Councillors in East Herts are going to be billed for failed repayments a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

The Herts and Essex Observer report:

CASH pocketed unlawfully by most serving East Herts district councillors is to be clawed back by the authority.

Members will have the £35 IT allowance – paid monthly between May 2011 and March 31 2012 – deducted from their annual £4,747 during the coming financial year in a bid to recoup around £20,000 while ex-councillors will be invoiced.

However residents will have to swallow the bill for “non-recoverable” broadband and telephone charges the authority paid for former elected representatives after officials admitted: “Members were informed that lines would be cancelled, but the council did not act quickly enough to cancel lines. The errors were not of the councillors making.”

You can read the full story here. 

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.