Cornwall councillors to be asked to spend their rise on Helston toilets
HELSTON town councillors are looking at asking the town's three Cornwall councillors to forego their rise in allowances to help pay to keep public toilets open in the town.
The council is looking at four options as it strives to save two of the town's three sets of public loos.
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Andrew Wallis
One of these options is to ask Cornwall councillors Alec Robertson, Andrew Wallis and Judith Haycock to give up their £2,000-plus rise in allowances, agreed by the unitary authority last week, if they are re-elected in May.
Other options include asking the private sector to take over the toilets, a shared scheme with other local councils or sponsorship.
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Cornwall Council is divesting itself of many non-statutory responsibilities such as public toilets in the face of government funding cuts and asking parishes and towns to take them on.
It looks likely toilets in Trengrouse Way will have to close, but at a special meeting on Thursday the town council agreed in principle to retain those at the monument and the Guildhall.
Now members are looking at the best way to finance and run them, declaring it to be essential that the service should be maintained.
Cornwall Council has advised them that only a grant of £9,279 a year would be available, probably only enough to keep one set of toilets open.
As a result, town councillors came up with their four options.
Keith Reynolds, chairman of the council's policy, resources and finance committee, said: "We will now be moving forward to obtain running costs."
Cornwall councillors' basic allowance will rise from £12,500 to £14,600 a year under the terms of the agreement reached last week.
Comments
by newlyncopper
Wednesday, November 07 2012, 10:54PM
“Perhaps the money currently being spent on the so far "indetectable" town center managers office revamp could have bought mops , buckets and bog rolls for the councillors to manage a toilet block each !!”
by newlyncopper
Wednesday, November 07 2012, 10:49PM
“why do we have three councillors in a small remote market town , its no wonder we cannot afford the basic stuff .
1 town = 1 councillor”
by MarcusAurelus
Wednesday, November 07 2012, 7:14PM
“This fallus kranium should not be allowed to represent anyone, as he has been shown up as only interesting in getting money for himself, and not in helping the town he is supposed to represent.
I agrree with everything written, he is just plain greedy and is a scruffy bully”
by RNASDutch
Wednesday, November 07 2012, 12:45PM
“I have been following local politics in Helston since I was seconded nearly three years ago.
I have to say the breath taking arrogance of Councillor Wallace is the most arrogant I have ever seen in these three years.
Helston desperately needs to keep all three toilets open, the Town Council is doing is absolute best with limited resources. Town Councillors get paid absolutely nothing to do their best for the Town.
And yet this deluded Councillor, in another paper, ways he will not give an answer as to whether he is giving up his outrageous allowance increase until after he is elected.
Presumably his election leaflet will be entirely blank, just saying "Vote for Me, I know best".
I think the increase is totally unjustified anyway, and in the current economic climate totally unacceptable. It also plain wrong that they vote to increase their own money, when the tax payers have to fund it.
Councillor Wallace is being totally castigated in all the social media he professes to be such an expert on. I was going to say another similar sounding word, which should happen to him after this arrogance, but did not wish to upset his Uganda relations with CC.
I totally agree with kernewekonan, this is nothing more than downright greed . Shame on them”
by kernewekonan
Wednesday, November 07 2012, 10:39AM
“there should be no rise in the first place. this is nothing more than downright greed when most people are struggling to survive as cost are rising and incomes are falling. the cornish spirit of one and all seems to be absent with these people, shame on them.”
by helston90
Tuesday, November 06 2012, 8:44PM
“The total cost of the raises was £260k, the amount taken out of the Public Convenience budget is £1.5million- so it's a start but more radical things need to take place (closures and devolution)
Some councillors do not have public conveniences on their patch so why should they take a pay cut as well?”
by Thelonius2
Tuesday, November 06 2012, 2:54PM
“Asking Councillors to give up their increased allowances is one thing, but this is disgraceful and closure of public toilets should never be an issue.
Surely the toilets can be maintained through money from Council Tax, Car Parks and kept clean by offenders doing Community Service.”
by cheekyman_jr
Tuesday, November 06 2012, 9:11AM
“Just to paraphrase
"Give us your money or your political opponents will be allowed to use you getting a pay rise against you, whilst being able to take the full wage when they get into "power" because of it"
Is that what we're being told here?”
by roger_angove
Tuesday, November 06 2012, 9:06AM
“".... give up their £2,000-plus rise in allowances, agreed by the unitary authority last week, if they are re-elected in May."
That's a very big 'if', particularly for Robertson who has shown himself up as an incompetent waster who had to be removed by his own colleagues as an electoral liability.
Perhaps Helston council should privatise their toilet cleaning operations. There are a number of Cornwall Councillors who would be just about qualified for the job.”