Scandal of the cosy deals in secret (From The Northern Echo)

Scandal of the cosy deals in secret

5:53pm Friday 23rd December 2011 in Peter Barron By Peter Barron

For someone who set out on a political path as a daft prank, Stuart Drummond has done remarkably well.

He was persuaded by his mates to stand as a candidate for the Mayor of Hartlepool under the alias of H'Angus The Monkey, got elected, and has never looked back a decade on.

He has clocked up a decent record as Mayor and, in addition, is now the newly-appointed chairman of Cleveland Police Authority.

I wish him well in his new role, particularly as he bids to persuade the Home Office to help meet at least some of the costs of corruption inquiry Operation Sacristy.

But it is what happened under the previous Cleveland Police Authority regime which must be exercising local taxpayers this week.

The Audit Commission criticised the police authority for failing to go through the correct procedures when making overpayments on redundancy packages.

The authority's former chief executive, Joe McCarthy, received £361,950 in redundancy payments while Caroline Llewellyn, the former solicitor to Cleveland's Chief Constable, received £213,379.

To the ordinary man in the street, these are mind-boggling figures.

Overpayments by the police authority are calculated at £35,000 and that money needs to be reclaimed for the taxpayer.

And never again must "delegated powers" be used to sneak through redundancy payments to high-ranking staff.

Whatever the outcome of the criminal and disciplinary inquiries going on into Cleveland Police officials, what has already come to light about the cosy arrangements used by the authority is a scandal.