Top councillor blasts 'dyslectic' authority after appeal for cash

Jonathan Reed

A SENIOR Yorkshire councillor has launched a furious attack on another of the region’s local authorities, accusing it of operating in a “dyslectic” manner.

Brian Percival, deputy leader of Selby District Council, launched an angry attack on troubled Doncaster Council – where the Government has been forced to intervene following a damning report into its performance – after it appealed for more than 300,000 from a regional fund.

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Other council leaders have backed the funding, which Doncaster would use for mentoring and training politicians and officers, but Coun Percival said: “I am totally against the proposal and it must not go through.”

The Yorkshire Post has seen a fierce email circulated to more than 50 councillors and other public sector figures in which he says: “I am aghast at the proposal to giving money to a council that has got itself into the mess that it has.

“It must look to itself and to its own community for its own salvation, not to the wider Yorkshire community. Supporting a council that some could call dyslectic in the co-operation between members and staff is not the purpose of the supporting performance fund, notwithstanding that this is an unbelievable sum.”

Coun Percival’s outburst came after Doncaster’s chief executive Rob Vincent appealed for the funding from the publicly-funded Yorkshire and Humber Improvement and Efficiency Partnership, YoHr Space at a meeting this week.

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Mr Vincent was brought in by the Government after a highly-critical Audit Commission report into the council. Inspectors said it was the worst authority they had seen, with in-fighting and poor leadership leaving it unable to function properly.

Only six of the 23 councillors who sit on the partnership’s

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