WESLEY Guild - "selling it for the community". That's one way of using words to hide the fact that Wigan Metro councillors need to sell-off community land to balance the local government budget.

Tom Sherratt, the deputy council leader insists that due to main stream government policy, the local government budget is starved of cash.

What Mr Sherratt fails to declare to the voting population of the community, is that for every member of the borough's population of the community, main stream government subsidises, in addition to the council tax collected: £860 per person.

Mr Sherratt's description of main stream government funding is that it is inadequate. The correct title of this so-called inadequate government funding is known as 'financial capping', ie. limiting the amount of money a council can spend and borrow.

Without the government imposing financial capping, local councils would be able to spend away with unlimited access to private and commercial money.

Mr Sherratt's letter then goes on to reveal to the people of the community that it has been common practise for the council to 'sell off' land that they regard as surplus, and that this practice has been taking place for at least five years - generating £50 million of capital for the borough.

To sum up, the people who reside in Wigan borough have been paying to the borough council for the last five years, the third highest council tax rates in Greater Manchester.

The council has also received five years of government funding and £50 million in land sales. In addition, the council has reduced its workforce by some 60 or more workers, but they still fail to meet the needs of the community, especially the needs of those people who live in towns outside the prefix title town of the borough.

Fifty million pounds seems a lot of money, but is not when placed into context with the council's own published figures showing a 'short fall' of £8.5 million in council tax for the year 1994-95.

If the known 'short fall' is calculated for the same five year period, then there would be a calculated 'short fall' of £42.5 million for the same period of time required to generate the £50 million in land sales.

Two conclusions can now be generated from these calculations.

1. The money generated by the selling off of the borough property was to hide the fact that due to council incompetence, they were unable to construct a scheme to collect all monies owing to them.

2. Due to council incompetence the sale of £50 million of land was only able to generate £7.50 million in 'real cash terms'. Good business sense? I don't think so.

Jarrod Gorse

Prestwich Street, Atherton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.