A warning has gone out about a telephone scam involving a conman who pretends he is working for Boston Borough Council.
The hoaxer contacted a resident by phone and purported to represent a company called CCPS who he said was working on behalf of the council.  The man was told if he paid £39.99 over the phone immediately they would get his council tax reduced and send him a refund cheque for £600 by doing a band reduction.
The gentleman did not realise this was not Boston Borough Council until he gave his bank details to them and they suddenly hung up. 
The council is not doing band reduction work and is not responsible for revaluations. The only circumstances in which the council would ask for bank details would be if someone contacted the council asking to set up a direct debit or make a payment.  

The borough council has teamed up with crime-fighting charity Crimestoppers to warn young people to be on their guard when out and about to help prevent them from becoming a victim of pickpockets.
While the recent quarterly update from the Home Office reports that police-recorded crime showed a fall in most crime types, theft from a person was one crime that did rise - by seven per cent. Lincolnshire Crimestoppers in collaboration with Safer Communities Lincolnshire County Council, Boston Community Safety Partnership and Lincolnshire Police are mounting a campaign to urge people in the Boston area to pass on information they may have about personal robbery and to be on their guard while carrying valuable items.
 

Who wins? You decide. And decide you did when D-Day for the U Decide community improvement initiative was held in Boston on Saturday.
People living in High Street South were asked to decide which improvement projects should go ahead from a list of ten projects bidding for cash from a £10,000 pot.
The first-placed winner was Lincolnshire Probation Area, community payback unit - to buy tools and equipment for a group of offenders supervised by a paid probation supervisor to clean up the High Street area. Offenders will undertake litter picks and tackle grot-spot areas for one day a week for 45 weeks with effect from April, 2010.
 

On January 26, 2010, the Consideration and Hearing Sub-Committee of the Council’s Standards Committee considered a complaint that Cllr Singleton-McGuire, a member of Boston Borough Council, had breached the Boston Borough Council’s Code of Conduct.

The allegation was that Cllr Singleton-McGuire, in linking from the Council’s website to his own website and there posting comments about the complainant, was using resources provided by Boston Borough Council improperly for political purposes in breach of paragraph 6 (b) (ii) of the Code of Conduct which requires that when using the resources of the authority a member must ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political purposes (including party political purposes).
The Consideration and Hearing Sub-Committee decided that Cllr Singleton-McGuire had not breached the Code of Conduct because the link to Cllr Singleton-McGuire’s website from the Council’s website did not amount to a “resource” within the meaning of para 6 (b) (ii) of the Code of Conduct.