Having read so much recently about the huge amount of money being spent by Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell on getting his finance and accounts departments up to standard, I must say the introduction of what appears to be self-assessment invoicing is very disturbing.
It basically works like this. The council sends you an invoice for services. You tell the council you do not agree with it. The council then writes to you and asks you what it should be. You dream up a figure and tell the council, not believing that it is going to take it at face value without even checking it. You then receive a revised invoice for the amount you put forward.
You then pay the new amount in disbelief that no-one has even checked your figures -- in my case, about £320 to my benefit.
It appears to me that from executives down through the ranks, no-one has any respect for money and they treat it with contempt and ignorance. I have said it before that if these people were to put their own money into running these offices, they would all be bankrupt within a month.
I would suggest that the council recruits someone to teach staff the basics of accountancy because the way it is going, council taxpayers will have another massive increase to pay for all these mistakes, and this will again hit pensioners and low-income workers. ROBIN PEADLE, Hastoe Grange, Oxford
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