Think the Tories Are Reading the Blog

Today is the full council meeting which pals from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be attending. Good luck to them with that.

On looking at the agenda, and in particular the questions to be asked by councillors, I came across this -

Think they might have been reading the blog...

Just for the record, it did cross my mind contacting one of the opposition councillors to see if they'd be interested in asking questions about the issue but I kind of draw the line at working with Tories. I also briefly considered contacting one of my local (Labour) councillors but ... yeah right.

My guess is that JoCo will answer this by throwing a few insults, claims of 'needlessly' re-openiing 'closed' issues and not actually answering the question at all. Bonus points if I get a mention by JoCo as the inspiration, probably as a 'sad blogger'. Be interesting to see what happens.

Is Jon Collins a Shameless Liar Part 2

So, following on from yesterday's piece about JoCo's fibbing to Leftlion, here's what happened next.

Rather than barge in accusing JoCo of untruths I thought it would be an idea to give him the opportunity to publicly explain himself. After all, there could have been further developments since that report four years ago. So I submitted a question to be answered at full council in the following terms -

"In a recent interview with local magazine Leftlion, Cllr Jon Collins was asked about the mis-allocation of council houses and the perceived lack of action taken.

In reply Cllr Collins stated -

"A number of people were prosecuted and lost their jobs, others had formal warnings and several of the houses in question were re-allocated."

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/councillor-jon-collins/id/6994

The report to the Council's Executive Board in December 2010 said that no houses had been re-possessed due to legal arguments being weak, one right-to-buy application was being contested and one overpaid right to buy discount had been recovered and that was it.

As far as disciplinary action was concerned, one agency worker was let go, three permanent staff were investigated, in only one case was disciplinary action pursued and a final warning was issued.

http://committee.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/Data/Executive%20Board/20101221/Agenda/$PIRreport%20-%2046138.doc.pdf

Of course, it may be that more things had happened since that report, despite it being presented as a final summary. Perhaps the leader could update citizens with the full picture of action taken and thus explain the apparent inconsistency.

Lastly, did the City Council explore the possibility of individuals being charged with misconduct in public office? Was any advice sought on this possibility? If so, what was this advice?"

Want to know what happened? They refused to let the question be asked. The reply I received on 4 December 2014 was as follows -

"The Lord Mayor has considered your question and decided that it should receive a departmental written response. This is because it relates to a historical issue that has been addressed in Council questions and other public forums already."

I wrote back to challenge this and received the following the next day -

"The Lord Mayor decides which questions are asked at the Full Council meeting and has made the decision that this question should receive a written response.

I have spoken with the department and they have confirmed that the position given in the Executive Board report you have referred to is still the position so I’m sorry but there is no further information that can be provided."

I should first of all say that I've received no departmental written response so far and I don't expect to get one. The minutes of the full council meeting on 8 December 2014 falsely state the following -

"No questions from citizens were received."

The upshot of this is that JoCo can hardly claim that he wasn't given an opportunity to explain himself in a high profile public forum. After all, he was the one moaning that nobody wanted to report the end findings of the enquiry and said that things should be done 'as transparently as possible'.

It also means that the Lord Mayor, Cllr Ian Malcolm, is prepared to spike citizens' questions to council if they might be embarrassing to the Politburo which essentially makes the whole thing meaningless. According the the Lord Mayor's webpage his key task is -

"To act as the a-political figurehead of the City Council; champion of the city of Nottingham and its people and symbolise the social cohesion of the city and its many cultures and faith"

Note the 'a-political' (sic) bit. He should be ashamed of himself.

The one thing the replies do confirm is that no further progress has been made since the Executive Board report, in turn confirming that JoCo's Leftlion comments were indeed a flight of fancy.

Cllr Jon Collins, your pants are on fire.

Is Jon Collins a Shameless Liar?

So the blog awakes from its slumber for 2015. Will it last? Who knows...

But back to the matter in hand. JoCo appeared in local music mag 'Leftlion' for an interview back in October. It wasn't exactly challenging, more 'Left Love-In' than Leftlion if you ask me but he was asked about why 'no action' was taken over the Housing Allocations scandal. I will quote his answer in full -

"We did take action, it was just largely unreported by local media who were very quick to report the early facts, but less interested in covering the action points after that. A number of people were prosecuted and lost their jobs, others had formal warnings and several of the houses in question were re-allocated. The issue illustrates why we don’t want to work on projects like reconfiguring city boundaries and why it’s better to do our core jobs to the best of our ability, as transparently as possible."

The first thing you'll notice is that the last sentence is just gobbledegook, it makes no sense whatsoever. But in addition he states as fact the following -

- 'a number' of people were prosecuted and lost their jobs
- 'others' (note the plural) had formal warnings
- 'several' houses were re-allocated.

Compare this to the only public statement ever made by NCC at the Executive Board meeting in December 2010. You can read it for yourself to check but as far as I can tell the sum total of action taken is as follows -

- NO tenancies repossessed, although one case is said to be 'under review' (paras 1.3-1.5).
- One 'right to buy' application being 'contested' and another right to buy discount being recovered via the courts (para 1.6)
- NO fraud cases brought (para 1.7)

None of this could really be said to be 'several houses re-allocated' and at best it could only be said that two people were prosecuted, more likely only one. Technically speaking 'two' is of course 'a number' but that's not how most people would interpret it in conversation. So far we have clear falsehood and obfuscation from JoCo there.

- ONE agency worker had their 'service terminated'. There's no information as to whether this extended as far as being sacked from their agency but we'll count it up as a 'person losing their job'.
- two workers investigated but no disciplinary action pursued
- one worker who received a final written warning

So one worker lost their job (possibly) and one received a written warning. Not 'a number' or 'others' plural at all. JoCo's account to Leftlion is demonstrably false.

For completeness I would suggest that there is absolutely no possibility that JoCo would not have been kept fully informed of all action taken, in considerately more detail than that given publicly too. He was at the Executive Board meeting where the report was presented and, even though he left early, he would have received a copy of the report.

So in conclusion, JoCo expressed false statements, along with some obfuscation, and he must have known them to be false. The word for a person who does that is 'liar'.

TBC in part 2

Hold the Front Page! A Bit of Info About the Housing Scandal has been Allowed Out!

Only a little bit mind you. And what has come out simply raises more questions than it answers.

Okay then. As you know the housing allocations scandal has been going on forever with NCC desperate to prevent any info about what went on, and more seriously, why nobody has been made to answer for it, getting out into the open.

My own FoI request has been going on since May 2011 and there has been allegations of vexatiousness (quickly but wordlessly dropped), exemption bingo and a thoroughly unsatisfactory Information Commissioner's decision which brought us back to square one.

Since then NCC has withdrawn an appeal against another requester's case where the Commissioner ordered disclosure of some information and, as my request overlapped with that one, I got the info too.

Considering what has come out, the suspicion that NCC is frankly taking the piss with resisting FoI requests is somewhat reinforced. It is pretty fucking outrageous that public money has been spent stopping this information getting out.

So, what have we got? Well, only information from 2006 unfortunately consisting of

• Hand written notes of a meeting between NCC and the Police on 15 May 2006 where removing IT equipment from housing offices for examination was discussed (note also the reference to 'players'!)
• A detailed briefing document summarising a meeting on 11 July 2006. This clearly shows that the Police were on message with investigating the matter, had formed an initial view on what the focus of the investigation should be (this is redacted but I think we can safely assume it to be 'The Sports and Social Club That Must Not Be Named'). If anything, NCC are saying that the Police have been a bit directionless and seem fired up with getting further info together and passing it on.
• A brief summary document on the three meetings that had occurred between NCC and the Police that year.

And that's it. My request asked for quite a lot more, in particular later meetings, so I have written back to remind them of this fact. Probably best not to hold my breath...

But the upshot of this is that it seems clear that the Police were well up for investigating the matter. So why did this attitude change, leaving NCC to spend £100k on external solicitors covering for its own legal team carefully looking the other way investigating the matter, with no prosecutions?

The answer will presumably be in the minutes of meetings in 2010 (which we know happened from earlier disclosures. Note also in there, Notts Police Head of Fraud Kevin Fidler. This shit writes itself). As such, I suspect a continuing battle to get hold of them.

Wish me luck.

Addendum; Following a comment on Indymedia I went back and checked some dates and it does seem that the July-Sept 2010 meetings that likely decided the fate of the police investigation were hot on the feet of JoCo being appointed Chair of the Police Authority and installing his 'Change Management' team. Which is rather an amazing coincidence.

NCC Withdraws Appeal Against Housing Allocations Disclosure Decision

Good News!

I think anyway.

A while ago I wrote about NCC's appeal against an Information Commissioner decision ordering them to release minutes of meetings between themselves and Notts Police, during which it was decided that the Police wouldn't be investigating after all.

According to the Information Rights Tribunal's current cases list, that appeal has now been withdrawn. This presumably means those minutes will be published in the not too distant future. Scroll down to case number EA/2012/0112, or do search for 'Nottingham'.

I will be keeping an eye on the disclosure log.

No Jobseekers, No Sickies, No Dogs. Economic Cleansing at Stonebridge?

Today I found out about a potentially disturbing and possibly illegal decision made about new lettings at the Stonebridge Park development of so-called 'social housing'.

The last time we heard about this particular development was when the nearby City Farm was presented with an apparent fait accompli by NCC to have 10% of their land taken away for parking for residents of the new estate. A portent of the levels of user friendliness to come maybe?

Anyway, it seems that at least some of the new social housing is to be subject to a 'local lettings policy' to restrict the type of people eligible for a tenancy. The policy aims, in short to '...improve the social profile of the area' by introducing a lettings policy that '...tackles crime and antisocial behaviour and also takes a different approach to the letting of the properties by focusing particularly on potential residents who are in employment or training.'

Ok, that looks a lot to me like they consider people who aren't in employment or training as having a negative impact on the social profile of an area. No?

Further into the report the following condition is cited (among others) -

"You are in employment or on a training programme i.e. apprenticeship and you can demonstrate the ability to pay rent subject to income assessment. Applicants in receipt of Disability Living Allowance will not be subject to employment/income conditions and those of pensionable age will be considered."

Preumably, the concessions to those on DLA and pensioners are there in a ham-fisted attempt at avoiding legal action for disability discrimination or the political fall-out of having a 'no pensioners' rule. Indeed, the appended Equality Impact Assessment notes no problems caused to people with disabilities by the policy other than some tosh about problems caused by having to wait for adaptations.

The problem here is, yet again, NCC's utter inability to understand the meaning of 'disability', both in everyday life and as defined by the Equality Act. Not all disabled people get DLA by a long chalk and, contrary to the policy's apparent expectations, quite a lot of people getting DLA do in fact work.

On the other hand, all those on Incapacity Benefit or its replacement Employment Support Allowance are UNABLE to work, that is a key defining condition of the benefit and a great deal of them will be defined as disabled under the Equality Act. I think what I'm saying here is that NCC is about to face a number of disability discrimination claims if the policy  remains in this state.

That aside (and I haven't even mentioned that their crappy EIA accepts that the policy may well discriminate against women due to most lone parents, who are significantly less likely to be working, being women. The justification is basically that they can go somewhere else. I kid you not) we should have a look at the whole basis of this belief that out of work benefit claimants are undesirables. NCC's evidence for this is based entirely on the experiences of the Victoria Centre flats which has had a similar policy for 25 years, according to the report. This 'evidence' includes the 'positive opinion of the Housing Patch Manager' (srsly) and that a 3 year survey of the dreaded anti-social behaviour' fingered 66% (27 in all) of miscreants being out of work.

First of all, that figure is meaningless without knowing the overall work status rates of the whole population of the flats. If 66% of all tenants are out of work then it cannot be argued that those out of work are more likely to be involved with ASB. Furthermore, it turns out that 12 of the 27 were receiving DLA or Incapacity Benefit so this raises questions as to the effectiveness of the entire policy i.e. they want to stamp out ASB but they are planning to allow DLA claimants in, but not Incapacity Benefit claimants, even though past evidence has shown they may commit ASB. So, the policy is an irrational shambles as well as likely to be discriminatory, think we've seen this somewhere before.

The sheer crapness of the evidence combined with a determination to go ahead anyway is the kind of policy based evidence that keeps the Daily Mail warm at night and has no real basis in fact. Anti-social behaviour will NOT be reduced by not accepting benefit claimants as tenants but it WILL result in fewer housing choices for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

We Pay As NCC Ramps Up the Guarding of JoCo's Secrets

A couple of months ago I wrote about an Information Commissioner decision notice that looked like it might well open up some of the murkiness around the police's decision not to prosecute anyone involved with the Housing Allocations scandal. The Commissioner refused to accept NCC's claims that minutes of meetings between the council and the police were exempt. The decision notice is here.

However, I did say 'subject to appeal' at the time and this appears to have been sensible. Because, yes folks, NCC has decided to spend your tax pounds on an appeal to the Information Tribunal. It is asking YOU to pay for it's attempts to keep you in the dark, to cover up its shifty little dealings.

Scroll down about a quarter of the way down this document (or do a search for 'Nottingham', it's the first one) and you'll find case number EA/2012/0112, formerly known to the Information Commissioner as FS5031799. Yes, it's the case linked to above with Nottingham City Council up there as the appellant.

JoCo regularly bleats on about the cost of Freedom of Info to the council and we have previously taken the piss out of him for doing so. It must be very time consuming and expensive for NCC's lawyers to be pursuing appeals to this level and you really have to wonder whether to do so is within the public interest.

I won't be holding my breath, waiting for JoCo's principled stand against the cost of his lawyers.

The Net is Closing...

It's the thing that JoCo has been hoping would go away but, in the manner of pulling teeth, NCC is being forced to reveal information on the Housing Allocations scandal. Subject to appeal of course.

The Information Commissioner has just released a decision notice on the issue. You may remember that, despite initial positive noises the police were never asked to mount a formal investigation into the matter. Council officials did meet with the police in 2006 but we don't know what was discussed. That maybe about to change.

Somebody has asked NCC for the minutes of those meetings under the Freedom of Information Act. Amazingly, NCC refused and went off on its usual delaying tactics and exemption bingo and the matter has ended up in the Information Commissioner's lap. He has now released his decision notice.

Initially, NCC's refusal was based on the exemption for information used in an investigation which an authority has a duty to carry out to decide whether someone has committed a criminal offence. The ICO was having none of that, saying that NCC was under no such duty. At most, its possibilities amounted to a power to decide on whether to conduct civil recovery proceedings against individuals but only the police could press criminal charges e.g. for misconduct in public office.

NCC's second objection, that the minutes included details of a 'group' of individuals they were investigating and releasing details of them would breach Data Protection principles was on stronger ground. After all, you can't go around being 'cavalier' with people's personal data can you? Even though the number of people in Nottingham who aren't aware of who EXACTLY that group is now only consists of sub-rock dwellers.

So the Information Commissioner has ordered the release of the minutes of three meetings between the council and the police in 2006 but with the details of the 'group' of individuals redacted. Like I say, that won't diminish their impact a great deal. It might finally shed some light on why the hell the police utterly failed to do their job at the time.

Will they appeal? Time will tell.

Note; I've also still got an outstanding complaint to the ICO about a request that covers the same ground plus some extras. Will let you know how I get on...

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away

Finally we hear from the Post that Cllr Grocock has been cleared by the Standards Committee over his 'grandson' getting a house, as highlighted originally in the report on the housing allocations scandal.

Not really a surprise, especially seeing as the monitoring officer appears to have been acting as an unofficial advocate on Grocock's behalf. His preliminary report urged the committee to throw the case out without a hearing. However, the committee would have none of that, possibly because on the day only the independent members and a Lib Dem were in attendance.

Oddly, when it came to appointing the members of the hearing sub-committee last July, i.e. the people who would hear the case, the committee deviated from its normal practice of appointing the members themselves and, on the recommendation of the monitoring officer, agreed to delegate responsibility for doing so to the Deputy Chief Executive 'in consultation with the Chair' who hadn't turned up that day. So apart from what's in the Post report we currently don't know who sat in judgment.

Anyway the Post does report that the independent member on the committee made it clear she thought his conduct was a breach of the Code of Conduct. However it seems that the monitoring officer swung the day saying -

"This happened because a senior housing officer [Tyron Browne] issued what could be described as an oblique instruction to the housing office and a tenancy was allocated. I remain of the view that the actual cause was the senior housing officer and the culture at the time."

Browne of course has since resigned and has never faced any sanction.

So, as you can see, a big boy really did do it and then ran away.

Grocock Report Published

The Monitoring Officer's report to NCC's Standards Committee, concerning Cllr Grocock and his 'grandson', has finally been published on the council's website, in advance of the Standards hearing Sub-Committee hearing the case next Friday.

This matter first went before the Standards Committee early 2009 so it has taken the best part of three years to reach this stage. As far as I know this is where a decision is actually made although don't bank on it.

As it's been so long let's remind ourselves that the case against Grocock is that he falsely claimed that a young man was his grandson when advocating for him and his partner to be allocated a property. The couple who had only specified Bestwood as an area where he would accept a property. In the end he was allocated a property in Bestwood Park, an extremely high demand area where applicants would normally spend years waiting for a property.

A factor that has previously seen little attention and which I hadn't really taken account of is that Grocock initially made his case via the Portfolio Holder for Housing at the time, Cllr David Trimble and it was him who made the approach to a 'senior officer' (unnamed but we might be able to hazard a guess). It is apparently only in his approaches to Trimble on the couple's behalf that Grocock described his constituent as his 'grandson' and had never done so before when previously approaching housing staff on his behalf.

Grocock says that he only approached Trimble after there being 'no progress' with his attempts to persuade housing officers direct of the merits of his constituent's case. In fact he had been sent two emails explaining why the couple were unlikely to get an allocation any time soon. Normally, a councillor's involvement should stop there.

Grocock's defence, and the conclusion of the monitoring officer, is that in using the 'grandson' term he was ensuring that he was declaring a personal interest as the man was a close family friend. He claims never to have got the emails from housing staff.

Now, this would be fine and a properly functional and honest environment, although you do wonder why he didn't just use the term 'close family friend' which would have been the truth. But at the time it wasn't a functional environment and the use of the term would be more likely to mean that officers would simply see that 'Cllr Grocock's lad' needed a house and to make sure one was provided.

To be fair the report does acknowledge the potential dual interpretations possible of the various facts (see p22) and says that a judgment call is required. Support for Grocock being essentially a 'good egg' is drawn from his 'long record of public life' (ignoring the fact that his stint as Lord Mayor was in its entirety occurring while he was under investigation by the Standards Committee, a situation that should not have been allowed to happen. More on this later) and the fact that he self-referred for investigation and helped facilitate it by allowing evidence collected for the District Auditor to be considered.

However, the alternative interpretation has a good deal of merit too.  Let's imagine for example that it wasn't 'lack of progress' that frustrated Cllr Grocock but that he simply didn't like the answers he had received. It's hard to imagine that he had no idea of the way things were run in the housing department at the time but maybe he didn't have access to the people that mattered himself so he had to go and see Trimble. Perhaps he needed a stronger argument for assistance than just 'close family friend'.

There are interview notes included with the report and it is notable that Grocock spends a lot of time telling the interviewers what he doesn't know. This is the standard tactic of those in power who are caught with their trousers down (for a recent example of a high profile non-Nottingham instance of this see the Murdochs before that Parliamentary committee). It seems fairly evident that Grocock isn't the sharpest tool in the box but the idea that he had no idea of what was going on is not credible.

Another factor that reduces the surprise level of the report's conclusion is that, as I mentioned above, Grocock got himself installed in the Lord Mayor's robes while the investigation was still going on. This strongly indicates that someone was pretty sure that he would be exonerated as otherwise it is not considered wise to elevate the position of a person under investigation.

Another interesting aspect is that, despite the man concerned supposedly being a close family friend, in the interview with Monitoring Officer he says that he was never contacted by him again once the matter had been passed to Trimble. That's a bit odd don't you think? I think it's possible that knowing exactly who this chap is might be quite informative.

So, as I say, the Standards Committee meets next Friday to finally consider the case. The fact that they previously refused to simply rubber-stamp the monitoring officer's conclusion is encouraging but I wouldn't want to put any money on things going against Grocock in the end.

Auditor Schmauditor

The District Auditor for Nottingham City Council, Mrs Sue Sunderland, is not fit to be in her job. She has routinely failed to hold the council to account and in fact has repeatedly endorsed NCC's efforts to conceal massive corruption from the public. Let me explain -

Council Publicity

NCC has a history of flouting the law on council publicity. What does Mrs Sunderland do? She writes them a letter. That's it.

Housing Scandal

This is of course the biggie and should have resulted in mass resignations amongst politicians and prosecutions by the police. In the event none of this has happened. NCC has spent £100k on outside solicitors carrying out the council's normal work while the internal legal team carried out its own investigation. Not only is this inefficient (the external legal bods would have had to spend extra time learning NCC's procedures) but the internal team would clearly have been briefed where not to look.

What does Mrs Sunderland do? She says this is all ok and that £100k is a lot to spend on an investigation. It is of course approximately 25% of what she charges for her auditing 'skills' annually.

Harold Tinworth

Tinworth has been working for the council as an £870/day consultant for NCC since around 2006 but his work had never been put out to tender until, following pressure from me, Mrs Sunderland told them to. Opinions vary as to how he was ever employed in the first place.

Mrs Sunderland refused to look into the matter beyond instructing NCC to initiate a proper tender exercise for the work.

Since then the open secret that he was providing political advice on public pay blew up. Despite this Mrs Sunderland refused to re-investigate, saying -

"Following on from the articles in the newspaper to which you drew my attention I have now had an opportunity to explore this matter further. I have not found any evidence that would contradict the Council's response that the contract is for professional support and development for the Leader and other executive councillors and is not related to any political work. As a consequence and linking back to my earlier response to you dated 27 July 2010 I cannot justify any further investigation into this matter."She later claimed -

"My remit is currently limited to the financial years 2009/10 and 2010/11. From the copy invoices I have seen the expenditure during 2009/10 was <£30,000, whilst this may seem a significant sum to an individual, when seen in the context of the Council’s annual gross expenditure of £1,066 million it is negligible"

However I have since heard that this may not be true and that an 'extraordinary audit' could be carried out in these circumstances.

Future Jobs Fund

Interestingly, during my correspondence with Mrs Sunderland regarding the Tinworth affair Mrs S tried to reassure me of her determination to get to the truth as follows -

"You may be aware that I haven't given my certificate on the 2009/10 accounts because I am investigating a query raised by another elector, so I can assure you that I will investigate areas which fall within my remit where there are sufficient grounds to warrant it."

This turned out to be reference to the 'Jobs Plan Review' report.

Now we know that this report contains serious criticisms of the council so it should be public yes? Mrs Sunderland again -

"The Jobs Plan Review is not a public interest report (ie a report issued under S8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998) it is therefore for the Council (not me) to decide how to deal with it."

Oh.

It is to be noted that a District Auditor has absolute discretion as to whether a report they issue is to be a Public Interest Report.

According to JoCo it was initially planned that the investigation would result in a PIR. From the last council meeting -

"It appears that the DA originally believed that the  allegation,  suggesting,  that  as  a  result  she  may  have  to  issue  a public  report  on  the  matter."

So she changed her mind for some reason, despite the report containing serious criticisms. Now why would she do that eh?

I asked her the following questions -

"1) Why did you choose not to make the report into this matter a public interest report?

2) Are you willing to reverse this decision and make the report public? If not why not?

3) Are you or are you not willing to make any comment at NCC's Audit Committee meeting on Friday concerning the council's decision to exempt your report and insist it is included in the minutes?

4) Considering the number of times that NCC has been found to be acting illegally in reports of various status and your failure to hold them to account do you believe that it is appropriate for the Leader of NCC to continue working for the Audit Commission, bearing in mind the considerable perception of bias that this leads to, not to mention legitimate concerns about what he actually is training your clients to do?"

She refused to answer any of them, merely saying -

"I am sorry but I cannot get into a debate with you on this subject. I have investigated the allegations fully and independently and I have reported my findings, conclusions and recommendations to the Council. I will also follow up on the action taken in response to my recommendations."

So that's alright then.

The most generous conclusion we can draw from all this is that Mrs Sunderland is incompetent and prefers the quiet life, having neither the ability nor the will to robustly challenge and hold NCC to account. For this supine jobbing bureaucrat every man, woman and child in Nottingham is charged something like £1.20 per year. Good value she is not.

However incompetence as an excuse can only go so far and many of Mrs Sunderland's failures start to look somewhat wilful and a little more sinister. Is the relationship too cosy? Yes I personally think it is and I think that it stinks to high heaven.

So someone tell me; who audits the Auditors?

NCC Plays FoI Exemption Bingo

Back to my FoI request on the housing allocations scandal which I briefly discussed here.

You may remember that NCC initially claimed my request was vexatious, calling me obsessive and other unpleasant things. I challenged that and they came up with an entirely new set of reasons why I could only have a little bit of information. That was about as far as I got round to writing last time, citing laziness and a desire to get my next challenge in before blogging about it.

Well, the Information Commissioner kindly said I didn't need to send a completely new application in but obviously I needed to provide revised grounds to challenge the revised reasons why I can't be told anything. It took me about four days but these grounds are here and I have sent them winging their way to the ICO. Have a read of them if you like but be prepared for long-winded dreariness. It had to be like that for reasons I will now explain.

Basically, NCC appears to have attempted to cram in as many exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act as possible. Let me list them for you now;

Section 12 where the costs of gathering the information exceed a statutory limit

Section 30(1)(a) concerning investigations by public authorities

Section 31(1)(a), (b) and (h), all concerning law enforcement

Section 36(2)(b)(i) exempting information that could 'inhibit the free and frank provision of advice'. They had to get a 'qualified person' to decide that one you know

and finally, section 42, that exempts information that is covered by legal professional privilege, basically confidential lawyers' advice.

Remember, all that is AFTER they had originally relied on section 14, vexatious requests, which they then abandoned without any explanation after I had spent a significant amount of time preparing a challenge against it.

Now let's have a look at some of the stuff that they did tell me. Here's an interesting admission -

"For information, I can confirm that a meeting was requested with Councillor Collins however Nottinghamshire Police did not indicate the purpose of the meeting. Once it was established that the meeting related to housing allocations it was passed to Glen O’Connell to progress and Councillor Collins had no further involvement with
Nottinghamshire Police over the issue."

They don't give any date for this but it would be interesting to know if it was around the time that JoCo took over the Chair of Notts Police Authority.

Another suspicious looking snippet came from Chief Constable Julia Hodson in an email to Jane Todd -

"As a result I think that our communications people need to get together to mitigate the risks around the publication of the outcome."

NCCLols Translation Service; "We'd better get our story straight before the shit hits the fan".

Also, check out the significant redactions of that email. No explanation was given for that which is a breach of the duty to provide a proper refusal notice.

That's about it really. There are a couple more emails about meetings but nothing with any substance in them and one of them containing further unexplained redactions. In other words they told me nothing.

Still, the substantial issues are now before the ICO and NCC cannot be assured of their exemptions being supported. Whatever happens I suspect this case will go on to the Information Tribunal because I very much doubt that NCC would agree to release the info if the ICO supports any part of my case.

Not 'Vexatious' After All (But We Can't Bring Ourselves to Say It Out Loud)

Remember a little while back I had a couple of FoI requests refused on the grounds that they were vexatious? I got round one of them by getting the information elsewhere but the other ended up going to the Information Commissioner because NCC failed to deal with my request for a review. Which is so unlike them.

However, they have now responded (about 3 months late mind). It's quite interesting.

First thing to notice is that, despite the fact that my original request was clearly refused on the grounds of being vexatious, they seem to have forgotten about it by the time of the latest response. All they say is that they have failed in their duty under s.10(3) of the Act which, as far as I can tell is the provision that allows them to go beyond the normal 20 days for a full response if they are considering public interest arguments under a possible exemption.

This wasn't the situation at all. They refused on the grounds that my request was vexatious (although their reasons clearly showed that in fact, what they meant was that it was ME that is vexatious rather than the request which isn't allowed). This is an absolute exemption so there would be no need to consider the public interest.

It seems that NCC couldn't bring themselves to actually admit in writing that my request was not vexatious and that they were wrong to say that it was. Which is pretty pathetic really. Almost as pathetic as their rather obvious tactic of delaying responses by not dealing with requests properly until the Information Commissioner gets involved.

I'll be writing a separate post about the actual content of the response because a) I can't be arsed to deal with it right now and b) I need to consider how I'm going to challenge it first.

Notts Police Authority See No Evil etc

Sorry to upset the current lovefest and hero worship for our wonderful police force following their apparently effective handling of the local riots and I suppose I should also apologise for again reviving the festering pustule that is the housing allocations scandal.

I thought I'd try a bit of a curveball in my attempts at getting hold of information about how aa bunch of NCC and NCH employees got away with nicking a load of council houses. So I sent a FoI request to Notts Police Authority (as opposed to Notts Police themselves, more on that in a bit) asking about any communications, meetings etc they'd had where the subject had come up.

After all, NPA's job is to monitor Notts Police's performance so if there were any doubts about their failure to look into the misappropriation of council houses you'd think that they'd have reason to discuss it wouldn't you? And that would pop up all sorts of difficult 'conflict of interest' questions for any NCC councillors also serving on NPA including, of course, its Chair.

Strangely, the Whatdotheyknow site got its wires crossed and initially sent my request to Notts Police itself. What could have been a slight irritation turned out to be quite interesting as their response confirmed that they held such information but refused it on the grounds of an exemption under s.30 FoIA, investigations into crime. They said the information had been previously requested and refused and the matter was currently before the Information Commissioner.

The thing is, I understood that the justification for Notts Police letting NCC investigate the matter themselves was that there was, in their opinion, no evidence of a crime. Furthermore, this is a 'qualified' exemption i.e. the public interest must be considered. This is one to watch therefore.

Anyway, back to Notts Police Authority.

Their response was that they did NOT hold any information related to the housing allocations scandal. In other words, NPA has never discussed Notts Police's decision not to investigate the matter itself, no meetings have been held to discuss it and, most amusingly, no NPA members have had any contact with police or council officers to discuss it.

I find that one a bit difficult to believe meself. Might have to follow it up.

So we have Nottingham City Council and Notts Police doing everything they can to cover up what happened and now the Police Authority seem to be playing the see/hear/say no evil thing. Not good.

PS If you are the person who submitted the FoI request to Notts Police mentioned above, please do get in touch and let me know how you are getting on.

The Continuing (and Repeating) Story of the Housing Allocations Scandal

If you've been reading the Post over the last couple of days you'll have noticed that they are going with a 'drip drip' style run of articles about the housing allocations scandal.

Yesterday started with this article claiming that 'sports club members' were among those who benefited from a leg-up the housing queue. Having loftily stated that they weren't going to name the club concerned they brilliantly left the comments open (since removed) and within minutes it was full of jokes about 'West Indians' having a 'cavalier attitude' and similar. This article gives a few examples of cases that (allegedly, legal fans) happened. It includes the one where one of the properties was squatted and a group of blokes came round and violently evicted them, using a cricket bat among other weapons. This incident was reported on Indymedia back in 2006.

Today we have a nice description of a couple of cases that JoCo either got involved with, or didn't if you listen to his personal lawyer NCC Monitoring Officer Glen O'Connell. Because of course Collins himself refused to comment for fear of making a twat of himself like he did when the matter came up at a council meeting. Back then he called Tony Sutton a 'prat' and had to be calmed down by Graham Chapman in true "leave it Jon 'e's not worth it" style. That's the Leader of NCC calling an opposition councillor a 'prat', statesmanlike demeanor fans, in flagrant breach of the councillors' code of conduct.

Interestingly, and it may just be a coincidence, last week there was a big PR push in the Post on the 'zero tolerance' of NCH tenants being evicted for drugs activity. It was hilarious, a second article had Richard Antcliff dipping straight into the 'drugs are bad m'kaay?' catchphrase book, claiming that -

"Drugs can literally destroy individuals and communities". 

Bless him. A housing director, Gill Moy, claimed -

"To a lot of offenders, the prospect of going to prison is something they are not scared of, but losing their and their family's home, is a much more powerful deterrent."

This was somewhat contradicted by the main thrust of the article which was that evictions for drugs activities were increasing, which doesn't really suggest that losing their houses was much of a deterrent at all.

I could witter on for hours about the phenomenon of drugs offences occupying a special place in the crime hierarchy requiring an extra sentence of eviction in addition to what you get from the criminal justice system. One of the commenters correctly pointed out that homelessness is likely to increase the likelihood of recidivism and drugs problems getting worse. Clearly high level drug dealing can be extremely disruptive and may subject neighbours to danger but I can't see why having a crafty toke of an evening when you get back to work should result in you ending up on the streets.

But I digress. The killer quote in the context of the allocations scandal was this one from Antcliff -

"Housing is a precious commodity. There are lengthy waiting lists and we want people in properties who deserve them."

Do you think NCC got wind of the Post's campaign and tried to spoil it by throwing this story at them?

And then this afternoon, and bear in mind that he was unwilling to comment on specific allegations of his own conduct in the affair, Collins was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in a press release calling on Nottingham peeps to 'get behind' Carl Froch in his punchy game this Saturday. Got to get those priorities in order and if jumping on a populist bandwagon draws a bit more attention away from those pesky housing matters then that's just a risk he's just going to have to take.

I'm Only Surprised It Took Them So Long

Well, it's finally happened.

Two of my freedom of info requests to NCC, this one and this one, have been refused on the basis that they are 'vexatious'.

It is claimed that, because I have made 22 requests in 12 months (I actually make it 19, 6 of which so far remain unanswered but we'll leave that for now) and write some of them up on this blog, my requests are 'obsessive' and are having the effect of 'harassing the authority'. They also claim that my requests are 'frequently' submitted simultaneously and often overlap.

This is of course nonsense. The 'obsessive' and harassment' claims are potentially libellous but as I'm not a premier league footballer I have to let that go. Harassment is a criminal offence and if NCC genuinely believed that I was harassing them I think I would have heard about it by now. They haven't even contacted me to dispute any of the claims on the blog, despite my invitation for them to do so if there was anything they felt was untrue.

It might be a coincidence but one of the above requests was a request for internal reports on the housing allocations scandal, something NCC is determined will never see the light of day. It's difficult to see any other exemption they could use to refuse to provide this info. Surely they aren't cynically using the 'vexatious' provisions to keep its dirty laundry out of the public eye? It would be a shame if anybody else had access to this info and were to send it on to me.

I have of course challenged their accusation via internal reviews. I suspect that, as well as the fact that I have written about it here, this will be used as further evidence of my obsessive and harassing behaviour but I'll just have to take my chances. Most of my posts are based on already available information anyway and it's better that the readers of this blog get to know about the lengths NCC will go to to cover things up.

More Info on Making the Lawyers Rich

There's been an interesting response to a Freedom of Info request posted up today, concerning the amount of money spent on external lawyers in employment cases. Remember this is on top of internal costs of their own lawyers involved with the cases.

Long story short, since 2003 NCC has spent between £29802 and £142448 per year between 2003 and 2009 (the 2010 figure probably isn't a full year) on external solicitors firms and barristers, averaging £65921 per year. In 2009, which was the year of my tribunal, they spent £72792. All costs include VAT.

The only solicitors firm named is Freeth Cartwright in Nottingham, something you might want to bear in mind if you've been fucked over by NCC and are looking for a solicitor. The barristers who I came up against, 7 Bedford Row Chambers, appear to have a fairly longstanding arrangement with NCC. I wonder how often these things go out to tender...?

Longstanding NCC watchers will remember that NCC claimed to have spent £100k on investigating the housing allocations scandal, saying this was a fortune and that further investigation was not justified. Yet that was the TOTAL cost spent and here they are routinely spending approximately two thirds of this amount each year on employment cases, in excess of their internal legal costs. So they're happy to shell out wads of cash on covering up workplace bullying yet investigating a massively important institutional corruption case only justifies peanuts. Good stuff.

More Standards Committee Deliberations

The minutes from the Standards Committee meeting held to discuss the Grocock case are out. As I said before, it wasn't the actual decision making meeting but a kind of pre-discussion.

Interestingly, monitoring officer Glen O'Connell argued for the meeting and investigation report to remain private but this was rejected by the committee, although I can't see it published anywhere.

The minutes also reveal that O'Connell's recommendation is that Grocock did not breach the code of conduct which, if the committee agrees, would be a bit of a bombshell. Can't wait to see how he's justified that one.

District Auditor LOLs

It's been mentioned before that NCC has abandoned its investigation of the housing allocations scandal. As we know, they've sort of spent £100k on paying outside solicitors to do Legal Services' normal work while the cosy in-house team 'investigated' the housing corruption that went on.

The District Auditor says that this is reasonable (see p4 and beyond). After all, £100k is a lot of money.

The District Auditor charged £388k (para 8 p5) for her annually required services. Yet abandoning an investigation into the worst public housing scandal since Dame Shirley Porter's shennanigins, having only spent just over 25% of that figure is apparently 'reasonable'.

Btw, in an unrelated fact, Jon Collins works as a self employed consultant to the Audit Commission.

A Surprising Event Happened

After the Labour Party showed its contempt for collaborative politics and accountability at the full council meeting this week the Post reports on the an example of opposition councillors showing how it should be done.

As well as Cllr Sutton's motion asking that NCC calls on the IPCC to investigate Notts Police's failure to do its job by not taking any action over the housing allocations scandal, Cllr Chapman also submitted a motion condemning the cuts to funding as 'unfair'.

With the Lib Dems currently on secondment to the Tory government you'd expect them to vote against but in fact they backed it. Admittedly it may well have been electoral suicide for them not to but at least they have set an example that not all votes need to be along party lines. Maybe Labour might learn something. Unlikely I know but we can live in hope.

Talking of Cllr Chapman, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has tried to humiliate him by 'hilariously' calling him 'a very naughty boy' because he shares his name with the Monty Python member who, as I'm sure you know, played Brian in 'The Life of...'.

I mean for fuck's sake. JoCo is right about one thing, that man is a buffoon and that's being polite.