Labour-run Birmingham City Council is under fire after £11M probe over eye-watering payments made to taxi firm charging more than £200 a day to take a child three miles to school and back

7 comments

1. To be honest there is a lot of reasons this could of happened.

   Obviously we have the undeniable reason of greed.

   Then we have the council and it’s ineptitude.

   We also have the ridiculous process of government contracts and they way they are managed and how they are given out.

   We also have possible corruption with council managers in cahoots. Although this is just a thought and not proven.

2. 11million over charged. Begins with a F and ends in raud.

3. To be fair this is still cheaper than being all socialist and bringing it all in house which would cost 10 trillion pounds as we all know privatisation is always cheaper and more efficient…

4. But 50 million on bridge that never was and Daily Fail doesn’t put so much effort in. Boris went on to award billions in dodgy PPE contracts to Tory mates….

   11M small potatoes compared to Tory Fraud

5. Guess a high ranking councillor has a family member who owns a taxi firm.

6. I shall assume back-handers are at play. No way could the recipients receive such huge sums otherwise. There won’t be any direct money trails – but there may well be wads of cash or other side-payments to offshore accounts. Follow the money. There should be an immediate audit and freezing of the recipient’s bank accounts for this fraud with an allowance to pay office and other staff salaries – no perks and no payments to senior management during the inquiry.

7. This is poor by even Daily Mail standards.

   Firstly it takes only 30 seconds to google and find out that Green Destinations are not a taxi firm at all, and were set up entirely to both do school runs for disabled kids and sell courses providing the relevant qualifications/training for this service.

   It only takes a minute longer to find out that they were set up and registered while BCC was under no overall control, so to tie this to Labour is a bit strange, Green Destinations would have had this contract regardless.

   Then there’s the supposed 11 million difference. Quoted by a competitor firm, HATS. The question must be asked, if HATS can do it 11 million cheaper, why didn’t they bid?

   Then the comparison to taxi firms prices, as if that’s the same thing. Sure, a taxi driver can take someone to school for £15 a pop, but when you introduce the factor that the driver needs to hold a specialist certification because the schoolkid has a special need or disability, that’s not a viable option.

   This either comes down to one of two things, either Green Destinations and HATC have spotted a niche in the market where they can effectively hold the councils to ransom due to the lack of certified operators (possibly a deliberate shortage, if they are also the ones doing the training) or – and this is where the Labour council are at fault – this particular council put on a lot of extra services through Green Destinations during covid and simply neglected to cancel them and GD didn’t mention it as they were laughing all the way to the bank.