Seeda: Let's axe this cash guzzling quango

10:20am Wednesday 4th April 2007

Comments (21)   Have your say »

The spending of Seeda, the South East England Development Agency, on fripperies and unnecessary expenses is a scandal.

How could any organisation splash out £115,000 on an awards ceremony in Brighton, especially one promoting green business?

What is the justification for a publicly funded body spending enormous sums on junkets such as a lunch at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, for ten guests and four Seeda personnel costing £1,600?

Surely it is not right for chairman James Brathwaite to claim £93,000 in secretarial expenses when he is only part-time and his predecessor did not claim a penny.

There is worse to come. Mr Brathwaite is paid the staggering sum of £76,000 a year for his part-time post when this sort of position is often rewarded with a nominal fee.

Chief executive Pam Alexander's package last year was £182,000, more than many council chief executives.

The high-spending duo have been jetting around the world staying at luxury hotels. They have been flying business class when this has not been necessary.

But the worst example of profligacy is their use of taxis which cost £55,000 last year. Mr Brathwaite claimed a staggering £230 a day for cabs.

I would find it quite hard to spend that amount of time in taxis, let alone if I was trying to run a development agency.

This spending shows contempt for taxpayers in the South East which is deeply worrying. I also find it disturbing that he was allowed to get away with it.

Has no one within Seeda queried this extraordinary spending? Has the Department of Trade, nominally responsible for Seeda, held an inquiry? I very much doubt it.

Then there is the even more serious issue of companies connected with Mr Brathwaite being funded by a Seeda subsidiary with large amounts of money. Even though there is no evidence of wrongdoing, the chairman of Seeda should not have a conflict of business interests.

At this stage I should emphasise I have nothing personal against James Brathwaite. I met him when he was running the multimedia company Epic, finding him both able and personable.

I am also not against reasonable spending on hospitality by public bodies such as councils.

They sometimes need to entertain people ranging from foreign leaders to business partners.

It's right that some of them should be offered more than a drink from the water filter in the chief executive's office. But there is the world of difference between that and luxurious lunches costing lots of money.

There is something terribly wrong with the Seeda set-up which it has taken The Argus to expose.

The trouble is that Seeda is not really accountable to anyone.

It is not like a council with bloodhound-like councillors probing into forgotten corners of questionable spending.

It is not democratically elected like Parliament where the diligent Mr Baker is forever making awkward inquiries.

Seeda is not a small organisation.

It employs more than 300 people and has a budget of over £200 million.

Taxpayers are entitled to know whether they are getting value for money. The evidence uncovered by The Argus suggests they are not.

It is true that Seeda has funded some good development, such as the excellent Ropetackle scheme in Shoreham, helping to bring life to an area which had been derelict for decades.

Seeda may aid redevelopment of the Brighton Centre, where assistance is needed, and has rightly recognised that Hastings needs help.

But is Seeda needed at all? Before it there was the single regeneration budget which was run by the Government until ten years ago.

This was a much more direct and effective way of investing cash in rundown areas than the bloated bureaucracy of Seeda.

The Government already has its own Office for the South East, making Seeda extraneous and even irrelevant.

It would be far more effective if local government was reorganised to make all councils single-tier, like Brighton and Hove City Council, and big enough to run their own affairs.

Brighton and Hove is able to make its own bids for development funding without the need for Seeda to interfere.

Local and national government needs to be as simple and effective as possible. There is no justification for more than one tier of councils.

There is also no need whatsoever for any form of regional government in the South East, as it is not a region in anything but name.

Nothing in common exists between Brighton and Milton Keynes or between Oxford and Hastings.

It is not even certain where the South East begins and ends on its north-west fringe.

Few people in Sussex have any connection with Guildford, in Surrey, which is where Seeda happens to be based.

Then there is the South East England Regional Assembly. It is much smaller and more sparsely run than Seeda, but is a waste of time and money.

Few people in Sussex know or care what it does. Yet it takes £4 million a year in public money and has more than 30 staff. It has the staggering total of 112 members. No organisation can work efficiently with that many people.

In its oddly defensive website, the assembly claims not to be a talking shop or to be connected with Seeda even though it shares the same office building.

It also says that it is not a quango, although this is only playing with words since it is publicly funded and not democratically elected.

At one time the Government had the mistaken notion that England was keen on regional government. A poll in the North East proved this was not so.

If it was rejected in the North East, where there is some regional identity, there can be no case for it in the South East where there is almost none.

No doubt Seeda will hope this scandal will die down after a few days and that things will carry on as before. This should not be allowed to happen.

James Brathwaite needs to consider whether he should remain as chairman, bearing in mind his connections to businesses receiving regional funding and his lavish spending.

Seeda's board needs to examine how well it is working when it has accepted and allowed such profligacy.

The Government must look at all regional organisations in England, especially those in the South East, and work out whether they are really worthwhile.

I was against the formation of Seeda right from the start. Events have proved me right.

Unelected and unaccountable, it is a grotesque waste of cash and should be scrapped.

Is Adam right? Leave your comments below.