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COUNCIL ATTEMPTING TO 'CON THE PEOPLE FIRST' OVER STREET CLEANING

Dear Ed,

To the 'blaring of horns and the sounding of trumpets' Shepway District Council (SDC) are bringing street cleaning and grounds maintenance back 'in-house' according to a story you recently published.

Readers will no doubt recall it was to the same 'music' that the contract was awarded to Kent County Council, resulting in the transfer of staff under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) arrangements, and the redundancies were supposed to result in 'massive' savings to SDC with increases in efficiency.

Its not rocket science to work out that this 'arrangement' has not been as successful as they had hoped. Re. Recent street cleaning problems. I consider it to have been a failure, as anyone with any knowledge of the subject could have told them two years ago, because of the loss of direct control of the labour force.
 
Therefore SDC does not now have the staff with the knowledge of how to run and operate such services anymore, having now been dispersed.

So how much will this exercise cost?

I suspect that the press release from SDC is yet another example of this administration attempting to 'con the people first' and charge them later, as with the £1.8m wasted o­n refuse trucks and sports consultants.

Cllr. Colin Tearle