Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Tealeaf
I do recall having an hour's knock-about fun with Greg on there on one particular evening. I suspect that we all recognised the thing was going to be a waste of time and money.
However, as Graham says, funding for this project came from central government - in other words, the taxpayer, not the council charge payer. This begs a number of questions, among which are:
1) Was this funding optional, or was HBC forced to receive it and develop the website as part of a central government directive?
2) Did the funding come with a list of approved web-site developers and a package showing council officers how to go about commissioning and launching the project?
3) Presumably, HBC & Pendle were not the only local authorities to be involved in this scheme. How have sites with other local authorities fared in comparision?
|
Hyndburn gets given pots of money to spend so it is not external money as such, it is Hyndburn money already in the bank ready to spend. There are many pots but there are four big pots. The Council and other Hyndburn organisations then gets its ideas together on how it to spend the money and develops an application or bid. Each pot has some broad criteria as it is designed to direct funding at problems.
1. NRF - from Govt (Neighbourhood Renewal Funding) £7 million from 2001 to 2008 (runs out 2008)
2. SRB6 from Govt (Single Regen Budget) £8million from 2000 to 2008 (runs out 2008)
3. ERDF from Europe (European Regional Dev Fund/Economic Development) £2.4million generally 2000 - 2006 plus £1m for Whitebirk.
4. ELEVATE (East Lancs Housing) Hyndburns Share £95 million 2005 - 2020 to regenerate housing in Hyndburn
The Council decides what bids to accept as the Council is the responsible authority for the money.
The bid application was done by the Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with Pendle's. No other authority was involved.
The Council (then Labour) were sceptical about the scheme but allowed the the Cham of Trade to put the application in because the Council new nothing of it and were prepared to look at the proposal. Council IT officers were then able to review the (Ch of Com) scheme and recomended against accepting the bid.
This advice was then also passed on to the incoming Conservatives. The (new) Cabinet then had to make a decision but somehow went against the expert IT officer advice and authorised the expenditure with - as outlined in the proposal - itself as the commissioning agent .
Consultants were used (at at cost of £300k approx) to develop the scheme. Not sure who did the code. The Council took on responsibilty for site maintenance and content. In fact the member of staff employed as part of the bid worked in the Councils IT dept but resigned after 12 months.
There are e-government targets but this is not part of them. It was designed to be a tool to attract new businesses to Hyndburn (hence the Ch of Comm connection). Sadly, it has not attracted a single business interest yet.
It is now being wound down but it cant be pulled due to EU 50% clawback rules and SRB clawback rules which the Council will have to stand. So in order to con the auditors they are leaving it up.
No other authorities were involved. Pendle's site is trundling along and marginally fairing better. At least they are making an effort. Unfortunatley due to Council cuts due their well documented finacial woes, 6 of the 13 IT staff positions are being left as vacancies and not filled leaving 7 staff to struggle (They do all the Council Tax stuff, benefits systems, complex servers and databases etc..).