No doubt East Cambs £50k spend on leisure grant bid will be on consultants when council has many capable employees

An East Cambridgeshire District Council employee and a single councillor have decided that £50,000 of our money should be spent on a grant application without, it seems, needing to get approval from other councillors.

Is this the way other large sums are being spent?

The money will be spent on an application for grant funding for the proposed new leisure centre in Ely - so it will be used to produce a series of reports.

I assume this means that, once again, consultants are to be employed, when we have a number of highly paid employees sitting in The Grange who should be capable of doing this work, by using information readily available on the internet? This is what the young graduates employed by the consultants will do.

The comment that the sum spent will be “no more than £50,000” and was available as a result of a ‘projected underspend’ shows that there is spare money available which could be used for community schemes rather than on a project which very few of the district taxpayers want.

If the council is always going to pay large sums to consultants, do we really need to pay for a large number of employees who, it seems, are unable to undertake tasks which are required for council business?

PHILIP GOULD

Dovehouse Close

Ely

Via e-mail