Collins (and others) Cover Up #2

You will probably have read the Post's coverage of NCC's decision not pursue the housing allocations scandal any further.

Not the world's biggest surprise admittedly, especially as JoCo had been implicated early on and we couldn't have him being looked at too closely could we?

Similarly, despite the more concrete allegations regarding Cllr Brian Grocock's involvement he was still installed as Lord Mayor, presumably so that someone well-behaved would be chairing council meetings. And I'm sure it's just coincidence that the Standards Committee is stalling over its investigation into what he got up to.

Lastly, we have Tyron Browne who legged it as fast as his little legs could carry him when the shit hit the fan but is comfortably ensconced in hoovering up grant aid from NCC via PATRA and now Nottingham Equal, which is a whole other den of iniquity involving One Nottingham and Cllr Hassan Ahmed (who the Standards Committee also seem to be dragging their feet over investigating).

What is funny is that NCC has supposedly spent £100k on its own solicitors investigating the matter. This from the council who drafts in outside consultants at the drop of a hat and whose legal department couldn't find their own backsides if it was a foggy day. Strange that in this context which would benefit from an outside objective look they decide to stay in house.

And of course the Notts Police (prop. J. Collins Esq) have also decided not to investigate.

Other than that I think the Post's coverage speaks for itself and there's not a lot to add.

PS Happy New Year all.

Addendum - Here's the actual report recommending no further action. Could've sworn that wasn't there before...

Dodgy Councillor to be Next Lord Mayor

The Post is reporting that Cllr Brian Grocock has secured the nomination to be the next Lord Mayor. The formal appointment is due to be made by full council at its meeting on 10 May.

The Post says that his nomination papers were signed by Jon Collins himself, which is strange seeing as JoCo made a public declaration that he accepted 'in full' the findings of the Audit Commission's report into the NCH scandal that Grocock had lied in order to secure constituents a house by claiming that one of them was his grandson. He's up before the Standards Committee over that which already has form for quietly sitting on aspects of that pitiful episode. Grocock's case has already been sitting around for a year and shows no sign of progress.

Of course, the question as to whether he actually lied or not is immaterial. The fact is that he used his influence to subvert the housing allocations policy. Whether it was on behalf of his grandson or the Queen of Sheba hardly matters.

The Lord Mayor's role includes "...act[ing] as the a-political figurehead of the City Council; champion of the city of Nottingham and its people..." I'm not sure how being found to be corrupt is consistent with that. The Lord Mayor's position attracts a special allowance of £24,899 pa on top of the standard councillor's allowance of £11,581 pa. It is therefore the second highest paid post after the Leader.

Politically speaking, and bearing in mind the geological timescales of the Standards Committee, this again makes me wonder whether JoCo has thought all this through. Having a sitting Lord Mayor being censured by the Standards Committee would be bad enough but in a year's time NCC's councillors will be facing an election. It's quite conceivable that the Standards Committee will be announcing its findings uncomfortably close to a time when sitting Labour councillors could do without their party's role in one of the biggest scandals at NCC in recent times being highlighted before a cynical electorate.

Unless of course for some reason JoCo feels confident of the way that the Committee's decision will go...

Naughty NCH Van Driver

Not the worst thing Nottingham City Homes has ever done I admit but here we see a NCH van parking half on the pavement.

In theory this constitutes two offences. Firstly, driving on the pavement (after all, how else did it get there?) and secondly, obstruction. Should any officialdom wish to take this up the picture was taken yesterday at about midday on Saxondale Drive. It was in full view of at least one of the CCTV cameras there. I won't hold my breath.

As far as I'm concerned, NCH and NCC are one and the same. NCH was created simply to please a bunch of accountants and all housing stock is still owned by NCC. What's more, NCC's CCTV team pass information to NCH not, as you might reasonably expect, to fight crime but to grass on tenants keeping pets without permission and other tenancy breaches. I'm quite sure that this is a breach of the Data Protection Act.

But of course if you leave something considerably smaller than a van on the pavement, let's say, a wheelie bin for example, or one of NCC's Community Wardens catches you cycling on the pavement*, you stand a pretty good chance of getting a fixed penalty.

I'll be writing more about this disgraceful 'do as I say not as I do' attitude soon.

*Not condoning cycling on the pavement btw, just using it as an example of double standards.

Weird Search Terms

Having a quick look through me Google Analytics earlier. Seems that somebody hass happened upon this blog via the search term -

"can you store monkeys in council properties nottingham?"

WTF? I'm not making this up they really bloody did. Should I report this to someone? Should NCH be monitoring banana consumption levels in their properties via RFID counting of banana skins in wheelie bins? Is the answer actually 'NO'?

Lessons NOT Learnt after Nottingham City Homes Debacle

Quite rightly, NCC is still ruminating over the potential fall-out and lessons to be learnt following the Audit Commission's report on the housing allocations scam. The Standards Committee met on 4 March 2009 and discussed some of the recommendations relating to Councillor behaviour.

You may remember in one of my previous discussions on this I said

"In an ideal world where everybody is above board, when a Councillor makes representations on behalf of a constituent who is also a close family member or friend, in my experience at other authorities they would declare this interest."

It seems that the Audit Commission said something similar on page 6 of its report (I hadn't read that bit before making my comment honest) and said that NCC should

"Ensure there are mechanisms in place that require councillors to register any potential conflicts of interest when seeking to advcate on behalf of local constituents."

I've got to say that, when I made my original remark I presumed that there would be such a peocedure but, like so many, it was routinely ignored. It didn't really occur to me that THERE WOULD BE NO FRICKIN PROCEDURE WHATSOEVER.

Happily, the Standards Committee has rejected this most basic tenet of accountability on the grounds that it may

"...cause confusion and conflict between it and the Members Code of Conduct in the minds of councillors."

and decided that a bit more guidance would be sufficient instead. This guidance would be on

"...factors which councillors need to consider when acting in housing allocations, with illustrative examples."

So the guidance will only talk about housing allocations, like thats the only possible area where conflict of interest may occur. What about planning for example?

There's nothing in the minutes suggesting where any conflict may actually occur and the idea that conflict of interest measures should be rejected because councillors won't be able to understand them just means that we need some new and cleverer councillors.

So much for the 'lessons will be learnt' rhetoric.

Mea Culpa

Ok, who else apart from me and the Evening Post didn't bother to read the whole Audit Commission re-inspection report on Nottingham City Homes because we fell for all the PR hype about everything being rosy now?

Have a look at para 131 to 133 in the above link. The number of tenants who received Notices Seeking Possession was running at over 27% through 2008. Thats horrendous. Actual evictions were running at around 1% through out the same period although there was a small reduction, that works out to around 300 people per year.

The report says that liaison with Housing Benefits is good and that 'money advice is readily available' via a link up with St Anns Advice Centre. Not sure how much good the latter is to someone in the Meadows, lets hope NCH remember their 'other advice services may be available' disclaimer. Needless to say, there's no mention of Discretionary Housing Payments being an option to help prevent rent arrears, but then Housing Benefits seem to regard their existence as a trade secret.

So back to this trigger happy approach to sending out NSPs. There might be a clue in a report to NCC's Debt Recovery Task and Finsh Panel from July 2006. Here's a quote from early in the report;

"Nottingham’s Corporate Debt Policy states that ‘it is assumed that all individuals (…..) are won’t payers until they are identified as can’t payers.’ This should be reversed and all appropriate needs assessed and referrals made for debt advice early on. "

This was after NCH was set up. Do you think some of this 'won't pay' attitude remained behind at NCH?

I've got to admit, I still haven't read the whole report, if I find anything else in it I'll stick it up here.

Run! Its the rozzers!

Ok so apparently NCC have passed the housing shizzle over to the boys in blue after all.

So what was all that flim flam and name calling at the full Council meeting all about then?

Housing Scandal Pratfalls

I've just been having a read of the Evening Post's reports about last night's Council meeting called to discuss the recent Audit Commission report on council house thievery. You might have heard something of this.

It turns out that, despite all the rhetoric, NCC aren't going to make a formal referral to the police after all. Strangely, the formal response issued immediately on publication of the report which quoted Jon Collins extensively (and which I linked to in my earlier article) seems to be no longer available so I can't go back and compare his attitude then with now.

[Update, thanks to Nick B (see comments) here's a quote from JoCo from that statement;

"The Police were informed in 2006 of investigations into these matters and we may ask them to consider again whether they should investigate them now. Where individuals involved in any of these cases are still employed by either organisation internal investigations will be commenced immediately." (my emphasis)

So he left himself some wiggle room. We 'may' ask the police to look into it but, now much of the fuss has died down we're not going to bother. Lets move on eh people?]

However the fun really starts when opposition councillors start suggesting that, horror of horrors, Labour councillors might possibly have realised that their humble and completely legitimate representations on behalf of their constituents got them a not totally legitimate leg up the queue. Cllr Brian Grocock is the headline boy on this one. For some reason he pretended that a constituent was a relative when contacting on his behalf. Its difficult to imagine a reason for this other than that the clear message that 'Cllr Grocock's lad' needed a house pronto would be heard loud and clear.

One of the Lib Dems highlighted a case where JoCo himself wrote in on behalf of a constituent resulting in a memo from Tyron Browne saying

"As you are aware this is a case that has been brought to my attention by the leader, I should appreciate it, therefore, if you would arrange for an offer to be made as soon as possible."

On being confronted with this JoCo apparently showed his statesmanlike qualities by calling the Lib Dem a 'prat' and blaming his secretary.

Whats interesting to me here is the whole dynamic of what was happening in NCH at the time and, probably, for years previously. Councillors will say in their defence that they never explicitly ordered staff to bump their constituents up the queue and therefore accusations of a conspiracy are unfounded. Yet clearly the report from the Audit Commission shows that those constituents clearly benefited.

I think there are parallels with a media theory constructed by Chomsky and Herman called the 'Propaganda Model'. This examines how the media's capitalist interests effectively 'filter' the stories that are published but not necessarily by an explicit central 'command' from capitalists. Rather a "...decentralized and nonconspiratorial...system of control and processing..." occurs, carried out by individuals who nevertheless are aware of what's expected of them.

So I think a similar thing was happening at NCH/NCC Housing Dept. Of course, councillors never said "move these people to the top of the queue" because they never needed to do, staff already knew what to do. Occasionally a hint would have to be dropped such as claiming that the constituent was a grandson for instance but generally the wheels were already well greased.

Incidentally this whole business of Cllr Grocock is very strange. In an ideal world where everybody is above board, when a Councillor makes representations on behalf of a constituent who is also a close family member or friend, in my experience at other authorities they would declare this interest. The idea being that everyone is open and honest and a councillor's family doesn't get an unfair advantage.

Yet in Nottingham, the Grocock case shows that not only had this basic principle of accountability flown out of the window, it had actually been turned inside out so that a Councillor, knowing that one of his family members would get special treatment, went as far as pretending that a constituent was a family member so they could take advantage of the family special offers too. Unbelievable.

Good News! (don't worry it won't happen often!)

Some good news at last for Nottingham City Homes and, more importantly, their long suffering tenants.

They have passed their most recent Audit Commission inspection so £165m of government money for repairs and improvements is going their way. All cynicism aside, this is good news in anybody's language.

Lets just hope that whether you get a new bathroom doesn't depend on who you're related to...

Link to Eve Post article.

Oh the irony...

One interesting little snippett from the Audit Commission report into Council House allocations and the council's response (see links in articles below) is that the Councillor who told fibs in support of a dodgy council house allocation is Brian Grocock who is, of course the current Sherriff of Nottingham.

Boooo hiss etc ;-D

BNP member on NCH Disabled Person's panel

Nottingham City Homes has been in the local news this week, although I don't think anybody has noticed.

As if things weren't bad enough for them it seems that a 'Gold' member of the BNP has joined their disabled residents' forum, known as 'Homes 4 Us' and claims to have reached the dizzy heights of Vice Chair.

I found this out only a few minutes ago perusing the Evening Post site for any more updates on the corruption scandal and found a comment from Rev J.P. Cotterill-Attaway on one of the articles.

Now the Rev has got a quite easy to remember name and I remember it popping up on the leaked BNP membership list. A bit of a search finds this letter from him to the Post which demonstrates that he's not shy of revealing his membership, although he seems to be on their 'deluded' wing. However, he is described as an activist on the membership list and this would appear to be borne out by the fact that he attempted to run for office, defeated only by a 'paperwork error'.

However, he does seem to have gone a little shy on his myspace page, now its just 'Jason' rather than his full name.

The Rev rather side steps allegations of racism in the BNP in his letter but he might like to look at the BNP's website today if he's not sure. Articles alleging that Lincs County Council would rather employ Romanian Gypsies and travellers than local people when nothing of the sort is evident. Another claiming that 'Third World immigration' turned London into 'Middle East Battleground'. This then becomes 50,000 Muslims and a handful of extremist communists'. In an article discussing the disproportionate number of black people being searched they say;

"Instead of drawing the logical conclusion — that there are higher rates of offenders amongst certain groups — the Race Gestapo has immediately blamed white policemen for the problem."

They forget this is about stop and search and presence on the DNA database not convictions.

Remember that this is the BNP's public face, the bit they allow to get on the news. Yet even here, everything is twisted, inflammatory language and 'white fright' stories are used in order to denigrate ethnic minorities, immigrants and asylum seekers. This is racism, pure and simple. Their latest campaign to young people claims that most racism is against white 'indigenous Britains' which is utterly preposterous.

I can't help wondering if....no, its more than that, I state as an unequivocal fact that membership of this race hate promoting 'party' is incompatible with serving as a member of a consultative committee for NCH, which of course provides housing to a multicultural community.

Disabled ethnic minority NCH tenants may wish to ask themselves whether their interests can ever properly be represented by a BNP activist. Best of luck.

Link to Audit Commission Report

The report is now actually available to download here. I think you can also get it via the link to NCC's response. Must have come up while I was having a nap this afternoon.

Not read it yet.