I refer to your article “Sacked officer wins appeal”, (TES, February 24). While I believe that the facts in the report are correct, I think that the juxtaposition of them is misleading.
Your final paragraph reported that “Last year’s review revealed an overspend of Pounds 6.5 million over two years”.
This may be true, just as it is true that my appeal against dismissal was rejected (I am now taking my case to an industrial tribunal). What is misleading, however, is any inference that my dismissal was for overspending the county council’s budget by Pounds 6.5 million.
Far from it. The agency for which I was responsible made a surplus for the county council of more than Pounds 250,000, as a result of successful trading within the newly established “purchaser-provider” relationship adopted for central education support services in 199394.
The cardinal sin for which I was excommunicated was seeking to commit the surplus across financial years by placing it within the education department’s renewals fund against works to be carried out the following financial year.
Having rushed into the arrangement of full internal trading for central education support services, the county council has now pulled back and abandoned the agencies it so recently established, along with some of the key managers who made the trading system work and produce profit.
CLIVE HADFIELD Grenfell Road Stoneygate Leicester.
