Answers demand on hospice rates

MP Phil Woolas has demanded answers from Oldham Council chief executive Charlie Parker in the wake of an error which threatened to hit Dr Kershaw’s Hospice with an £8,000 rates bill.

Plans to charge the cash-strapped hospice and its three charity shops in Lees and Shaw hefty business rates from April next year were shelved after Mr Parker called it an “administrative error”. He said the decision to withdraw discretionary rate relief from Dr Kershaw’s was “incorrect”, and it had been reinstated with immediate effect.

His comments, reported in Monday’s Chronicle, prompted a swift response from local MP and Government minister Mr Woolas, who drafted a number of questions in a letter to Mr Parker later the same day.

He said that when Dr Kershaw’s asked how the decision to turn down its appeal against the charge was made, it was told discretionary rate relief up to £5,000 was dealt with by a Cabinet member and a council officer, and higher amounts were dealt with by “committee”.

He asked for more details on the process, and inquired how Mr Parker, as chief executive, could describe a decision made by a council committee as an “administrative error” or “incorrect”.

“It may have been a wrong decision, but surely at the time the committee refused the appeal by Dr Kershaw’s, it was the decision it had come to and a correct recording of that decision,” he wrote in the letter.

But Mr Parker said in a response to Mr Woolas sent yesterday afternoon that the figure over which cabinet was called on to make a decision was in fact £50,000, and the decision to withdraw discretionary rate relief from Dr Kershaw’s was taken by an officer — who has not been named — and it did not require the approval of cabinet members.

Mr Parker reiterated that he had apologised for the error, and no councillors had been aware that a decision had been made to withdraw discretionary rate relief.

He said Councillor Lynne Thompson, cabinet member for finance, had now asked for the council’s constitution to be changed so all relevant members are in future involved in such decisions. He also said that all other recent decisions on rate relief would be urgently reviewed.

Mr Woolas said in his letter that he was delighted at the council’s swift action.