Council “Can’t Afford” Elections… But Spends £30k on Asylum Seeker Mental Health
A Labour council that cancelled its local election to cut costs spent £30,000 on an “asylum seeker mental health and trauma project”, the Telegraph reveals.
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council is one of 29 local authorities granted Government permission to halt its local election this year.
The cancellations have resulted in Sir Keir Starmer being accused of “running scared” of the electorate at a time when polls show a collapse in support for Labour.
Defending Blackburn’s decision to ask the Government for a postponement, Phil Riley, the council’s Labour leader, previously said the council would “rather the money went on delivering services people want than on an election which would have to be repeated just a year later and on different ward boundaries”.
“It costs around £200,000 to hold an election,” he added.
However, the same local authority spent £30,000 on commissioning a project that focused on the mental health of asylum seekers, the Telegraph can reveal.
A contract awarded in January 2024, when Riley and his party were in control, granted the sum to a university, noting that the council had “been a supporter of asylum and refugee communities for many years”.
Setting out the purpose of the project, the document read: “The aim of this commission is to develop a project focusing on trauma within the asylum community in Blackburn with Darwen.”
Richard Tice, Deputy Leader of Reform UK, claimed: “Local elections are being cancelled while council staff are funding mental-health projects for illegal migrants who have invaded our country. The British people are rightly furious.”
The Telegraph has launched a Campaign for Democracy, calling for elections to go ahead and for the scrapping of an obscure clause in the Local Government Act 2000, which allows polls to be delayed without a full vote in Parliament.
Yet while many council leaders have cited the costs associated with holding elections in their calls to postpone them, the Telegraph has found the same local authorities have spent far more on other services, schemes and projects.
Cheltenham Borough Council, another local authority where councillors will not face the polls this year, also blamed costs for its cancelled election.
While stressing that running the election would always be the Liberal Democrat-led council’s “preference”, leader Rowena Hay said the drain on resources because of “major under-funding of local government” had led her to the decision.
“We have to take a balanced and pragmatic view as to how we can continue to prioritise our residents and deliver the high-quality services they rightly expect,” she said in a statement earlier this month.
A spokesman for Cheltenham Borough Council said the decision to postpone its election was “the right one”.
However, just a few months ago, it was revealed that the local authority had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxpayer cash on gagging orders over two years, up to and including 2024-25.
These non-disclosure agreements, signed by the council, were reportedly linked to commercial information associated with the authority’s major development projects in the town, according to Gloucestershire Live.
A freedom of information response obtained by the news site last year revealed that £782,468 had been paid in association with 25 non-disclosure agreements signed by the council.
Elsewhere, Labour-controlled Crawley borough council spent £961,176 on a “solar carport project”, £250,000 of which came from the council’s own funds and not central government grants.
Worth reading in full.
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What about the mental health of the English people traumatised by the state-sponsored invasion and colonisation of our country?
The cost of elections should be ring-fenced and untouchable by incumbent councils, any attempt to do so should result in those involved being removed from “office” instantly and irrevocably.
I don’t recall this kind of anti-democratic activity ever occurring previously, like pre-2010, there may have been singular isolated ones.
The decision to postpone the election was “the right one” is another way of saying we are right because we say we are. Sounds like a familiar refrain from a public servant.
Cancelling elections should not be an option for any council, unless the nation is facing a serious (existential) national crisis.
We live a Democracy right, so they claim!
We’re a Constitutional Monarchy, but councils opting out of the “democratic” process should not be a possibility!
I live in Cheltenham and the local Lib-Dim controlled borough council (since time immemorial) has been a byword for corrupt practices for decades. They’re the worst sort of grifters and self-promoting, arrogant t**ts. But there is little chance of getting rid of them, as so many local residents have been ‘captured’ by the soft-left leaning narrative. Huge number of snivelling servants live here because of GCHQ.
£30K is peanuts compared with what changes hands at the Races; alright, not necessarily in sterling when the Gold Cup is on!
True ………… but the figure of £782,468 is the figure quoted for what the loons on Cheltenham Borough Council have spaffed up against the wall to draw up their anti-transparency NDAs. An outrageous sum of local council-tax payers money being WASTED. (30k was the Blackburn Council money wastage). Some might call it criminal.
Shhhhh!
I wonder how much money they will save. The staff will not be fired and the electoral register has to be maintained regardless.
Oh think of all the printing! All those poor trees saved by the brave decision.
Don’t worry. The money was not actually spent on Asylum seekers. It was spent on developing a project. Once the project is developed funding it will cost far more.
Our area has recently replaced sodium vapour (yellow) street lights with LED ones. Many of the new lights either do not work at all or have ‘split’ and shine predominantly blue light, or flicker on and off and intervals ranging from 2-30 sec. Yes, they save on maintenance – but only because they are not maintained.
I’m assured that the actual LED light units are more reliable than sodium vapour lamps but that it’s the separate electronic driver which is at fault… Sheesh!
How can it possibly cost an extra £200,000 on top of business as usual expenditure to hold an election? From what I have seen the staff and the polling stations and counting venues are all council owned so where is the incremental cost?
His argument against elections could apply equally to any and all elections forever more.
The Returning Officer apparently has to arrange to rent the premises for the polling stations. As you point out many of the polling stations are local authority owned so the rental is just moving money from one pocket to another with an extra thick layer of bureaucracy on top. Given that these bookings are made months in advance (it would be a shame to discover the venue already booked for that day) I very much doubt that cancelling them saves any money. Of course, the council could claim lost revenue if a previously firm booking for the hall is cancelled due to the vote not going ahead.
Indeed
Council staff are paid extra for manning the polling stations and maybe doing the counting.
Any update on “Reform UK seeks High Court order preventing local elections delays”?
I think the hearing is fixed for later in the month, around 19/20th
All councils should be required to post their annual accounting online and available to anyone for free, and this should be audited and auditable.
If any council or individual objects to that, they should be investigated – its public, and accountable – right?