The costs behind new council HQ

Once they get a notion in their heads, they keep repeating it, even if it makes them look foolish.

Once again, they are peddling their story about the cost of new office accommodation for Stratford-on-Avon District Council.

They falsely claim that it will be a £22million burden to the Council Tax payer imposed by the Conservatives (Stratford Journal, October 18).

Not only are their figures inflated, but also they have strange logic.

They include things like electricity, business rates, receptionists, security staff, and cleaners in their estimates, no doubt hoping that the public will believe that this figure is just rent or building costs.

Just to make the figures sound even scarier, they have added together all the estimates of cost for the next 15 years, down to the last toilet roll.

The Liberal Democrats plan to stay in a crumbling building that will cost an arm and a leg to refurbish to the legal standards expected of us in 2004.

When will they come clean and add these costs to some money for paperclips and floor polish and publish the true comparative figures, over 15 years, of their expensive proposals?

Of course, the Liberal Democrats could be wishing to save money by dispensing with anybody to answer the telephone, abandoning security staff and hoping that nobody will send them an electricity bill.

Don't laugh - their propaganda publicly criticises the Conservatives for proposing to pay electricity bills, business rates, receptionists, security staff and office cleaners amongst other allegedly outrageous costs.

The Conservatives have a proven low cost option to move to a new office building.

Any other forecast is as unreliable as a prediction that, if the Liberal Democrats were to return to power, they would save money by asking the staff to provide their own toilet rolls and organise a rota for whose turn it was to bring in the Hoover to clean the office floor.

COUNcillor C J SAINT, Executive councillor - management portfolio, Stratford District Council.