Mayoral concert cost comes under fire

Coun Colin Inglis has asked the city council to pay the £47,000 needed to stage the event, which would be held in Queens Gardens on May 20.

However, despite confirmed support from several council departments, there is a £16,000 shortfall, with a further £10,000 needed from the leader’s contingency budget (already providing £20,000), and £6,000 from the business support team.

Hull University’s music department would provide the orchestra and singers.

However, opposition Liberal Democrat councillors at the Labour-led authority say financing the concert would not be an appropriate use of council funds and called it a “vanity project”.

Coun Mike Ross, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, said: “For me, this is very much a question of Labour making a great play at the last local elections around the use of council finances and tax payers’ money. It would be hypocritical of them to start allowing taxpayers’ money to be used for this vanity project. I’m sure the residents I speak to on a regular basis would not want their council tax wasted like this.”

But the Lord Mayor hit back, comparing the cost with what the Lib Dems spent on Hull’s Freedom Festival when in office.

“Mike Ross was part of an administration that spent half a million pounds on a rock concert, so he wants to look at his own history,” he said.

“It’s a partnership with the university, using local people, students and teachers. It’s quite cheap for an event of this kind.

“It not only commemorates the Lord Mayoralty, but what Mike Ross has probably forgotten is it’s also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and this will be just at the start of it. That’s why the public don’t trust the Liberal Democrats; because they shoot from the hip and don’t think about what they are saying.”