Quote Originally Posted by The Bedlington Terrier View Post
Birmingham Council have been subjected to 50% cuts like every other Metropolitan Council because of the Tory austerity policy founded by Cameron and Osborne.

The senior Tories look after their chums and that's where the money goes...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56319927
If you want to know where the money has gone in Birmingham, check out the Equal Pay Claims scandal and the IT disaster.

"On Tuesday, it emerged that Europe’s largest local authority was forced to take the humiliating step of issuing a section 114 notice, meaning it has to halt all new spending immediately, with the exception of protecting vulnerable people and statutory services. The Labour-run council said it had been pushed over the edge by equal pay claims totalling £760 million, plus the £100 million cost of a botched IT scheme."

"The Section 114 notice issued by the city’s interim finance director Fiona Greenway starkly sets out what has gone so horribly wrong. Top of the list is that the council is on the hook for what will likely turn out to be a billion pounds in equal pay claims, owed to thousands of its own workforce who have been victims of discriminatory pay practices over recent years. Just last month I exposed how the city’s management had been allowing its bin collection crews – nearly all men – to work to a ‘task and finish’ regime since the pandemic, with many knocking off hours early as a result. If there was a textbook example of a practice likely to trigger an equal pay claim, this was it.

It was subsequently discovered that the council accounts signed off in 2020, 2021 and 2022 were flawed, with no accounting for the equal pay situation and liabilities.

It’s not the only manmade disaster to afflict the council. A £20 million new IT, finance and HR system designed to ‘save money’ has been so poorly implemented by the council that it is going to cost an eyewatering £100 million to put right. And rising demand for costly adult care and children’s services, the housing crisis and inflation meant that the council already faced an £87 million end of year shortfall."

A financial disaster of epic proportions, and not a Tory in sight.