This is Sussex: Crawley Borough Councillor Jennifer Millar-Smith received £1,100 for attending 1 meeting
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Robert Oxley, campaign manager for the TaxPayers’ Alliance, has labelled the payment “over-generous”.
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Mr Oxley said that such payments were over-the-top at a time when councils are making cuts and savings.
He added: “Allowances for chairing committees are meant to cover the extra costs incurred by a councillor taking on additional responsibilities.
“They shouldn’t be treated as an easy way to top up a local politician’s income.
“Councillors should look at cutting poorly administered allowances when there is little justification for their continued payment.”
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This is Derbyshire: £200,000 cost of payouts for Derbyshire pupils hurt at school
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The figures have been criticised by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which says that compensation costs paid out of the public purse should be kept low. Robert Oxley, campaign manager, said: “We’ve seen high compensation claims too often.”
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Mail Online: Council criticised for wasting money on trip for housing tenants to see MUPPETS film
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The TaxPayers’ Alliance blasted the Muppet idea. Robert Oxley, their campaign manager, said: ‘If councillors are really worried about hard pressed families then they should stop wasting taxpayers’ money on gimmicks like council funded days out.
‘Residents who have issues with council housing should be able to get straighforward advice without the need for free cinema tickets.’
Mail Online: We want more! £500 ‘bribe’ given to Tube workers not to strike during Olympics isn’t enough, says union
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Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, added: ‘The Olympics has cost enough without the threat of Tube drivers holding the capital and the Games to ransom.’
The Mirror: Ex-pat pensioners cost NHS £1.6m a day
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But the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “That can’t be the whole story and the NHS needs to do more to recover the costs of treatment given to those who don’t live in the UK to help to close this gap.”
Yorkshire Post: Lifetime tax bill for average family raeches £650,000
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The average family pays over £650,000 in tax over their lifetime, according to new research from the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The startling sum, which is based on an average annual household income of £36,372, has been revealed ahead of tomorrow’s tax self-assessment deadline.
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BBC News Online: Row over Lincolnshire pupils’ £22,000-a-year taxi fares
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Emma Boon, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “This is a huge amount of money to spend transporting just a handful of students.
“Relying long term on taxis to cover a 100-mile-a-day journey doesn’t represent value for taxpayers’ money.
“The distances involved in rural commutes can make things more expensive but the council needs to find ways of bringing these costs down.”
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Daily Express: More RBS bosses in line for million-plus bonuses
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Matthew Elliott, of campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The priority for RBS should be getting money back to taxpayers as soon as possible, not handing out million-pound bonuses.”
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Daily Telegraph: The obscene profligacy of the British government and the EU – with your money. By TPA Campaign Director Emma Boon
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Here at TaxPayers’ Alliance, we investigate the waste of taxpayers’ money. Every day there are reports of profligacy from across the public sector in Britain and stories of EU largesse in Brussels.
The scale of the problem is enormous. The European Central Bank estimated that Britain could cut public spending by 16 per cent and get the same results if our public sector were as efficient as the best managed in the developed world. A few years ago, when the last Bumper Book of Government Waste was released, that was worth about £94 billion, and spending has risen since. Individual projects like the proposed new high speed rail line, which will cost well over £1,000 for every family in Britain but only benefit a fortunate minority, are such a massive waste of money that they can make some of the silly little projects dreamed up by councils and quangos and hitting the headlines almost daily seem like a distraction.
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Mail Online: Matthew Elliott’s blog – Spending cuts at the Ministry of Justice
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George Osborne has set his Cabinet colleagues some pretty tough spending reduction targets. There’s an argument to be made that they should go further, but there is no denying that, historically speaking, they are pretty tough.
Unfortunately, some departments are better at cutting spending than others. Ken Clarke’s Ministry of Justice hasn’t emerged from this process with flying colours, which is surprising since he was an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1990s. The MoJ has failed to have its accounts approved by the National Audit Office three years running, it has allowed spending on criminal legal aid to jump by 9% in a year and it has failed to collect £1.5 billion in fines owed by criminals.
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Peterborough Today: Council’s mobile parking enforcement car serves over 1,400 tickets in three months
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A TaxPayers’ Alliance spokeswoman said: “With this Smart car raking in so much cash in fines some taxpayers will suspect this is more about raising revenue than road safety.
“Of course motorists should drive and park responsibly but in many other cities they do so without the threat of fines from roving enforcement cars.”
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Sunday Sun: Litter droppers forced to pay up on fines
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Hitting out at the changes, which are due to come into effect in March, Emma Boon of campaigning group the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Axing weekly collections will make it even harder for households to cope with everyday waste. Weekly collections are one of the basic services residents expect for the council tax bills they pay.
“It’s particularly galling for taxpayers to see rubbish collections reduced, only to be faced with fines if they can’t cope with the reduced service.”
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This is Derbyshire: Row over £300,000 bill to dredge canal
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The council’s opposition Labour party has been joined by the Taxpayers’ Alliance in criticising the amount set to be spent.
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Robert Oxley, campaign manager for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said the council could “not afford to spend money on unproven projects which would not provide value for taxpayers’ money in the foreseeable future”.
He added: “£300,000 seems an excessive amount to spend when it means the money cannot be spent on other infrastructure.”
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This is Derbyshrie: This eye-wateringly expensive high-speed rail link will be a huge white elephant and saddle us all with debt
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According to the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), this railway will cost us £45 billion – more than £1,700 per household.
We are not against high-speed rail but putting all this into a single line that will be used by a relatively small number of mainly wealthy people is the wrong priority and will saddle the country with yet more debt.
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Daily Express: Bank in £1m bonus scandal has cost every family £500
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TaxPayers’ Alliance director Matthew Sinclair said that if the RBS share price had not plunged from around 43p to 27p over the last 12 months, the public’s stake in it would now be worth around £38billion instead of £24billion.
He said: “It means we are down £14billion, or around £500 for every family in Britain.”
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This is Leicestershire: The Lord Mayor, the allegations and the confidential report
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Emma Boon, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, put it neatly in last Saturday’s paper when she said: “Transparency is a vital principle to defend as part of our democracy, and investigations by standards officers should not be accorded this blanket protection.
“Taxpayers cannot hold their council to account if there is no transparency.”
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Daily Express: Ban on compo for criminals
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Robert Oxley, campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s high time that those convicted of serious offences bore the financial costs of their actions.
“The message has to be clear that whether outside or stuck behind bars, crime doesn’t pay.”
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