[Not] Jon Collins Personal Mentor

Bit of a rum do this business in the 'Post' of JoCo supposedly spending over £100k on a 'personal mentor'. JoCo is, of course, in full denial mode saying that the payments to a Harold Tinworth was for policy advice and support to himself, other members of the executive, senior officers and 'One Nottingham'. Kind of sounds as though HT is running NCC single handed in which case he sounds pretty good value for money.

But as Alanadale has already said, this attempt at a defense from JoCo shows that, in the political phrase du jour, he simply 'doesn't get it'.

What's a bit odd though is that there's very little info about Mr Tinworth in his role as a consultant. A Google search for his company (the 'Post' says he runs a firm of consultants called 'Regional and Local Associates') and a search for him mostly seems to bring up stuff about his local authority background. A search on the NCC website reveals he was once an adviser on the reform of (forerunner to 'One Nottingham') the 'One City Partnership Nottingham' (see p16 of this report) back in 2005 but I think that work was done for Government Office East Midlands rather than freelance.

I have to admit though that, just because I can't find something doesn't automatically mean it's not there but if anybody can enlighten me on this chap's background please do via the comments or email.

A little bit more worryingly, although subject to the same proviso as above, is the fact that there appears to be no record of a decision to approve the funding of HT's work for the council. At this level of expenditure any approval would be via a portfolio holder decision, most likely by JoCo himself. Yet I've painstakingly gone through the list of portfolio decisions back to the beginning of 2005 (that's a couple days of my life I won't get back) and I can't find anything remotely relevant to Mr Tinworth or his firm.

So it's all a bit mysterious and the lack of info makes it rather difficult to comment properly. Someone should have a bit more of a look into this business about the approval decision to employ him though.