Letter: Is This A Sound Financial Way To Proceed?

Published on: 13 Feb, 2018
Updated on: 13 Feb, 2018

From Bernard Parke

According to a recent national press report, there are to be curbs on councils to stop multi-million-pound gambles.

It is reported that councils are using cheap cash to stake multimillion pound bets on the commercial property market.

Apparently they are under a new obligation to ensure that relatively amateurs are not staking huge bets as they chase financial returns to replace lost revenue; revenue lost through government cuts in the rate support grants

The report also goes on to say that one local Surrey authority spent £422 million alone in this way and another invested the sum of £10,600 for every household in its district,

One has, of course, every sympathy for such elected bodies who have been placed in such positions due to the continuous policy of this government reducing central funding.

One also has every sympathy for their apparent wish to lessen the intolerable burden forced on to their hard-pressed council taxpayers. But is this a sound way forward?

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