act. The new Labour leader of Tameside Council, councillor Eleanor Wills (see above photo), who was recently sacked as an executive cabinet member of the council after a scathing report by a government commissioner into Tameside Children's Services - which were rated 'inadequate' - is one of three members of the Ballagher family to have been Tameside Labour councillors. Both her mother and father were Tameside Labour councillors. You might say that being a Tameside Labour councillor runs in her family, as it does, with many other Tameside Labour councillors.
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It is quite evident to me that this appointment is what the three Tameside MP's will have wanted. A pawn in their game. I suspect that they will be able to exercise control over the local political direction, to make sure that it is compliant with the national narrative. EW is one of my ward councillors and when I was in the LP, she would be in attendance at the ward meetings. Never once did I feel she had any strong political direction nor did she ever articulate any meaningful ideas about giving the LA any different profile or a set of strategic priorities. On many occasions I advocated policies that would provide the LA with a real identity, a democrats foundation and a coherent approach to elevating the economic prospects of the people of Tameside. I was invariably confronted with protestations that the local political leadership would not listen to the ward councillors. I was incredulous that EW and her colleagues' merely accepted their position.
I have worked in the NFP sector now for thirty years. So I am only too well aware of the many qualities required to sustain an organization and to keep it relevant to those whom it is serving. I am referring to being able to anticipate change, to evolve policies to meet the new challenges and to coordinate responses through establishing appropriate alliances to meet demand. Can I conceive of strong, thoughtful, decisive leadership from EW? No!!!!!!!!!!!
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