From the report below the council decided and I am not sure how?
to approve the request of £1000 from Cllr Michael Haley for the Neighbourhood Plan
Steering Group.
The Steering group is a working group of the council meant to be community led.
It appears to be the only council working group that does not need to produce a
proper budget.
When it was formed an amount for a budget was guessed, that guess was
far to low and the NP is now quite a lot over budget.
I don't think the council has approved enough expenditure and the £1000 is just
another low guess.
for example if all residents use their prepaid envelope to return the survey
Oakham Town Council will receive a postage bill of nearly £4000
which the council has not approved.
It was said the council council could not budget for postage because they did not
know how many people would return surveys in the prepaid envelope.
I have attempted to explain if we approved the full amount and people did not
use them then the it did not matter that the expenditure was less than the approved
amount. It would matter if it was more.
From what I can work out from the report Cllr Haley who was on holiday
was seeking £757 for printing and a guess of return postage costs.
The council has guess that would be £243.00 meaning 405 out of the 6500
printed and some how delivered.
A very poor expected return.
It is expected that everyone else will use drop of point in the town.
Cllr Richard Haynes a member of the steering group said they expect less than
half the surveys would be returned.
I also pointed out at the same meeting the council had not seen the survey
so if residents asked Cllrs questions we would not be of any help to them.
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