PAPERS QUIET ON COUNCIL BABYSITTERS

CRUMBRIA: 01.09.2025: EXCLUSIVE

HANDS up who knew that Labour-daft Crumberland Council has been operating under an independent “Improvement Panel”.

Not readers of our dreadful local newspapers — the News & Shrug, The Crumbling News, the Times & (Red) Star, or The Fighthaven News.

Back in May, these alleged papers made a fleeting, blink-and-you-miss-it reference to the fact that the Council had called in the babysitters as far back as September 2024.

And then they dropped it.

Since then, not one so-called Churnalist has lifted a finger to explain what this panel is, who’s on it, what it’s costing, or why the Labour-daft council needs supervision in the first place.

Meetings have been taking place for months to discuss “finance and management”. All behind closed doors, naturally.

Apparently, this didn’t merit so much as a phone call by the papers to the Council.

Instead, local reporters were presumably busy with the safest council story that there is: scraping planning applications off the Council website and regarding it as “local democracy reporting”.

So we learn — not from our newspapers, but from council documents — that Crumberland has drafted in officials or former bigwigs from Dorset, Durham, Barnsley, Hartlepool and Wiltshire, plus representatives from the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

That “expertise” won’t come cheap.

Especially when the chair of the panel, Robert Tinlin MBE, has previously charged £1,000 a day for his wisdom.

Taking notes and nodding along at these meetings include the Council’s well-paid chief executive and the Labour’s Council’s top brass: Councillors Mark Fryer, Emma Williamson, Lisa Brown and Barbara Cannon.

There’s also been a “restructure of senior management” at the top of the struggling council. Another detail nobody on the local paper thought worth reporting.

It looks like another stone-cold exclusive has sailed straight right under the noses of Crumbria’s local media!