Wrexham Council Loans Over Locals Scandals

[Matt]

Wrexham Council would rather loan out £11m in total of OUR MONEY during times of austerity to prop up other councils (to get a paltry <1% interest return – that’s below inflation) than actually use this money to keep vital services running and prevent vicious cuts in our home town.

If this article makes any sense loaning out £4.5m in public ratepayers money in the 2017/18 is absolutely astonishing when you look at the patter that was wheeled out in the 2017/18 difficult decisions consultation.

Mystery over claims Wrexham Council loan £11m to ‘prop up’ other authorities

Table says
Wrexham – 2017/18 – £4.5m

Now, read what was said in the 2017/18 difficult decisions consultation about justifying cuts.
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/consultations/budget/2017-18/difficult_decisions_2017-18.pdf

In Wrexham our medium term financial plan indicates a shortfall of £7.8 million for 2017/18, however by not passing on the cost of general inflation to services, we can reduce this shortfall, and therefore we are aiming to identify approximately £5 million worth of savings over the next year.

So if there was £4.5m available to loan out how can that possibly be justifiable when there was £5m of cuts needed in Wrexham. Surely that £4.5m should have been plugged in locally and only £0.5m of cuts then needed. I know it’s not as simple as that as some money might be needed for a rainy day (but then what if the loans were defaulted on and that money was lost entirely).

It’s completely baffling and the executive board including the head of the council have some serious explaining to do. It’s very hard to swallow that this money was used to provide funds for services in other councils when lots of people have had to go without in Wrexham and have had a worse off situation due to these public cuts. In fact local council jobs have been cut as a result of this austerity, insufficient teachers and school staff have been hired due to this austerity. Meanwhile there was a pot of money there to help PROP UP our own town.

The only way I can get my head round the situation would be a bit like loaning out your mates some money to go for a night out drinking only to then not be able to buy your kids clothes or put sufficient food on the table.

[Matt]

Clr Marc Jones has shed some light on the situation:

I hope it's explained clearly by the ruling group @wrexhamcbc that these are v v short-term loans in both directions (daily in some cases) and are at vastly preferable rates to the banks.

— marc jones (@marcvjones) December 17, 2018

[DerekJackson]

The issue should be about the level of interest rates that are paid – the money would surly be part of the Councils reserves which they legitimately have to hold.
If as Cllr Marc Jones has indicated these should be very short term loans (possibly daily) then the interest rates would be a lot higher on the commercial loan market.
Interest rates are low but this does not seem to fit within the commercial markets rates that could be available

[wrexview]

Looks like this form of short term loan generates income. How much additional income has Wrexham Council received in the last five years? The figure should be public knowledge in the annual accounts ?

[Author]

Posts