East Dulwich Lib Dem Councillor backs undeserved bonuses

Regular readers will be aware that Southwark Lib Dems are proposing to pay massive bonuses to the most senior council officers despite Southwark recently being rated the worst council in inner London. The Lib Dems seem happy to reward failure and are not holding senior officers to account. To put things in context, 17 council officers in Southwark are already earning more than £100,000 per year.

When local residents complained that it was wrong for the Lib Dems to pay lump sums to council bosses when services were failing, the response from our local Lib Dems was, apparently, ‘so what?’!!

Posting online, East Dulwich Lib Dem Councillor James Barber, refused to accept that those of us watching our pennies and keen to know that our council tax is being well spent, might be annoyed about this. He defended the policy by simply saying:-

“As for bonuses, so very senior managers have performance management pay, and some have delivered larger back office savings than expected.”

So that’s fine then. Worst council in inner London, 6th worst recycling rate in the country, £700 million hole in the decent homes budget, primary school admissions in a mess – here you go guys and gals, have a bonus!

This just won’t do. It’s time East Dulwich and Peckham Rye Lib Dems listened to local people and recognised the anger that is out there about the way they are running the council. Paying council bosses bonuses is exactly the wrong message to be sending out when services are being run so poorly.

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