Councillor Keegan axed from the cabinet

frank

Cheshire East Council have confirmed that Councillor Frank Keegan has lost his job as Resources Portfolio Holder and is no longer a member of the cabinet.

His name has already been removed from the Cheshire East website, yet council leader Wesley Fitzgerald has refused to provide an explanation as to why our local councillor has left the cabinet.

All Councillor Wesley Fitzgerald would say is that "The change of Cabinet is an internal matter which I am dealing with. I am not prepared to comment further at this time."

We understand that Councillor Keegan, who moved to the village in 1984 and has been a Parish Councillor since 1987, is still a borough councillor for the Alderley Ward.

He joined the Cabinet in Macclesfield Borough Council in 2004 with the Environment Portfolio, took the Finance Portfolio in 2006 and in 2008 became Leader of Macclesfield Borough Council. He was then elected to Cheshire East Shadow Council in 2008 and became Cabinet Member for Resources, covering Finance, HR, Legal and IT.

Unfortunately Councillor Keegan has been unavailable for comment in the past couple of days but we understand from a fellow councillor that he fell out with council leader Wesley Fitzgerald over the current financial situation. The council needs to make savings of £30 million next year, and apparently has low reserves so drastic cuts are called for which the two men disagreed about.

Frank Keegan is the fourth conservative councillor to leave the Cabinet during the past year, the other three were David Brickhill, Paul Findlow and Brian Silvester.

The councillor we spoke with said "Wesley Fitzgerald is very worried about numbers at the next election and whether the conservatives can maintain a majority, yet he is doing a really good job at removing them."

Cheshire East have confirmed that the leader of the council, Councillor Wesley Fitzgerald, will be taking responsibility for Finance and Resources assisted by Councillor Peter Mason and Councillor David Brown.

Click here to read my recent interview with Frank Keegan regarding budget pressures and hopefully I will manage to catch up with him shortly to obtain his side of the story.

Tags:
Cheshire East Council, Frank Keegan
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Comments

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.

Giles Watmough
Saturday 13th November 2010 at 10:33 pm
Wesley Fizgerald in charge of Finance? Prepare for skyrocketing expenses and salaries!

Anyone who disagrees with this bully is sacked or ignored - he appears to have only his own interests at heart woe betide any dissenting cabinet members who actually seek to represent their constituents or the good of the community.