As you may have read today – or heard our Campaign Director Mark Wallace discussing on the radio – each Regional Development Agency has cost British households £600 since 1999. Despite taking more and more from the taxpayer and yielding less and less – local economies grew and employed more in the years before RDAs – the political class are coming out in favour of these wasteful bodies.
This is a rolling blog of councillors and bureaucrats who have defended the waste and their contact details so you, as taxpayers, can hold them directly to account and ask them why they support the shameful policy of burning your money on these unaccountable, undemocratic, wasteful quangos.
Councillor Malcolm Buckley, Leader of Basildon Council
“I understand where the Alliance is coming from, but in this instance we would have to say they have supported us in bids for resources for town centre regeneration and the sporting village and are helping us to achieve what we want.”
From the Essex Echo today.
So why then did Cllr Buckley increase Basildon's Council Tax by 4.5% this year? Contact Cllr Buckley at [email protected]
Pam Alexander, Chief Executive of the South East of England Development Agency
“This report contains information that is largely out of date, inaccurate and taken out of context."
From the Brighton Argus.
Yet Ms Alexander doesn't quote any statistics to prove that RDAs have increased rates of employment...You can contact her at [email protected] and tell her why a 4% cut in small business coproration tax would help business more than the wasteful RDAs.