Tracie to the rescue, as Cornwall councillors get down to the nitty-gritty of setting their £1.2 billion budget

Cornwall Council’s CEO, Kate Kennally, has moved with lightning speed to appoint Tracie Langley, formerly with Homes England, as interim Section 151 officer, responsible for ensuring compliance across a host of issues, including the council’s £1.2 billion budget.

Ms Langley is likely to have presented a budget briefing to councillors this week.

She had been executive director of corporate services with Homes England since March, having previously been executive director of economic growth at Surrey County Council during the period when that council nearly went bankrupt. Surrey was so short of cash, despite a fire-sale of assets, that it considered holding a referendum about raising council tax bills by 15%!

Before her stint at Surrey, Ms Langley had been deputy chief executive at the London Borough of Haringey – during the period when Ms Kennally held a similar post at neighbouring Barnet council.

Ms Langley’s appointment, and the imminent departure of Paul Masters as Strategic Director for neighbourhoods, potentially leaves economy director Phil Mason as the only male member of the senior management team at Cornwall Council.

Mr Brown’s resignation from his job as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with Cornwall Council has left councillors and officers in shock. The council says he quit “for personal reasons.”

The greatest concern in this tragi-comic tale of municipal musical chairs is the serious observation that very few senior council executives ever stay anywhere long enough to actually accomplish anything of much use to the council taxpayers they are supposed to serve.

The notable exception to the transient nature of council executives (there is always one) is the teflon-coated lighter-than-air former chief planner, Phil Mason, who has wafted effortlessly upwards into the heart of power in Kremlin Kernow.

We may never know what really happened to former CFO, Andy Brown, but the gut feeling, given his acknowledged integrity, is that it had something to do with the hubris orbiting around John Betty and Langarth, in relation to the unauthorised £2 million spend that came to light and which was exposed by Andy Brown. This was promptly airbrushed away and buried as if it had never happened.

Given the rising body count on the fourth floor, there is almost inevitably something seriously wrong at the very heart of our council to cause so many people to leave such lucrative posts at a moment’s notice and in quick succession.

Effectively, Cornwall Council has become a rudderless ship wallowing in the rising swell of discontent that is daily building.

Inevitably the ones who are going to suffer most in the wake of this turmoil are, as usual, the unfortunate bottom feeding council tax payers, at the foot of the power chain, and who have no protections, in spite of the fact that they will be forced to pick up the bill at some future point.

Cornwall Council is already proposing another inflation-busting +4% council tax rise for next year, and God help us when Threemilestone Cllr Dulcie Tudor’s Langarth (garden) town gets the go-ahead at Chiverton, with the additional financing needed to service the council’s new £600m borrowing.

Question to Cornwall Council:

What happens to gridlocked traffic, air quality and Treliske A&E, when you add 10,000 cars to the equation?!!