A Market Drayton town councillor is to continue the push for a play area to be refurbished following a row over finances.
Councillor Janet Smith said she would keep her eye on plans for the £60,000 redevelopment of Buntingsdale play area despite concerns over a delay in starting the work.
The issue was discussed during last Thursday’s town council meeting where a call was made for talks to be held with an accountant over council expenditure.
Plans to replace existing play equipment, fencing and rubber surfacing at the Buntingsdale Road site were approved last December.
However, refurbishment work was put on hold a month later after councillors voted in favour of drawing up an “approved list of contractors” to carry out work on its behalf.
Councillor Smith said: “We first agreed that we needed to look at a complete redevelopment of the Buntingsdale play area in 2006 and it has been through several phases and stages since then.
“We were informed last October that the money would be available for use at Buntingsdale but in January this year, we were told that we’d have to identify money for it because we still didn’t have enough.
“There’s been a much longer than desirable delay in doing the work and I’ll continue to press for it so that Buntingsdale doesn’t get forgotten about.”
Councillors raised the council tax precept by £10,000 this year to help fund the project and Councillor Smith has asked for a breakdown of figures to confirm whether the money is in place.
Meanwhile, Market Drayton mayor Councillor Roy Aldcroft has moved to clarify the position on the state of the town council’s finances.
This follows a decision by a number of councillors not to support the figures released by town clerk Edward Davies at last Thursday’s meeting.
Councillor Aldcroft said: “The town council’s finances are subject to constant scrutiny by our own computerised system and audit, the town clerk and members of the Finance and General Purposes Committee. In addition, they are audited annually by independent internal and external audit staff.
“Over the last few years, the system has become overly bound up in red tape, restricting council staff and committee chairman unnecessarily.
“Our aim now is to reduce this workload so that we can concentrate on responding to the needs of our community.”
By Winston Brown
