EPPING FOREST: Calls to scrap taxpayer-funded business loans (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)
Get involved: send your pictures, video, news & views by texting WFNEWS to 80360, or email us
Epping Forest News RSS Feed Send your news, pictures & videos
EPPING FOREST: Calls to scrap taxpayer-funded business loans
12:39pm Thursday 27th May 2010 in Epping Forest News By Daniel Binns
The Banking on Essex scheme, the brainchild of former council leader Lord Hanningfield, was launched a year ago.
A SCHEME using taxpayers' cash to fund loans to small local businesses has helped only ten out of more than 200 applicants and has cost far more to set up than the actual amounts paid out, it has been revealed.
Calls have now been made following the revelations to scrap the “useless” and “wasteful” 'Banking on Essex' project, which was the brainchild of former Essex County Council leader Lord Hanningfield, who has since resigned after he was charged with fraud.
Despite being launched to great fanfare a year ago, with £50million being set aside to fund it, the council has paid out just £145,000 in loans, matched by bank Santander, but spent £250,000 establishing the scheme in the first place.
A total of 223 businesses have expressed an interest in it, but only ten have received any money, with a further 14 still being considered for loans.
Accountant and UKIP activist Mick McGough, of Wellfields in Loughton, who uncovered some of the details using the Freedom of Information Act, said: “Banking is for bankers, not for county councils.
“If businesses need help then it is not for the taxpayer to shoulder that risk, if the banks won't lend to a company why should we?
“There just seems to be no logic in it – and when are we ever going to get this money back?
“It seems all these grandiose schemes were set up by Lord Haningfield because he wanted to make Essex the leader in all sorts of areas while neglecting the core tasks that councils should be focusing on, like fixing the many pot holes which are all over our streets”.
The Essex Lib Dem's economics spokesman David Kendall has claimed that the figures show that the council is no more willing to give out loans than ordinary high street banks, but called for a more “pro-active” approach.
He said: “After all the hype and publicity I was really hoping this scheme would provide much-needed help and support to small businesses in Essex".
He added: "If the economy in Essex is going to be given the kick start it badly needs, then ‘Banking On Essex’ should be playing a much more proactive role in promoting and advertising what it can offer to small businesses, and certainly giving them more support than they are at the moment."
Council leader Peter Martin told a meeting that the authority was analysing the scheme to see how to “move forward” with it.
The Guardian has requested to speak to Cllr Martin about the issue.
Lord Hanningfield has denied fraud and has said he will fight to clear his name.
Comments(8)
UKIP-local
says...
5:22pm Thu 27 May 10
Tax payer loans always end in tears - for the tax payer!
To say there is a shortage of funds is like saying there is a shortage of gold or beer - at a price, of course there is. It happens that at present banks are wary of lending because they suspect the economy is in a bad way. Who am I to disagree with that assessment.
A "double-dip" looks highly likely and inflation is already high. The OECD says we will have a big increase in interest rates in the next year or so.
If Essex County Council has more money in its balances than it needs to run the county, it should not have increased rates last year.
Our District Council in Epping has lost millions on loans to Icelandic banks (although they have not yet written them off). Why should we believe Councils are competent this time to participate in a business lending syndicate?
Quickexit
says...
4:48am Fri 28 May 10
This crisis is a direct result of the one-size-fits-all ECB monetary policy which caused the economies of Greece, Ireland and Spain to overheat. Yet, at the same time, the Commission failed to enforce the terms of the Stability and Growth Pact relating to fiscal deficit and debt (it must be acknowledged that the states that have met most if not all the targets are not in the eurozone: Estonia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, etc). If it had done, the current crisis would not have happened.
I suggest that Essex County Council spends more time criticising the policies that are behind our troubles instead of putting an expensive bandaid on the rampant cancer coursing through the economic system.
Or maybe they can just get around to fixing the roads!
Quickexit
says...
5:16am Fri 28 May 10
MICHAEL MCGOUGH
says...
8:58am Fri 28 May 10
http://www.ukip.org/
content/ukip-policie
s
Quickexit
says...
11:17am Fri 28 May 10
Fondness for spending a lot of money on grammar schools and the joy of commanding minorities to confirm to values none of the majority understands let alone obeys seems to mark you as Tebbit-style Tories and as such a separatist wing of the Conservative party.
I'd rather see a free market liberal political force that was principled rather than Euro-rebels with the hump. Hopefully, campaigning on issues like the Bank of Essex will assist in that transition - certainly refreshing compared to the litany of bizarre European directives UKIP usually puts forward as justification for its existence.
UKIP-local
says...
3:54pm Fri 28 May 10
the fact is that UKIP exctivists and elected representatives are constantly looking out for these examples. The fact one of our local members has discovered this and brought it to your attention with the help of the local press demonstrates that.
At hustings for the General Election, UKIP made it clear that leaving the EU is not an end in itself. We want it in order to restore democracy and accountable government in Britain.
We want to leave the EU and put decision making nearer the people, like us.
Quickexit should re-appraise his view of UKIP.
Quickexit
says...
6:05am Sat 29 May 10
UKIP-local wrote:Let's get this into perspective: UKIP is not the first party to criticise Lord Hanningfield's vanity projects. Indeed, I think I was the only one who voiced criticism in the local press when it was first proposed and since then the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties have stepped up their criticism. UKIP has helped add something worthwhile to the debate.
Quickexit seems to be confused.
the fact is that UKIP exctivists and elected representatives are constantly looking out for these examples. The fact one of our local members has discovered this and brought it to your attention with the help of the local press demonstrates that.
At hustings for the General Election, UKIP made it clear that leaving the EU is not an end in itself. We want it in order to restore democracy and accountable government in Britain.
We want to leave the EU and put decision making nearer the people, like us.
Quickexit should re-appraise his view of UKIP.
But I'm still not clear as to what the party's agenda is, what its ideological foundation is. There are many who want withdrawal from the EU, from left, right and centre and on the basis that they want more accountable government. The only other thing I can think of is the statements by UKIP leader Lord Pearson (who, like Eleanor Laing, flipped his taxpayer-funded second home in order to avoid hundreds of thousands in CGT) against Muslims and immigrants, which in my mind puts it firmly in the area of politics once occupied by the Monday Club - an unpleasant bunch on the Tory fringes who spent most of their time opposing majority rule in South Africa, supporting Ian Smith's regime in Rhodesia and having love-ins with Nicaragua's Contras in addition to advocating withdrawal from the EU to pursue some misguided 'special relationship' with the US (ie being the lapdog of Washington instead of the poodle of Brussels). As a libertarian-minded person who shares your misgivings about daft schemes like the Bank of Essex, I find your party's policies on religion and immigration as abhorrently authoritarian and narrow-minded as the BNP's. As such, UKIP's extreme policies in this area undermine worthwhile interventions in another area.
Quickexit says...
2:51pm Thu 27 May 10
I totally agree with Mr McGough, although I am not a UKIPer. Hanningfield wanted to be a trail-blazer, thinking of a new role for local government. In the process, he forgot about the services the council should be providing and went off on this egotistical tangent. Now he's gone for good, perhaps the Conservatives can concentrate on the council's core functions and just do it well for a change.