Oldham Council spends £26.3 million from council budgets and resources on a cinema & charges the fourth highest council tax in the country yet plans to put bin collection on a three week rota

Oldham Labour Council who charge the fourth highest council tax in the country and just directly spent £26.3 million taken from the Council budget and resource accounts to build an overpriced cinema will discuss plans to put bin collections on a three week rota at a meeting next Monday 27/06/2016. Councillor Barbara Brownridge, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Co-operatives, said: “Over the next two years the council needs to make £37m worth of more savings, which means we need to do things differently. Doing nothing is not an option” Worth noting that the spending savings required by the Council are less than the council’s total liability and spending for the over-priced cinema complex at £37 million and Council purchases of multiple empty shops, public houses, offices and mills all within Oldham Town Centre at undisclosed costs within the last two years. We are quite sure Oldham Council will also find the resources to purchase the empty four storey retail property at 18-20 Curzon Street, Oldham, OL1 3AG which goes to auction on July 12th. It is about time that this Council was held to account, they consistently and disproportionately allocate and spend an ever increasing amount of tax payers money within the wards that make up Oldham Town Centre. This Council have the audacity to fail on delivering the basic services for which they charge the fourth highest UK rate yet can find hundreds of millions to play a game of property developing roulette within the Town Centre wards that contribute the least and cost the most. Government statistics show that one in every four Oldham homes gets £7,401 in tax credits meaning all those homes in real terms contribute absolutely nothing in taxes this is why so many people are so apathetic about a system that they do not pay into and it is why immigration in England’s most deprived Town is at record levels.

Empty shop

Empty shop Yorkshire St Oldham Town Centre

Refurbished by Oldham Council, occupied and empty again within a year

Refurbished by Oldham Council, occupied and empty again within a year January 2016

Six months after closing Oldham Council are refurbishing for the second time

Six months after closing Oldham Council are refurbishing the same shop for the second time