NCC Breaches Code of Practice on Publicity - Again

Ok, so I actually rather liked this breach but I suppose we have to accept sauce for the goose etc.

I did mention briefly that NCC ran its own petition against the bedroom tax earlier this year. I signed it and recommended that you did too. However it disappeared off the website rather suddenly without explanation.

Turns out the petition was referred to the council's auditors and they have now decided that it breached the code of practice for local authority publicity. Presumably it failed the 'objectivity' test.

Despite the fact that I was and am foursquare behind the campaign against the bedroom tax and would support contributions from any quarter, with our objective heads on we have to note that NCC has form on this. It seems that certain sectors of the council have still not quite taken it in that NCC and the Labour Party are not one and the same. It's fine for councillors to shout from the rooftops about the injustice of the bedroom tax and I hope they do but it seems that it's not so fine to use council resources to do so.

Are NCC's Adverts For the Mayoral Referendum Above Board?

NCC has erected billboard ads for the upcoming referendum about whether we're going to have an elected Mayor in the City. This is all right and proper in itself, you want to do everything you can to encourage people to vote.

But let's have a look at it (TVM @mikebettison for use of the pic)

Hmm, see how the poster makes it very clear that NCC opposes having a Mayor and clearly states it would not be 'value for money'.

Thing is there is a Code of Practice for local government publicity and I'm not at all sure that this complies.

Para 30 of the code says the following -

"30. Advertisements are not normally likely to be appropriate as a means of explaining policy or commenting on proposals, since an advertisement by its nature summarises information, compresses issues and arguments, and markets views and opinions."

This implies to me that, if NCC wants to tell us about the issues that affect the decision to have a mayor or not a billboard ad isn't the best way to do it. This is probably a minor issue though.

More important is the (amended) version of para 43 dealing with referendums which says -

"The publicity should not be capable of being perceived as seeking to influence public support for, or opposition to, the referendum proposals and should not associate support for, or opposition to, the proposals with any individual or group."

I think the ad clearly breaches that requirement. I should add the proviso that the provision mentioned above refers to the old referendum rules for Mayors etc not the new ones introduced by the Localism Act, This is presumably because the code was written before the Localism Act was passed. I'm not sure that would really make a difference though and, even if it did technically, I think it would still be breaching the spirit of the code.

As you may know, NCC has form on dodgy publicity and the Audit Commission has form on not really doing a lot about it. But if there are people who feel very strongly about having a Mayor they may well be able to use this advertising to challenge the validity of a 'no' vote.

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?

Nice Work if You Can Get It

The news that NCC is investigating whether public money was siphoned off to pay for Labour's campaigning in the 2007 elections is not a big surprise, including the bit that they're being allowed to investigate the matter themselves.

The documents reportedly have the names 'Harold' and 'Stephen B' on them. Some people, nasty suspicious paranoid people obviously, are asking whether these names refer to political consultant Harold Tinworth and NCC's Director of Communications Stephen Barker.

NCC has been repeatedly caught out over its publicity being over political and as Barker is in charge of all that it wouldn't be a huge surprise to find his prints all over this. He also leads a charmed life - how many other senior officers would still be in post after putting videos of work colleagues on the internet, seemingly without their knowledge?

Tinworth has of course graced these pages on a number of occasions and famously included a proposal to advise executive councillors on their election manifesto in his pitch for a new contract. He only had to submit a tender because the District Auditor told NCC that the rather informal way his services had been procured for the previous five years wasn't acceptable. Gosh! You don't think he was giving campaign advice during the last election as well do you? Surely not.

Of course if the DA could have been bothered she could have looked into this but she refused to do so, claiming that she couldn't go back to accounts that had already been audited. Now it turns out that actually she can. It'll be interesting to see if she finall pulls her finger out and does something useful for a change.

Nottingham City Council in 'Dodgy Communiations' Shock....Again

The Evening Post has reported that NCC has been criticised over it's communications, in particular the Stalinist banners that get hung up all round the Market Square.

The District Auditor said that the ones hung up on the Council House earlier this year saying "2 stars, Improving well" were "borderline legal". Cllr Chapman interprets this meaning that the DA "...is happy with the current initiative". My bullshitometer has just exploded.

Before this latest incident came up I had been thinking of writing about the previous two incidents in 2005 and 2007 when NCC had been told off for having dodgy banners about the place, however it didn't seem very current and I put my rather limited energies into more recent matters.

As one of NCC's 'Statements of Internal Control' notes, the Audit Commission had issued statutory recommendations regarding unlawful publicity materials issued in 1999/2000. Later criticisms of banner campaigns during early 2007 (the notorious 'Proud' and 'Ambitious' campaigns), a mere three months before the local elections led the AC to conclude that the statutory recommendations had not been complied with, leading to NCC introducing further action. In March this, the 'Standards Committee' further discussed publicity issues when it considered NCC's response to proposed changes to the Code of Practice on local government publicity.

So why do they keep getting caught out? The issue has been discussed to death and it's not as if publicity is short of resources. It has a budget of about £2.7m pa and its own senior officer at Director level.

Frankly, if all the Audit Commission is ever going to do is write a stiff letter it's hardly surprising if councillors play fast and loose with the law. JoCo and his mates are hardly known for their reticence and the opposition on the council is just too small (and in the case of the Tories too useless, at least the Lib Dems do at least make an effort to challenge things, it was them who complained about the recent publicity issue). The Commission needs to hold senior councillors to account on this issue. In 2007, after one of the earlier incidents, Nottingham seriously bucked the political trend in the local elections, returning an increased Labour majority. Coincidence? I don't think so, these things have an effect.

However, I can't help wondering if that Director, Stephen Barker (we've had fun with him on here before) is also a big part of the problem. He is known to be close to JoCo and the inner circle and also appears to be close to the Sheriff, accompanying him on his recent US junket chasing Robin Hood. Such personal closeness to the politics may result in his judgment being impaired in terms of the political neutrality of the communications initiatives that he is in charge of. It is part of the role of senior management to provide advice on such issues.