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£19,000 spent on spin doctor for care chief
Kiran Randhawa08.12.08
HARINGEY council spent £19,000 on spin doctors hired to rebuild the image of former head of children's services Sharon Shoesmith, it emerged today.
The money was used to train her and other colleagues on how to answer probing questions from journalists following the Baby P tragedy.
The 55-year-old, who was suspended last week but who is still picking up her £110,000 salary, was given role-play exercises by up to three external firms as part of the package - even though Haringey has its own communications team.
This came after she twice refused to apologise at a press conference for her department's failure to save the 17-month-old who was tortured to death by his mother, stepfather and a lodger.
Lib-Dem MP Lynne Featherstone said: "It is absolutely outrageous that this money has been wasted on spin doctors. Every penny of this cash would have been better spent on improving our children's services." The spending was revealed in a written question tabled by the Lib-Dems to council leader George Meehan before he resigned.
Reader views (4)
Why has this contemptible woman not been kicked out.
This council is a total mess.......Can it go down any further?
The people of this "bo'rough" should raise the roof on this one and demand their money back!#
Utterlly useless!!!!!!!!!
- Valerie, Hanworth Middlesex
Central and local government has kept increasing taxes without constraint. This is a clear example of where our hard earned money's going. No one has any cojones to tell them to stop taxing and start cutting.
My favourite is Ron Davies (ex MP) heading up the publicly funded "[Welsh] Valleys Race Equality Council". What's that all about.
- Chris Stenson, London
Get your money back (people of Harin-miserable) they did an awful job. She still comes across as worse than Himmler and Pol Pot combined.
Only self exile to Siberia for life would make her slighlty more likeable.
- Rusty Shackleford, UK
truly sickening and disgusting - but nothing less than i would have expected from this discreditted and dysfunctional self serving excuse for a Local Authority. Political correctness has been embraced to such a cloying extent that the normal rules of public service have long been ignored in favour of a marxist regime with a militant and cronyistic undercurrent.
- Gary, amersham
