I WAS amazed to learn that Chippenham Town Council has recently agreed to pass over £40,000 to the BID board to help finance events put on by them during the year.
So far as I can see from the BID website, the events planned so far consist of a Christmas lights switch-on, which as you will remember last year was a disaster, and the fireworks display in Monkton Park, which until this year has always been put on by the excellent, and still active, Rotary Club.
This year’s Christmas lights switch-on event is promised to go back to using the format it always did when the town council put it on year, on year, for a fraction of what it is now costing, but of course the BID have to use a suitable corporate company from Swindon to produce this (with all the resulting extra expense) which make the costings treble.
There seem to be no other big community events planned to use up this huge amount of money in the first eight months of the fiscal year, so it begs the question, what is the £40,000 of us Chippenham householders’ money being used for by this organisation?
The other question that comes to mind is just why the council are handing over pubic money to an unelected limited company that has no public scrutiny of how this vast amount is being spent? Moreover, who actually can say if this limited company is doing a good job and is fit for purpose?
I understand that town centre businesses have no choice but to contribute to this limited company, of which spends town council and local businesses’ money. This seems to me to be a return to the old-fashioned quango that spends public money in an undemocratic way.
Chippenham deserves better than this, and we should expect better from our elected councillors., perhaps the town council leader should explain this use of taxpayers’ money to the hard-working tax payers of Chippenham?
DAVID POOLE
Rowden Hill
Chippenham