Greenwich Borough Liberal Democrats

for a fairer and greener borough

Labour admits loss of £2.3m

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 30th Nov 2004

Greenwich Council admitted yesterday that up to £2.3m in leaseholders' service charges may be legally unrecoverable.

After months of questioning by Lib Dem Cllr Mark Pattenden (Eltham South), the Council has admitted that because they failed to bill for the work within 18 months, leaseholders have no legal obligation to pay.

The problem came about because the leaseholder computer records were lost. IT workers have spent the last year trying to recover the information.

"This is a significant amount of money that the Council has lost," commented Cllr Pattenden. "I have been raising this issue for more than a year, so they can't say that they weren't warned."

"The Council seems to have adopted a policy of keeping its fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Well, that has just cost us over £2m."

The final decision on whether or not to try and recover the money owed will be taken by the Cabinet next month.

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