Cheshire East needs to improve – and fast!

ilovemacc has highlighted the shortfall in finances and poor governance of Cheshire East on many occasions.

Now, the government has expressed its own concerns – telling Cheshire East it must address its concerns over financial sustainability and governance – and improve at a much faster rate.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) issued the council with a best value notice – which is a formal notification that the MHCLG has concerns regarding the council. The notice requests that Cheshire East engages with the department to provide assurance of improvement.

The notice expresses the governments significant concerns about the council’s financial sustainability, medium-term financial strategy and its leadership capacity, governance, scrutiny and culture.

Full notice can be found HERE.

Cheshire East has been pushing its devolution agenda, telling us that joining forces with Cheshire West and Warrington will make all its (that is, our) problems go away and will even lead to a sort of Cheshire Utopia – but it’s not going to happen.

Cheshire East are in debt to the tune of £100 million, Cheshire West £156 million and Warrington a staggering £2 billion. That’s a combined total debt of £2,256,000,000!

“Once in a generation opportunity” – lol!

In a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy Cheshire East is cutting services left, right and centre, closing waste recycling tips, reducing library opening hours, increasing car parking charges, extending car parking charge hours and even selling off some of the car parks.

Devolution from government and joining forces with two other incompetent councils cannot possibly achieve anything, except increase the already high level of bureaucracy (with the resulting higher costs) – and providing someone else to blame when the whole shebang goes bankrupt.