Tuesday 31 July 2012

A sniff of a scandal as Stephen Lloyd’s Lib-Dems descend into dogfight over their plans to do away with popular Dog Warden


The husband of a Lib-Dem Councillor has caused a stir at The Town Hall by distributing a newsletter to members claiming that Eastbourne is to lose its Dog Warden. The leaflet points out, quite correctly, what a good job the Dog Warden does across the Town and calls on Councillors to ‘Stop the cut and keep our dog welfare officer’.  This bizarre development follows recent concern expressed by Conservatives over the findings of a staff survey conducted by Eastbourne Borough Council which identified low staff morale and allegations of bullying.

Leader of the Conservative Opposition, Cllr David Elkin commented, “you can understand why such a high proportion of Council staff feel this way if you see popular and efficient officers thanked for their efforts with a redundancy notice.  I am also tempted to question what kind of an administration conducts policy debate in this way? You have the spouse of a member distributing these letters to other members, telling them what is going on, and then someone else removing these letters from the in trays of opposition members before they have had a chance to collect them !  It is both bonkers and dodgy in the extreme”

Shadow Cabinet Spokesman for Environment, Cllr Tom Liddiard also commented adding “we were disappointed, during the recent budget process, that  the Lib-Dem administration refused to back our proposal to double resources in this important area and provide sufficient to employ an extra dog warden. I will be calling for their crazy plans to leave us with no dog warden at all to be hastily abandoned”.
Following the leaflet having been distributed to Councillors, some having gone missing and my release of this release, things have gone very quiet. We understand that the popular dog warden concerned has been told not to talk to anyone about the situation. Rest assured that my colleagues and I have taken seriously the numerous expressions of concern we have received on the subject and will not relent in holding the Council to account.

Links:
The Council's current link to the Dog Warden information on the EBC Website (seems rather hypocritical given this news story):
http://www.eastbourne.gov.uk/environment/animal/children/meet-polar/

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