Warrington Borough Council Avis 

I feel let down consistently with the way the council spend our money. We are not given timely access to financial audits. Won't give us information on commercial enterprise and generally lack openness about finance.

A council that runs a “do as I say, not as I do policy.”
Refuses to answer FOI requests and treats the townspeople as a lesser entity.
Destroying the green belt and making “investments” and not asking the electorate if that’s acceptable is their forte.

Basket Case

Been a resident Warrington for well over 25 years a homeowner and a council tax payer and I have been appalled at how badly run this town is.

However under the current Leadership Things have taken a nose dive.

The vain Leadership has got itself involved with some very strange characters and given them nearly a quarter of £1 billion of money that has been borrowed from central government.

A town of only 220,000 people now has a debt of £1.6 billion which is a massive increase on where it was just a few years ago but were still they are predicting it will rise to £2.3 billion very shortly.

There is absolutely no way this town will be able to pay this back in several generations of council tax payers and we have nothing to show from it.

We have bought shares in Redwood holdings A shareholder in Redwood bank from the former Conservative party chairman and Conservative party donor.
The claims of the value of the shares has been rejected by the councils own auditors Grant Thornton who as a result of refused to sign off the 2017 accounts for the council.

There have been some large white elephant projects like Warrington West Station and the new council offices totalling some £150 million.

We have invested in retail property just as the smart money is getting out.

We’ve bought a 50% stake in the failed together Energy Company and bought out the failed Bristol energy company to augment it. That has just returned a loss of £4 million.

People like my group in the stop the Warrington Council debt group I’ve been asking questions about what’s going on and we’ve had retired accountant who know what they’re talking about ask for specific information and been refused even on the freedom of information requests so the commissioner is looking into it at the moment.

Expenditure has got out of control the council tax is up nearly 5% and we are still facing deficits and cutbacks.

Many people believe that should now be a public inquiry a government investigation and the council be put into special measures and have a government commission at running the town.

Every single one of the Nolan principles has been broken not only by the counsellors but by the very partisan staff particular the chief executive officer who has given up on any respect for the public.

Urgently need government action before this debt which is out of hand tips the town into bankruptcy.

With huge debts and a worrying lack of transparency, we are left with constant council tax increases while money is loaned out and invested. Some of the investments are performing poorly, but no-one knows exactly what the situation is as the accounts aren’t audited and information isn’t forthcoming. Then to top it all off they want to destroy the greenbelt while pretending to declare a climate emergency. All while the town centre falls into disrepair around the expensive new cinema and council offices. The new offices which they can’t even even tell us how much they cost to build!

As a result, we are left paying more, for less.

Absolutely awful - this is a council who loans out our hard earned money to dodgy firms.

This money should be going into job creation schemes and services for local people.

The council doesn't care about preserving our countryside and will give developers the free for all despite local objections, excess traffic and air quality issues.

Too busy loaning other people’s money to billionaires ( and lots of other very shady monetary deals) to actually do any work.
We are currently £1.6 BILLION in the RED,soon to be well over £2.0 BILLION.
Cannot get anything done as most council staff working from home, er, why??

Poorly designed bus lanes (expertly designed to make money , close to £1million in 15months) roads switch to bus only lanes halfway through leaving you no escape. If traveling to Gulliver's world theme park, plan your journey to avoid Warrington. Taking advantage of tourists not familiar with a poor adaption of existing roads, using nav or maps . Unless your local and know the system I suspect alot of people innocently get lost and get fined.

Bins in all local parks and public places around the Warrington area always over flowing, not emptied and nothing ever gets done about it. It stinks and it's unsightly, a shame to have to take children to outdoor places like this.

From week to week and month to month it's always the same, the service of emptying them needs to be done more regularly.

Date: April 2021.

Wish I could attach pictures to this review. I will email them to WBC, theirs plenty of examples.