ON Thursday, we reported the Thurrock Council leader defending the council’s job cut plans.
It included the following from councillor Rob Geldhill in a quote.
“I am sure that no one, other than the Labour leader, forgets we inherited a deficit of £40m from Labour when we took control of the Council in 2016.”
On Friday, we have been asked to correct this article.
Councillor Gledhill has since advised he made a typographical error and the true figure is £30million.
Over the weekend, YT will have a trawl through our archive (38,000 stories) but a figure nearer £18 million comes to mind.
We will let you know in due course.
You are fa.£for the old politicians trick of mixing up deficit and debt.
Deficit is the difference between spending and income – resulting in budget cuts to try and balance the books.
Debt is the accumulation of deficits.
A far better question is how much is Thurrock Council in debt each year for the last 10 years.
And how much each year is Thurrock Council paying to service this debt each year for the past 10 years.
If you had time trawl through 10 years of Thurrock Council accounts and look at past financial forecasts on debt and borrowing and see what actually happened.