Accrington Superloo: Deceitful Tories mislead the public once again

A claim by Cllr Peter Britcliffe, former Leader of HBC, that a Labour administration were responsible for a six-figure contract for a pay-per-use toilet in Accrington has been strongly refuted by the controlling group.

The offending statement comes from this article in the Accrington Observer and reads:

Tory group leader Peter Britcliffe blamed Labour for the fiasco. He said: “The toilets were put into the town centre circa 1997 when Labour were in charge. It was me who promoted this problem and if I had not identified this it would still be there. It’s remarkable.”

In response, Cllr Clare Pritchard, Deputy Leader of HBC, has written this letter to the press:

"I refer to the article in the Accrington Observer regarding the removal of the Superloo form Peel Street in Accrington. Having read the article with an increasing sense of disbelief I felt compelled to correct the, what can only be described as misrepresentations, of Cllr Britcliffe.

The decision to keep the Superloo and indeed extend the contract was made by the Conservative administration led by Cllr Britcliffe, indeed the contract is dated as 23rd April 2002, so the decision for this was taken at a Cabinet meeting CHAIRED by Cllr Britcliffe in the months before this. Indeed a major feature of Cllr Britcliffe's budget proposals in 2011 was the achievement of shutting the free loos on Peel Street as a cost saving measure whilst keeping the one costing £18 a visit within 10 yards of these loos.

The cost of these loos was astronomical and it is very disingenuous of Cllr Britcliffe to say that he was in any way involved in the removal (or even a suggestion of removal) of yet another one of his mistakes, made with seemingly no thought of the huge financial burdens he was placing on the taxpayers of the borough. He should hang his head in shame, between his shambolic handling of this and his mishandling of the advertising of taxi license fees resulting in a cost to the Council of upwards of £210,000 and the fiasco of the Hyndburn Life Website, which was up and running for only 4 months at a cost of £700,00+ I think it fair to say that his tenure as Leader of the Council cost the taxpayers more than £1,000,000 in mistakes."

The Cabinet minutes from 2002 which relate to this can be seen here and clearly show Cllr Britcliffe's involvement in the original decision:

Not on this list is the failure to maintain refuse vehicles, the failure to curb mercury abatement from the crematoria and the botched planning agreement for the wind farm that knocked out thousands of TVs in the Baxenden area.