Conservatives plough more cash into troubled Banking On Essex project

11.17.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 1st Sep 2009

Cllr David Kendall

Essex taxpayers are being asked to cough up another £200,000 to fund 'research' into the Conservative county council's Banking on Essex project, despite significant sums of money and hundreds of hours of council staff time already invested in the scheme.

Speaking about the decision, Cllr David Kendall, Liberal Democrat spokesman said: "Only a couple of weeks ago my group raised concerns about the council's about turn on lending criteria after only a few weeks of the start of the project. We were told that this was on advice from Santander, the bank operating the project. Why the council had not checked appropriate lending criteria with Santander before launching the project remains a mystery.

"The increasingly haphazard fashion in which this project is being managed, accompanied by increasingly significant amounts of taxpayers' money being ploughed into it, is starting to ring alarm bells."

The Liberal Democrats have called in this decision which will be discussed at the council's scrutiny meeting later in September.