As a follow-on from yesterday’s post, Somerset Council have now also chimed in to challenge the figures released by Labour. It seems that Somerset Council were named as the fourth highest charging council per household, just behind tourism-magnets like Westminster.
It seems that a fairly simple error and a lack of fact-checking caused a decimal place to be missed, meaning that instead of showing charges at £208.82 per household, it should only have been £20.88. The council are understandably not best pleased, and have pointed out that the other figures release could now also be highly suspect.
Local Government Minister Brandon Lewis said: “Hilary Benn is a grade A hypocrite. He has failed to condemn his own Labour council which is hiking parking charges. It was the Labour government that cynically targeted motorists, actively encouraging councils to increase parking charges.
I wonder if more articles will follow as other councils now rush to check the figures quoted against what was actually sent in response to the original FOI requests.
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