The Guide Cheshire continues to investigate and is currently reviewing a Freedom of Information response from Knutsford Town Council which, once you wade through the legalese, could be seen as rather defensive in tone and gurgling in sound.
The council’s sudden obsession with legal terminology makes you wonder if revealing the financial records would genuinely compromise national security, or if it would just expose a truly catastrophic piece of bad maths.
Knutsford taxpayers should not have to scale a mountain of legal paperwork just to see the books of an administration whose primary responsibility is usually coordinating the Christmas lights, ordering the hanging baskets, and arguing over who left the gate open at the allotments.
How much did it cost Knutsford taxpayers to stage a week-long fashion show?
What were the profits and losses?
And how much public money was spent marketing with Marketing Cheshire (Visit Cheshire) and rebranding the week-long consumerist initiative from Flash Fashion into Knutsford Fashion Week?
It sounds like a straightforward question.
Unfortunately, Knutsford Town Council appears to have mistaken “How much did it cost?” for a declaration of war on the flower-arranging committee, instantly deploying a fortress of legal exemptions to guard the parish noticeboard.
Rather than providing a simple breakdown of profits and losses, the council has retreated into a fortress of legal exemptions, leaving taxpayers to wonder how much this latest round of legal drafting or advice costs the taxpayers to respond to a pretty standard FOI request.
The FOI response retreats into the mind-numbing technicalities of a trademark dispute, as if hoping that a sufficiently boring cover-up will cause taxpayers to lose the will to ask where the money went.
At this point, the public can only assume the answer has vanished into a bureaucratic black hole, fed through a high-speed shredder by a system so visibly panicked that the ledger is likely covered in sweat marks and accidental splashes of blue hair dye from a very chaotic emergency meeting.
On the question of accountability of Knutsford taxpayers’ money, are the books balancing?
Knutsford Town Council has described its week-long fashion show as a success.
But was it?
It definitely succeeded in making Knutsford feel very chic for a Tuesday afternoon.
Does the information provided by Knutsford Town Council via the FOI request really provide the taxpayers with a sense of success?
Are Knutsford taxpayers being left completely in the dark?
In its own Freedom of Information response, the Council discloses figures showing that expenditure vastly exceeded income.
The public purse was emptied for staff costs, legal fees, and website development, all offset by a truly microscopic trickle of sponsorship money.
As part of its investigations into Knutsford Town Council’s spending, The Guide Cheshire is also holding evidence regarding its costs of marketing with Marketing Cheshire and Visit Cheshire.
Why is there such a stark contrast between the council’s official disclosure and the evidence we hold?
Why were those details kept back behind legal exemptions?
That evidence will be examined and released in due course.
Are Knutsford taxpayers paying for a wave of council-orchestrated, paid-for publicity designed to ride the coattails of an existing, successful Cheshire Fashion Week, while silently draining more public funds than it brings in?
A FOI response from the Council raises a much bigger question for Knutsford taxpayers about profits and losses and what the true cost of the project was to the public purse.
Why does the response not provide the entire financial picture?
The calculation should be simple: what was spent, what came back in, and what was the final cost to Knutsford taxpayers?
Although the Town Council hails the event as a roaring success, the taxpayer balance sheet says otherwise.
The other side is the total lack of an environmental audit, suggesting the council’s green policy was temporarily tossed out the window alongside basic arithmetic, presumably to clear space for more clothing racks.
There is another side, of course.
The money.
Specifically, the taxpayers’ money.
There is also the environmental cost of aggressively advertising fast fashion, a stance that appears to have been overlooked in favour of the town’s recycling policy.
These are the uncomfortable realities lurking behind the glossy marketing presented in the deflective FOI pile.
Knutsford taxpayers are left asking exactly how much the week-long fashion show actually cost, how much public money was poured into the marketing machine, and how much income the event actually generated in return.
And, most importantly, what measurable value did Knutsford taxpayers receive?
The Guide Cheshire submitted Freedom of Information requests seeking answers.
While some of this information is currently being withheld by Knutsford Town Council under specific statutory exemptions, it happens to clash directly with solid evidence already in our possession, all of which will be revealed to the public in due course.
Instead of the straightforward financial picture that taxpayers might reasonably expect, parts of the response hide behind a wall of legal exemptions, citing everything from legal professional privilege to court records.
While these loopholes certainly have their place in high-stakes criminal trials, there is something profoundly embarrassing about a local town council forcing an ordinary taxpayer to navigate a maze of legal technicalities simply to follow the money behind a village consumerist clothing-shop promotion.
The Guide Cheshire is therefore continuing to follow the money: from tourism and marketing expenditure to the costs, income and ultimate taxpayer contribution associated with Knutsford Fashion Week.
And Knutsford taxpayers should not need to become Freedom of Information lawyers simply to understand how their money was spent.
