Responding to some of the usual election lies....

When you're a Councillor, and particularly at election time, you kind of get used to all manner of things being said about you.

Some of it is a sort of twisted truth, some of it is a complete lie.

I don't normally respond to such rubbish - people spreading such untruths will never change their ways, they'll never listen to the alternative narrative and certainly never admit that they are wrong. They clearly don't bother to do any research but spread hate and misinformation gleefully.

However, seeing as I have a bit of time spare this morning, I thought I would respond to a couple of the things floating around on various anonymous Facebook pages:

1. "Councillor Terry Jermy is the highest paid Councillor in Norfolk" - hilarious! All Councillor allowances are published online on the relevant Council websites. It is blatantly clear to see that I am not the highest paid Councillor on Breckland, or Norfolk. In fact, some Councillors are paid more than double what I am. 

2. "Terry Jermy overspent his budget when he was Mayor of Thetford" - I was Mayor in 2016/17, and people are still peddling this nonsense. I finished my Mayoral year with money to spare, visited several hundred events and activities during the year and raised £6,000 for local charities - a sum much greater than most Thetford Mayor's achieve. Approx halfway through my Mayoral year staff highlighted that I might run out of funds because I was so busy, and from that the rumour began - pushed by several Councillors who did nothing but try to undermine me during my year. However, most Mayor's have to use part of their 'allowance' to fund their end of term Mayoral Ball. Charity balls are very difficult to make profitable, that's why so many Mayoral Balls have been cancelled in recent years. Council funds literally need to be used to cover some of the costs and that money gets taken from the Mayoral allowance. I've always felt uncomfortable about public money being used to essentially help pay for a private knees up. £500 had been set aside to help with my event, but, I had already secured an external sponsor, a local estate agents, who donated the money to help cover the costs. Problem solved and there was now no risk of any over spending. Oh, and my Ball sold out, we literally had to squeeze in an extra table - so rather than being a drain on council funds, the event made an actual profit, hurrah for charity (which ironically is the sole purpose of the ball but rarely do Town Council balls make a profit). 

3. "If Cllr Jermy really has Thetford's best interests at heart then ask him how he managed to overspend his budget by £30,000 last year and why the Council Tax payers of Thetford have had to fund his incompetence by way of a 20% hike in their bill this year"

I don't have a budget as a Councillor. I am Chair of the Amenities Committee, who does have a budget. The only additional 'power' I have as Chair is that I get to use a casting vote in the event of a tied vote amongst committee members. The budget is the committee's budget and we are all equally responsible. The current finance figures are draft, but show that expenditure is significantly lower than budgeted - no overspending. But income is also down. Largely because we have not received anticipated income from the Rural Payments Agency - they pay the council for it to manage its land (common land mainly) in a way that supports conservation. We do not know at this point if that money is delayed, or will never come. Have previous committees over estimated the income? possibly. Has the council not submitted all of the claims and is due some more money? also possible. All of this was explained by the Finance Manager to the committee at the April meeting - available on Youtube if you want to watch. There was approx £8,000 of additional expenditure that wasn't anticipated. Due to an error by the committee back in 2016, and an error by officers, we've been forced to repay £8,000 to the rural payments agency for fencing around castle park. The payment should have been made by a certain date and it wasn't and a recent audit highlighted this so the current amenities committee has lost £8,000 due to an error in 2016. Who was Chairman of the committee in 2016? Brenda Canham. Is this £8,000 mistake hers alone? of course not.

4. 20% hike in Council Tax bills - I voted against the original proposal to increase Council Tax by 30%. When the voted was taken to increase it by 20% at the January meeting, I was absent, my father passed away two days before the meeting. Had I of been there, I'd have voted against. The Town Council is wasteful, we do not get value for money, they rely too easily on whacking up council tax without looking for new sources of income or reducing costs. I make these points nearly every year but of course, that doesn't stop people trying to blame me for Thetford's council tax going up, which is entirely untrue.