News

Dear Editor,

I can't say I've had much of a problem spending money and I'm certain that many of you reading this are in the same position as me, so how is it the Hawkinge Partnership with a £330,000 budget for last year failed to spend their allocation to 'improve' the village.

Maybe the village doesn't need much improvement and I was correct with my assumption that John Prescott's Pathfinder scheme initiatives were a good thing in areas of deprivation but not in an up and coming area like Hawkinge.

Anyway that's in the past and I'm sure the bureaucrats would be a able to shoot me down in flames with pages of statistics showing how high the crime rate was, and the numbers of families living on benefits before the Partnership got to work.

But my point all emanates from the high quality glossy Partnership News which dropped through my equally glossy letterbox this week.

According to their figures, they had a budget of £330,000 for 2006/2007.

They managed to spend a total of £307,922. Not bad you may say until you realise that a mere £118,400 was spent directly on the village and £189,521 was spent on running the office, training, services provided by Shepway Council and more which is all lumped under 'support' costs.

On the figures published I calculated that for every £1000 spent on the village it costs £1600 to spend it.

They should come and speak to some of the villagers who I'm sure would be able to show them an easier and cheaper way of spending money.

J Cullen