Richard Taylor

Cambridge City Council lost almost £650,000 of public money after the company it appointed to run the online ticket sales for the 2008 Folk Festival failed to hand over any money. I have written a number of articles following the council’s attempts to understand what went wrong so that similar disasters can be avoided in […]

On the evening of Monday the 30th of March 2009 Cambridge City Council’s Civic Affairs Committee considered a report into how the council came to lose £644,951 which was not paid to the council by the company it appointed to sell Folk Festival tickets online in 2008. I have written a previous article on the […]

The report paints a picture of the City Council as institution in a state of chaos where junior council officers working on the folk festival were free to ignore advice from the council’s finance and legal departments. The key questions of where the city’s money is, and what’s being done to try and get it back have not been tackled. It also isn’t the independent, external, report promised.

Following from my my response to the news that Cambridge City Council is owed £618,000 by SecureTicket UK Ltd., the company it engaged to sell Folk Festival tickets online and the questions which I asked about this money on the 8th of January, another opportunity to ask questions arose last week. At Cambridge City Council’s […]

The collapse of icelandic banks in which Cambridge City Council had invested £9m left a major hole in the council’s finances. While the government had instructed local authorities not to budget for the loss of the capital, they had not made any allowance for loss of interest which councils had expected to be paid. The […]

I attended Cambridge City Council’s West Central Area Committee on the 8th of January 2009. During the public forum I asked a series of questions about the Cambridge City Council news release stating the council is owed £618,000 by SecureTicket UK and is taking legal action in the High Court in an attempt to recover […]

On the 7th of January 2009 Cambridge City Council issued a news release stating that the council was owed £618,000 from ticket sales for the Folk Festival which the ticket seller “SecureTicket UK” was due to pay in August 2008 but had still not been received by the council. The council has initiated legal proceedings […]