Eric Pickles slams Conservative councils for wasting money

What else can one make of this? Eric Pickles has been in the media today calling for pay cuts for the most highly paid local council chief executives. But what’s this at the foot of the report about Eric Pickles and his proposals in The Times? It’s a list of the eight highest paid local council chief executives.

I think you can guess what might be coming next …

Yes indeed, let’s look at who runs these councils:

Bexley (Conservative)
Ealing (Conservative)
Hertfordshire (Conservative)
Kensington & Chelsea (Conservative)
Kingston upon Hull (Lib Dem)
Newham (Labour)
Suffolk County Council (Conservative)
Surrey County Council (Conservative)

Yup, that would be six out of eight of the top paying councils are Conservative-run. So in other words, much of what Eric Pickles is saying really amounts to, ‘look what an awful job so many Conservative councillors are doing wasting our money’.

Footnote: Eric Pickles, the Conservative MP for Brentwood and Ongar and Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has a habit of attacking his own party’s record in local government, as with his dispute with Paul Bettison over waste collection policies.