MINISTERS have launched a savage attack on Nottingham City Council's Labour leaders today – accusing them of wasting taxpayers' cash and of acting in an "irresponsible and shameful" way.
The broadside from Tory minister Grant Shapps comes after the council refused to comply with an order to publish detailed information of its spending on its website.
But in a sensational counter-attack, council leader Jon Collins branded Mr Shapps "a fool" and called his superior, communities secretary Eric Pickles, "a buffoon".
The Post reported yesterday how Mr Pickles and Mr Collins had already clashed over the Government's determination to force councils to publish details of all expenditure above �500 on their websites.
Mr Collins refused, saying that the measure was merely the Government "playing to the tabloid gallery" while Mr Pickles threatened "serious ramifications" if the council failed to comply by the end of January.
The most recent attack by Mr Shapps, who has responsibility for housing policy, and the council leader's response has now caused the dispute to escalate.
Mr Shapps highlighted four examples where he said the council had misspent hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent years:
�600,000 on publishing and distributing free magazine Nottingham Arrow to 113,000 households
�200,000 on a "Proud of Nottingham" campaign with signs, banners and posters
A trip to Cannes, on the Cote d'Azur, taken by six council officials including the chief executive Jane Todd in 2009, costing over �30,000
An undisclosed sum to hire a cherry-picker to remove conkers from a tree because officials saw them as a health and safety hazard.
"Labour-controlled Nottingham City Council is playing politics with people's lives. Using the cuts as a political football to hammer hard-working members of the public is irresponsible and shameful," said Mr Shapps.
But on hearing of Mr Shapps' attack, Mr Collins hit back.
He said: "Grant Shapps is a fool.
"He's risking his already risible reputation and fast becoming as big a buffoon as his boss Eric Pickles," he said.
"Only such a fool would think he can attempt to discredit us with nothing more than half-witted and inaccurate headlines from the ever-more partisan newspapers and selective extracts from FOI requests and expect to be taken seriously.
"He's even more of a fool if he's had civil servants trawling the internet to find these stories for him because that would mean he's using public money and civil service time to help him make cheap political points – which is illegal – when he should be focusing on the housing brief that is, after all, his job."
He claimed that the council had already done the things Mr Shapps and Mr Pickles had said would make it easier for authorities to manage cuts.
"Our chief executive has taken a pay cut, we've reduced the number of senior managers by more than one third, we're sharing back office services with Leicestershire County Council," he said.
"We've significantly reduced running costs by moving to a single headquarters building and we've announced that, on top of 600 jobs that have gone during this year and last year, 370 jobs will go next year."
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