Call for council leader to resign over laundry row

COUNCIL Leader Roger Stone was called on to resign this week amid fresh allegations over what campaigners have dubbed “Hospicegate.”The row over whether Cllr Stone knew Rotherham Hospice was a customer of the authority’s laundry service w

COUNCIL Leader Roger Stone was called on to resign this week amid fresh allegations over what campaigners have dubbed “Hospicegate.”

The row over whether Cllr Stone knew Rotherham Hospice was a customer of the authority’s laundry service when it was scrapped intensified as new evidence emerged.

Emails have been produced apparently showing that two other leading councillors were aware that the hospice—which is facing a bill for an extra £18,000 a year because of the closure—was a customer of the subsidised service.

Rotherham Borough Council—the only local authority in South Yorkshire which was still running an in-house service—confirmed in October that it was scrapping the scheme despite public protests because it was losing £200,000 a year.

But anger over the move was reignited when Cllr Stone said during a full council meeting earlier this month that he did not realise that the hospice was a customer.

This followed Advertiser revelations of the cost of finding a new service for the Broom Road facility—prompting campaigners to call for the borough council to foot the bill.

Now, former councillor Michael Sylvester has claimed that it is time Cllr Stone resigned because he has either misled the council or been incompetent.

Shona McFarlane, the council's director of health and wellbeing, said: “If the hospice cannot find another provider who is less than 350 per cent dearer than the council then we were clearly undercharging for the service.

“To have tripled or quadrupled our prices to bring them into the real world would have been an unacceptable option.

“We understand the difficulty the hospice is facing but would maintain we have been providing a service to them for a long time that has supported them, precisely because it was so cheap.

“We also gave the hospice nine months' notice that there may be a change to the service, to give them time to find another supplier.”