Canning Circus Creative Hub; The Next Radford Unity Complex?

Stumbled across a petition asking for support for the Canning Circus Creative Hub the other day, I'd recommend that you sign it.

The Hub is, in its own words

'... a hub for creative individuals and organisations, taking our name from the area of Nottingham in which we are based.

We are a collective of creative companies who work together to share resources and ideas. We represent a shared movement, intended to promote, inspire and create work we’re all proud to put our name to.'

They are based in buildings on Wollaton St which they rent from the City Council. The regular readers of this blog may already be able to guess the way this is going.

Yes, despite happily toiling away for nigh on 30 years, the council has asked them to leave. They have a press release which gives some background. As yet, NCC has just asked them to 'leave quietly' as opposed to serving a formal notice quit.

I've been in contact with a couple of people based at the Hub. Their feeling is that the situation has arisen due the City Council's failure to maintain the range of buildings it owns on Wollaton St, of which the Hub is only part, leaving them on the verge of being condemned. They have an 'amusing' story of NCC contractors bungling the fitting of fire doors so badly they had to redo it themselves. Redevelopment is clearly on the agenda, almost certainly via the private sector, but the Hub's residents were apparently the last to be told.

Broadly speaking, the businesses at the Hub are very happy with how things are going as they are. None of them are interested in expanding and none of them want to move, particularly if it means being dispersed around the City. None of them receive any grant funding. The impression I get is that the Hub is more than just the sum of its parts but is very much an interdependent community. Such things are hard to translate into cold business language and, as such, tends to get ignored.

As a backdrop to this we have the Radford Unity Complex debacle where NCC wasted gobs of cash trying to hand the building for a cut-price to an arts organisation called Nottingham Studios, completely disregarding the needs, not to mention the legal tenancy rights, of the community groups who were already using it. When that fell apart NS were handed another set of buildings to become 'Primary', ironically just round the corner on Seely Rd. We also have the planned 'Creative Quarter' in the Lace Market, whose 'ambassador' has apparently cited CCCH as a major inspiration.

Unfortunately, the CQ doesn't reach as far as Canning Circus so CCCH cannot access any of the mountain of funding from the City Deal if they want to stay where they are. Some of the residents have looked into relocating to the CQ but feel the properties on offer aren't suitable. And of course, everyone wants to keep their artistic community together which may not be possible if they do move.

As sort of an aside, CQ has launched a loan scheme to assist companies with the costs of relocating there. Now CQ is a separate body to NCC but they are clearly working closely together. Seasoned council watchers therefore may not be over surprised that the company who got the gig managing the loan scheme is First Enterprise, one of whose directors is one of NCCLols' very old friends, former councillor Hassan Ahmed. They were also mentioned as benefiting from the dodgy Future Jobs Fund allocations that Ahmed presided over. So I'm sure that's all completely above board then.

So, with all this past and future money flying around it seems somewhat unfair that at the first sign of panic about the state of their building, NCC's first reaction is to ask them to leave. Since then Cllr Nick McDonald has been quoted in the Post saying that 'no decisions have been made'. However that isn't really very reassuring because, technically speaking, 'no decisions had been made' when Nottingham Studios were invited to buy the RUC building from under the feet of its tenants. At least CCCH seems to have got a bit more warning than the RUC groups did.

We'll be watching this one closely.

Fire Station Fuck-Ups

I have to confess that I don't really take much notice of what Notts Fire Authority do, even though their committee minutes are all posted up on NCC's website. Perhaps I should as there may be worthwhile lols to be picked up.

However, I'm not sure checking minutes would have helped me find this stuff that the 'Post' is reporting on regarding NFA and NCC being hit for big out-of-court settlements of £2.7m. This followed a stalled legal action against a private development company, Gladman Commercial Properties, who had pulled out of an agreement to buy the old Dunkirk Fire Station site and surrounding land.

Briefly the allegations are as follows. NCC had land around the fire station it didn't need so it teamed up with NFA to sell the lot together for added value purposes. Gladman claimed that they were told the site could accommodate 600 student flats and, when they worked out it couldn't, pulled out. NCC and NFA went to m'learneds to try and get them back into line. It didn't go well it seems, hence the hefty out-of-court settlements.

Fact is, the whole business seemed pretty bejiggered from the start. The point of selling Dunkirk FS was that, combined with the sale of another station in Beeston, they could build a whole new big spangly station.

Simple enough you'd think but have a look at this report to NFA's Finance and Resources Committee in September 2007. One thing that alarms is the number of times the phrase 'it became clear that...' features at the start of paragraphs, almost as if nobody had actually tried to spot problems before they arose.

One problem that caused a significant deviation from the original budget was the realisation that the plot for the new station, assumed to be industrial land and thus worth about £300k, turned out to be residential land worth £2m. Whoops. That's an extra £1.7m please.

Moving on a few years to the actual court case, this was handled with the usual finesse and expertise that we have come to expect from NCC's legal department. First of all, here's a quick summary of the issues from the Property Litigation Association which is what I'd advise you to read if you're a vaguely normal person. If you want the full fat court decision it's here.

It seems that what NFA and NCC were claiming depended rather heavily on what was said in conversations between the selling agents and Adrian Jones, NCC's Director of Planning and Transport at the time. However, in a stroke of pure genius, they hadn't listed him as a witness, hadn't secured a witness statement from him and he wasn't there to do his stuff at the hearing. When asked why by the Judge the reason given was that he was no longer working for NCC. It's quite likely that, at around this point, Gladman's lawyer took the piss somewhat mercilessly because the big golden rule of court action is that you set out your case from the beginning.

Anyway, NCC requested an adjournment in order to get Mr Jones to appear. After some considerable opposition from Gladman the Judge agreed BUT, and here's the rub, he said that 'there will be heavy costs consequences' for NCC due to the delay and the extra work this would cause Gladman and their legal team.

And that's the point of this post really. Because the substantial issue was settled out of court we have no way of knowing who was actually right. It's not even clear whether Jones ever did appear on the stand or what he (would have) said if he did. But one thing we can be sure that the final settlement, and thus the cost to taxpayers, was inflated by NCC's legal team screwing up the case from the beginning.

One last thing. The Post reports that the following statement was issued by Gladman on conclusion of hostilities -

"GCP wish to make it absolutely clear that they accept that no member (councillor) of either Notts Fire Authority or Nottingham City Council played any part in the misrepresentations alleged by Gladman in the High Court claim."

This seems to have been designed to get any politicians caught up in this off the hook and has already been used as the excuse for the Chair of the Fire Authority, Darrell Pulk, not having to resign. Makes you wonder how much extra that statement cost just to save a few political asses.

PS. If you fancy further reading about another fuck-up by NCC's property and legal wings, not to mention the efforts made by the politicians to extricate themselves from a quagmire, you might like to have a look at the saga of the Radford Unity Complex.

Cunning Stunt

You might guess from the title that I'm not a particularly happy blogger. And if you'd guessed 'Freedom of Information' you'd be spot on but I don't think that deserves a prize.

This one goes back to the Radford Unity Complex affair. That's the one where a Nottingham Arts group were strangely offered a former school at around half its market value and the council's legal services forgot to take into account that there were a bunch of community groups based there who hadn't been consulted properly and hadn't been served a valid notice to quit. The arts group were represented by an agency called Artreach.

So, I thought it might be an idea to ask for details of all the negotiations between NCC and Artreach because it seemed a bit fishy that there should be such a rush to get this particular group into a former council property at the expense of a number of voluntary groups and at an apparent loss. And there was evidence of JoCo being involved too.

So, I made my request on 8 November 2010 and NCC acknowledged it the same day. Then silence until I requested an internal review on 8 December 2010. This was acknowledged the next day and that was the last time I heard from them until today.

In the meantime I sent numerous chase-ups, the ICO wrote on 9 March 2011 instructing NCC to reply within 10 days which was ignored. By that I mean that the ICO told me clearly that NCC did not respond to any of their letters and chase-ups. Despite this it took until 28 July for the ICO to issue a decision notice which, because NCC had not provided any response at all, could only be framed with reference to s.10 of the FoIA i.e. the time limits for a reply.

Now, give it 5 days and suddenly NCC provides a response. After over 8 months. Here is the reply they sent.

As you can see, they have refused to provide the information under s.43(2) FoIA i.e. that its release could damage the council's commercial interests. The effect of this is that I am back at square one with regards to challenging the refusal because the ICO decision notice couldn't deal with s.43(2) because they obviously had no idea NCC would rely on it. I thought I was cynical but I have to admit I didn't see that one coming.

Now I was recently accused by a commenter of being a 'conspiracy theorist' so if he's still around I suggest he sits up and pays attention. Because I am extremely suspicious of a public authority ignoring a FoI request for 8 months, 7 months longer than the time limit for a reply, then, 5 days after the decision notice arrives, issuing a refusal notice on the grounds of an exemption.

Now why would they do that? Surely it would have been sensible to issue the refusal notice a bit sooner, keep the ICO informed of what was going on and then any appeal I make to the ICO could have included arguments around the exemption relied on. The only 'good' answer to this is that it took Legal Services all this time to draw up the grounds for refusal which, bearing in mind how they dealt with the RUC issues, isn't totally unbelievable.

The thing is, there is no actual time limit in the legislation for dealing with internal reviews. Guidance says 20 working days (as does NCC's own procedure) but a quick leaf through Whatdotheyknow.com website's NCC pages reveals that this is rarely complied with. So I have to sit and wait for NCC to do an internal review (which I have requested natch) and, presuming a refusal, go to the Information Commissioner again. Worse still, if NCC simply ignores my review request, the ICO is likely to simply 'instruct' NCC to provide a reply within 20 working days and it's a hell of a battle to get them to take such cases seriously. Essentially, we're probably looking at at least as long again before we get a result and that depends on the ICO finding in my favour which can't be relied on.

I'm sorry but is there anybody reading this who doesn't think this was deliberate? A particularly dishonest ruse to stop or seriously delay a matter that might embarrass JoCo and others reaching the public domain? All this delay being a mistake? Bollocks on stilts.

Nottingham Plays 'Pin the Red Rosette on the Donkey. Any Donkey'

Well it's pretty clear that nobody listens to me.

Whatever your views as to which party is best for Nottingham I defy you to argue convincingly that the virtual removal of all opposition to Labour on NCC is a good thing.

As you probably already know the Lib Dems have paid the ultimate price locally for their national leadership's hunger for power. Former Leader Gary Long has made no secret as to what he thinks the solution is, although he's apparently bottled out of repeating that on the national stage too knackered to do Newsnight. The loss of decent campaigning councillors like Tony Sutton and Alex Foster is a real source of regret and gives the impression that voters don't want to know about corruption in the council and will punish you by voting you out if you wake them from their slumbers.

There are still five Tories which means that Nottingham's golf courses continue to have their advocates in the city, although they will have to find a new leader as Andrew Price got his marching orders.

In my ward the odious former 'high class' (self defined) escort Cat Arnold kept her seat. My bet is that she'll be on the new Executive as she's been crawling up JoCo's arse for years. Mick Newton, who ran as an independent, didn't make it which I think is a shame. Again, a red rosette means more than a record of actually getting out into the community and doing your job it seems.

It has to be said that, despite some best efforts, the corruption issues haven't gone away. The District Auditor is set to report on alleged Future Jobs Fund dodginess, the Harold Tinworth affair is still ongoing (and hasn't he earned his money) and as Tony Sutton has a bit more time on his hands I suspect he won't let that go. I've got FoI requests regarding the funding cuts to CEHRNN and whatever went on between NCC and Nottingham Studios over Radford Unity Complex. These issues could be embarrassing for JoCo and his sidekick Chapman. Could there be resignations?

Addendum - nearly forgot, the NCC website has a rather impressive results information portal. It's only missing turnout figures so far (as a %) but the votes cast numbers indicate a much higher turnout than 2007.

Some More of My Opinions on the Local Elections

If anybody should care here are some of the issues that I believe are important when deciding how to vote in the local elections on Thursday.

My first thought is that, before deciding HOW to vote, it's vital to first decide TO vote. Local elections are notorious for their low turnouts and this is a serious threat to true democracy. Turnout in 2007 was 32.4%, up from 29.1% in 2004, an improvement but still nowhere near a majority of those eligible to vote. And that increase is more than explained by the increase in postal votes which bring in their own problems.

I have to say it, voting for someone is nearly always better than not voting at all in my opinion. Nothing encourages complacency, self-interest and downright corruption in our elected representatives than them knowing that they are in a safe seat and not enough people care about their poor performance in order to bother voting against them. Whatever your political views I firmly believe that just turning up for each election and voting against the current incumbent will improve the health of democracy, at least it would keep them on their toes.

So, presuming that you have decided that you are going to vote, my next piece of advice would be to be sure to avoid voting on national issues at the expense of local. It's tempting to assume that they are one and the same and, while there is clearly overlap, it's not necessarily so. For example, I believe very strongly that the biggest local issue in Nottingham City is the out and out corruption and cover up within the Labour establishment at NCC (housing scandal etc, see the blog passim) and voting Labour to teach the coalition will not solve this. I'm not necessarily saying that Labour in local government is intrinsically bad, and I'm certainly not saying that I would never vote for a Labour politician again, it's just that the current Labour establishment consists of three groups; a small controlling core that has no respect for democracy and due process, a small group of lickspittles desperately trying to get into group one and lastly, a larger group of useful idiots/vote fodder who do as they are told regardless.

Again, I should emphasis that this is not a syndrome that is exclusive to the Labour Party, I firmly believe that if the Green Party won three elections in a row you'd end up with a very similar situation but with different colour hats. You'd probably find a lot of the same names as the politicos changed allegiance to the party that could deliver them into power. The important thing here is that when these cliques do establish themselves the important thing is to bring them down.

So for me at least I will not be looking to vote against the Lib Dems simply to punish them for selling their national souls to a poor-hating disablist right wing government. Locally they have been effective constituency representatives and sources of opposition, their effectiveness limited mainly by their numbers. The Tories are a little different of course, while they have taken on certain issues such as the Radford Unity Complex but I'm quite sure that was for cynical electoral reasons as they were targeting the Nottm South seat in the general election at the time. If a comment on Alanadale's blog from one of the candidates in Radford and Park ward is anything to go by they still see some mileage in this issue yet. In power, the Tories wouldn't give a shit about RUC but most importantly, everybody who's nice hates Tories anyway, that's just a fact.

So, to be a bit more prescriptive and specific, I've made no secret in the past that I strongly believe that a Green Party presence on NCC would be a good thing and if you are lucky enough to have a candidate in your ward I would urge you to vote for them. Those against Tesco on Eastside might want to look at Dave 'Lord Biro' Bishop in Dales ward too. In Basford, former Labour councillor Mick Newton is standing as an independent and seems to be good at getting stuck in to local issues so he will probably get one of my votes.

But in the end I suppose that it is pretty much inevitable that there will be a Labour majority in the end so what to do? My personal opinion is that a 'decapitation' strategy is the best bet i.e. get rid of those who are at the top of the dodgy clique. Luckily, we have already seen the last of Hassan Ahmed for a while so the priority is to get rid of JoCo and Graham Chapman. If you live in either St Anns or Aspley ward I implore you not to vote for these two even if you are a Labour supporter, their removal will result in an immeasurably improved local Labour Party I'm certain. We can but hope...

So that's what I think, see you at the ballot box.

Collinsblog

Blimey, JoCo's got himself a blog.

Modestly titled 'Leading Nottingham', he's used his first post proper to label housing minister Grant Schapps as a 'fool' and Eric Pickles a 'buffoon'. Powerful stuff that's got the Post in a lather but is this really the sort of language that a politician who wants/expects to be taken seriously should use?

Don't get me wrong, I can't fault Collins' assessment of these two Tory twats but last time I used words which could be described as "personal, derogatory comments" about some of Collins' colleagues I got a letter from the City Council's legal department. He presumably has no problem with using council officer time "trawling the internet to find these stories" when it's used to threaten local bloggers with an implication of legal action. My subsequent complaint about this was first ignored then flatly rejected.

Anyway, it keeps him off the streets I suppose and it's probably no coincidence that the local elections are coming up. I'll add him to the blogroll so we don't miss out on any future giggles.

(Hat-tip, Ben Barton)

Update - I made a comment on the latest post this morning but, funnily enough, it has yet to make it past moderation.

Updateagain - as it's still not made it up here's my comment -

"Except of course you won’t be in the same position as FoI because you build the financial reporting into ongoing systems so it’s done routinely. You might actually save overall because fewer FoI requests will need to be made because the information is already out there.

You don’t help yourself when you’re publicly going up against one of the few ideas the Tories have had, and with your record of backroom deals (Radford Unity Complex) and secret/illegal spending (Harold Tinworth) the City Council is badly in need of more accountability."

Jon Collins Demonstrates His Unfitness for Public Office Yet Again

I am sure that all readers of this blog will know about the collapse of the trial of the remaining six climate activists who were accused of planning to shut down Ratcliffe on Soar power station.

Notts Police Authority is the body that is supposed to 'oversee' the work of Notts Police. Its Chair is Jon Collins who is also leader of Nottingham City Council and has been known to feature in these pages from time to time.

In a way, the revelation by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy that the reason for the prosecution being abandoned was that covert recordings made by him conclusively proved that the six had not agreed to join any alleged conspiracy has taken the heat off JoCo. He was previously being put through the media mill by the scandalous decision to end the investigation into the housing allocations scandal.

As such he's featuring prominently in Notts Police Authority's bleatings that they 'welcome' the investigation into the matter by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, presumably because that organisation can usually be relied on to cover up the worst of police incompetence and malpractice. Unfortunately that also means that he has had to put a load of bullshit in print. Lets have a closer look.

Firstly, we have this -

"Nottinghamshire Police Authority has welcomed both the IPCC investigation and an Internal Review into the events leading up to the collapse of the trial of six green campaigners after an undercover police officer offered to give evidence on their behalf."

Well no, that's not really what happened. It wasn't that the undercover cop had agreed to give evidence on the protesters' behalf, he wouldn't need to because after he revealed the existence of the tapes mentioned above the case was dead in the water. Notts Police, whose work is overseen by Notts Police Authority remember, had previously decided to keep the existence of these recordings secret and this was clearly no longer possible. This is as clear a case of perversion of the course of justice as it's possible to get. This para is probably still within the realms of spin, now we come to the outright lies.

"This followed a successful investigation by Nottinghamshire Police, after a total of 114 people were arrested on 13 April 2009 on suspicion of conspiring to disable a major power station and thereby disrupt a critical piece of the national energy infrastructure."

A successful investigation by Nottinghamshire police? Apart from the fact that it was an undercover Met officer doing the work, there were 114 people arrested yet only 26 charged and the cases of six of those were abandoned. That's not what I'd call a successful operation by any means, especially as the operation cost £700k and resulted in nothing more than community sentences and the judge going out of his way to praise the activists for their care and dedication to the environmental cause. What a result.

More serious is the claim that the action would disrupt 'a critical piece of the national energy infrastructure'. This, as has been repeatedly shown, is bollocks and is part of the deliberately false police line being used to justify what was a totally disproportionate action by the police. If Ratcliffe had been closed down then the national grid would have taken up the slack because, well, that's what it's designed to do. Nobody would have noticed except E-On who might have lost some generation revenue. But of course, that's the police's main job these days, protecting big business.

Then the actual quotes from Collins come in and things go downhill.

"...a great many people showed their professionalism and commitment in terms of both the policing of the event and the subsequent investigation."

Withholding evidence that proves a person's innocence is 'professionalism' is it Cllr Collins? Smashing up the Iona school is 'professionalism' is it? You bullshitting twat.

"When policing major public order events, such as this protest, it is necessary that the police use all the resources available to them to maintain public safety."

Again this is thoroughly misleading because the only public safety issue was the police going in tooled up. There was no public safety issue from the protesters because they would have been charged with something more serious than conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. Obviously when the shit hits the fan Collins will be emphasising that NPA has no role in operational issues and so it has nothing to do with him but people need to remember, with the elections coming up, he's quite prepared to put his name to this rubbish when he judges it politically advantageous to do so.

Notts Police are really not looking good at the moment with this and their failure to even attempt to investigate the housing allocations scandal. Collins has of course been in central roles with NPA and/or NCC throughout so it's reasonable to assume that he had some say in what was going on. Considering his record of completely ignoring proper procedure in his appointment of Alan Given (no stranger to helping cover up police scandals himself) at NPA, the Harold Tinworth and Radford Unity Complex affairs, I'd guess that in reality he was barging his way to the front of the action throughout.

Collins Cover Up #1

Before Christmas I received notification from NCC's Monitoring Officer Glen O'Connell that a Standards Committee Review Sub-Committee had confirmed that no further action is to be taken against JoCo over his 'erroneous' claim that Radford Unity Complex would raise over £300k for council coffers when it had already been offered for sale for £150k.

The Assessment Sub-Committee had previously found that JoCo couldn't have known about the lower sale price. However, for the review sub-committee I had managed to get hold of emails that demonstrated that Collins had involvement in the matter for some considerable time, making it somewhat unlikely that the only things he knew were what he had been told in reports from officers.

Yet the review sub-committee decided that 'no additional information' had been provided.

I'm going to stick my neck out here but that is bollocks on stilts and wearing fire-engine red lederhosen. My conclusion of all this therefore is that this is a cover up and the Standards Committee is corrupt.

Two Years of Blogging About Conniving Incompetent Twats Pt 2

Right! Now where had we got to? Ah yes...

June 2010

Lib Dem councillor Alex Foster attempted to get a resolution at council calling on Portfolio Holder for Adult Services and Health to lobby the blood doner service to allow gay and bisexual men to be allowed to give blood, which they are currently banned from doing so. Despite this the resolution was amended to remove any reference to gay men, with said Portfolio Holder apparently heard to say "I have gay friends, but..." Enlightened times. Serious criticism from the Audit Commission over NCC's subsidy claims for housing benefit and its administration of the Bridge Estate charity came to light and JoCo and his mates' continued appropriation of Notts Police Authority upsets a few more people.

July 2010

We find out that NCC's website is woefully unfit for purpose for those who want to conduct business with the council online, putting NCC in breach of an, admittedly obscure, EU Directive, we point and laugh at Comms Chief Stephen Barker getting his priority driven prioritisations, erm, prioritised and the world of politics is upended when the Labour Group torpedos a Tory motion to help rehabillitate offenders. Collins gets quite undone over the Parliament St sex shop attempting to renew its license while Cllr Cat Arnold outs herself as a former high class (self defined) escort, causing schoolboy sniggers over the fact that she is the 'executive assistant for leisure' and setting a wonderful example for the city's schoolchildren. On the plus side, it probably helped to sell her book which came out at the same time (currently available for £6 off at Amazon, if you're interested).

August 2010

A slightly quieter month this one. NCC's planning section decrees that one type of solar panel is 'in character' with an Edwardian conservation area but another type isn't, Harold Tinworth is formally awarded a contract to do the work that he's been doing for the last four years, after a scrupulously fair and open tender exercise obviously, and NCC puts the kibosh on this year's East Midlands Vegan Festival by refusig to allow use of the Council House on spurious 'wear and tear' grounds.

September 2010

That decision to award Tinworth the contract was subjected to 'call-in. We went beyond the call of duty and went to observe the meeting which was as dull as you'd expect and just as much of a blatant cover up. After having initially lied about not employing consultants to sort out the lifts maintenance problems NCC suddenly remembered that in fact, yes they had done after all. Michael Williams bids a tearful farewell, inadvertently exposing the complete lack of thought in NCC's senior management restructure last year and we are heartened by an apparent outbreak of good practice at One Nottingham. I did say apparent...

October 2010

The Post reveals the shocking misuse of confidentiality in local government rules when Harold Tinworth's offer to provide political advice at public expense to Labour councillors is exposed following the call-in meeting, Cllr Mick Newton gains my respect by outing himself as a mental health problem sufferer (next month - he loses it again), NCC's reasons for not allowing the East Midlands vegan Festival to be held at the Council house start to unravel and we have some fun chatting to some councillors for Local democracy Week. We end the month with the Information Governance team clamming up because there's some information that NCC wants to keep secret but they're not sure if the law allows them to do so.

November 2010

The Standards Committee stretches credibility beyond the call of duty by ruling that JoCo has no case to answer over his misleading the call-in sub-committee over the selling price of Radford Unity Complex. We get hold of pretty good evidence that oh yes he bloody does have a case to answer and demand a review of their decision. Don't hold your breath. Just show there's no hard feelings we give JoCo valuable advice as to how he could still make it to MIPIM despite NCC's lack of enthusiasm to fund it any more. In 'that took longer than I expected' news, Nottingham Equal is given an amount of funding suspiciously similar to the amount taken from CEHRNN earlier in the year and NCC admits that CEHRNN would have been a competitor for such funding streams had they not been sabotaged. My local councillors disappoint, but don't surprise, me again by steadfastly ignoring my emails and One Nottingham destroys our illusions that they might actually be jolly good chaps by deciding not to cough up about how Nottingham Equal got their money and by installing JoCo's mate as Chief Exec without so much as expecting him to apply or attend an interview.

So, that's my second year of blogging. Obviously I wrote about a few more things than the lowlights above, partly due to lack of energy and partly because I don't get to find out about everything. Readers can help with the latter of course, we are always looking ou for disgruntled NCC, One Nottingham or even voluntary sector employees with information to share. Check my prfile for an email link.

Will we last for a third year? Will NCC's secret agents* 'take us out' or will we simply lose the will to live? Tune in regularly to find out.

*It's alright, I don't really think that NCC has secret agents.

It's That Radford Unity Complex Again

The 'drip drip' of information coming in on this continues.

I've managed to get sight of some of the emails that were exchanged between Nottingham Studios' representatives and NCC when negotiations started to turn sour. You may recall that NS were somewhat unhappy about having to allow some of the community groups to stay on in the building for an indeterminate period. NS were quibbling over the rent that NCC were going to pay on the groups' behalf.

One of the emails I've seen was from somebody called David Smith at NCC and it includes an extraordinary admission which I don't think has seen the light of day before, here's an extract -

"You will be aware that we have to address a Local Government Ombudsman case regarding the disposal of this building. The payment of a rental sum for accommodation within the property to a new owner will be viewed upon as most extraordinary, when the new owner is purchasing the property for an amount which falls well below the figure which the Council would expect to obtain, were the property sold in the open market, partcularly [sic] when an offer for the property has already been received at a figure close to the £350,000 at which it has been valued."

So NCC had received an alternative much greater offer for the building yet were still pushing for a sale to NS for a much lower figure, completion of which would have cost them even more for renting half of it back. The use of the word 'already' suggests to me that this higher offer predates the one from NS, which the council proactively invited. You can see why Mr Smith was worried.

As far as I know this fact of the alternative offer was never put before the call-in sub-committee. It would surely have put the handling of the sale in a different light if it had. It's still very much open to question how much JoCo knew about all this. At call-in it was said that he wrote to the tenants at RUC on 29 December 2009 to tell them that the building was to be sold, some weeks before he made the official decision.

In addition, one of the emails from NS' rep says -

"1. Last autumn the Studios group was invited by NCC to consider the purchase of Radford Unity Complex at a price of 150k. NCC indicated a valuation of 300k for the property but there was acknowledegment of significant potential remedial building work."

All this makes the Standards Committee's Assessment Sub-Committee's claim that the only thing Collins knew about the matter was what was in the report appended to his decision seem all the more extraordinary and unlikely. I've pointed this out to them in my request for a review of their decision not to investigate Collins' conduct at call-in.

I've been told separately that one of the groups based at the complex, who are affiliated to a national organisation, had made an offer for the building and I'm attempting to confirm whether that is the case and whether it was the same one that David Smith was referring to.

But essentially, it is clear that, even before the serious incompetence set in with legal services' failure to give the tenants proper notice, NCC was already nearly £200k down. For some reason, it seems that somebody high up really wanted the building to go to Nottingham Studios. I have no idea why but maybe there's a clue as to the who in one of the emails from David Hill, Nottingham Studios' agent on 19 March 2009-

"My understanding is that the Leader is very keen to see this sale go through and the resulting project to support artists.

I assume that any response to our final position will be endorsed by him."

"I Knew Nothing" Says JoCo

Funny isn't it? You send email after email and you are ignored. Write some stuff on a sweary blog that's read by a few hundred people and suddenly you get a response.

I've now had a reply from NCC Monitoring Officer Glen O'Connell including the Standards Committee's Assessment Sub-Committee's deliberations on my complaint about JoCo's conduct during the Radford Unity Complex fiasco.

Essentially I complained that JoCo appeared to have misled the call-in sub-committee over the amount that RUC was to be sold for. The minutes record him claiming it would fetch £320k whereas Nottingham Studios had already been offered it for £150k.

And yet, the Standards Committee said -


"4) ...that the Portfolio Holder Decision and supporting documentation had been prepared by professional officers and the Subject Councillor was entitled to rely on their content when taking the Decision and when participating in the Call-In Sub-Committee meeting on 4 March 2010;

(5) that there was no evidence before the Sub-Committee to suggest that the Subject Councillor was aware of Property Plus negotiations at the time of the Call-In Sub-Committee meeting on 4 March 2010..."

In other words he didn't know.

Now, what we need to remember here is that this is an assessment sub-committee. Its role is to decide whether there is a case to investigate. It's totally disingenuous to state at this stage that there is 'no evidence' that he was aware of 'negotiations'. That's what you do investigations for, to see if there is evidence.

And yet there was evidence that JoCo was quite involved in the matter. The Post quotes Nottingham Studio's agent telling NCC in an email -

"My understanding is that the leader is very keen to see this sale go through."

Now that's not proof that he knew every in-and-out of what was happening but it does suggest that he was maintaining a close interest. There are other potential explanations too but then, in order to discover which explanation is the correct one you carry out an investigation.

The Assessment sub-committee is effectively expecting me to prove the case before it will even agree to investigate. That is a perverse outcome. I have the right to request a review of the decision and I intend to do so but first I am going to see if I can get hold of any more evidence. I have one or two lines of inquiry but if anybody can help with this please email me via the link in the blog profile.

More Radford Unity Complex Fall-Out

The Overview and Scrutiny Committee is soon to discuss the progress of implementing recommendations made by its call-in sub-committee after JoCo (and presumably a number of others) ballsed up the handling of what to do with the Radford Unity Complex.

I reported in my previous post that Nottingham Studios had secured a lease on the Douglas School site. Well, it now seems that the wronged parties in all of this i.e. the occupants of RUC have now been engaged in negotiations for a Community Asset Transfer of the property.

Like with Nottingham Studios and the Douglas School site, you have to ask why this wasn't done
before. It was claimed at call-in that

"...the City Council had not been forthcoming with community groups about the possibility of pursuing a community asset transfer...". 

Essentially the response by JoCo et al was "...well you didn't ask...". I paraphrase but that about sums up the quality of the debate.

Another recommendation from call-in was that a review of the 'communications strategy' between NCC and RUC be carried out. The latest report states that -


"Since the call in the communication plan for the Radford Unity Complex Project has been revised. In particular new channels of communication have been established. The RUC groups have appointed a main spokesperson, with a deputy to cover in his absence and to support as necessary. The groups’ spokesperson is in direct contact with the Service Manager (Voluntary Sector Sustainability) who acts as a two way channel of communication between the RUC groups..."

(NCCLOLS translation service - "we went and talked to them". I love the way that NCC calls a spade a strategic multi-purpose manually operated granular materials moving device.)

Meetings have also been held concerning a further recommendation to 'develop transparent criteria for asset transfer to the community'. This is to avoid in future giving the impression that policy is made on the hoof when one of JoCo's mates rings him up and asks if there are any properties they can have. Which isn't what happened with RUC obviously.

Other fine measures include overhauling procedures to ensure that equalities issues are taken into account. The Equality and Diversity team's advice was to ensure the form has a question along the lines of 'have you taken into account equalities issues? Yes/no'. Worth their weight in gold that lot, that midnight oil wasn't in short supply there. Finally, never again must that embarrassing situation occur where officers send notice of eviction three months before the political decision to dispose of the property is made. It just makes everybody look silly and gives the impression of being disorganised.

All in all, that's quite a lot of changes and recommendations considering that call-in voted almost unanimously that nothing had gone wrong anyway. Welcome to the bizarre world of local government.

Nottingham Studios Given a Home

Nottingham Studios last came to our attention when it emerged that they were intended as the beneficiaries of the decision to offload Radford Unity Complex due to it being 'surplus to requirements'.

Initially, NCC proposed to offer the RUC tenants the (genuinely) surplus Douglas School site but that wasn't suitable and, as the legal quagmire deepened the sale of RUC fell through.

In a twist of fate it now seems that Nottingham Studios is to be offered a lease on the Douglas School instead which you can't help feeling would have been a good idea at the start. Not that we get to see the terms of the lease mind, that's 'exempt' from publication.

It seems that NCC doesn't see it as being in our interests to examine whether our assets are being disposed of in a way which provides value for money.

Standards Committee Fail

Here is the text of an email that I have just sent to Glen O'Connell, Nottingham City Council's monitoring officer concerning the consistent and ongoing failure of the Standards Committee to deal with complaints against councillors -

"Dear Mr O'Connell,

It is nearly two months since I last heard from you with regard to the complaints I have made against serving City Councillors and yet I have heard nothing further. Both of these go back as far as May yet as far as I can tell absolutely nothing has been done.

In addition I notice that complaints about other councillors appear to be making no progress and yet the Standards Committee appears to be repeatedly canceling meetings. Even if they do manage to get it together the agenda rarely seems packed. I think it is true to say that the Standards Committee have yet to hear any complaint against a serving councillor.

It is hard not to conclude that the internal regulation system for elected members' behaviour is collectively dragging its feet. At best it is utterly failing to do its duty to the citizens of Nottingham. I realise it would be politically embarrassing for the Lord Mayor, Leader and a Portfolio Holder to be investigated at the same time but I hope that this is not playing any part in the delay.

Please will you take this email as a formal complaint under Nottingham City Council's complaints procedure for the unacceptable delays in dealing with all complaints against councillors. As part of dealing with this complaint I would be grateful if you could provide an update to the cases that I have referred at least, however it would be preferable if The Standards Committee were to provide a public update on all cases. Nottingham City Council is quick to name and shame individuals when it sees fit and sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

The reference to cases that I referred concerns complaints I made in May in May about Cllr Ahmed's role in the decision to cut CEHRNN's funding and against JoCo for, ahem, 'making a mistake' when telling the call-in sub-committee that the sale of Radford Unity Complex would raise twice as much as he had already offered it for sale to a bunch of artists. In addition there is still the Cllr Grocock issue outstanding which is becoming farcical in the extent of its delay.

I can't help wondering if the agenda is to make sure that nothing is heard before the elections next year.

Update - no response by end of play Friday

Calling (In) Mr Tinworth

Three Tory Councillors have invoked the 'call-in' procedure on Hassan Ahmed's portfolio decision to award Harold Tinworth the £30k contract for 'Executive Development'. The Overview and Scrutiny' Call-In Sub-Committee will consider the request on 8 September.

The 'call-in' procedure is the little used means by which a portfolio holder's decision can be examined by councillors. Following a good old chinwag, absolutely bugger all happens due to Labour members resolutely refusing to ever challenge the leadership. It's only the second time it's ever been used, the first being the decision to sell Radford Unity Complex. At that one, Councillor Jon Collins, he of 'Leader of the Council' fame, sold the committee a porkie regarding the sale price. Hopefully the Standards Committee should be looking into his conduct there but they're probably desperately trying to think of a way to avoid doing so. Certainly you shouldn't hold your breath.

You may remember that the 'Executive Development' gig was formally put to tender following the District Auditor's failure to do anything significant about the seriously dodgy way that money was finding its way to Tinworth without any formal sanction.

District Auditor in 'Mild Rebuke of Council' Uproar

We've been having a look at the somewhat murky status of the various payments made to Mr Harold Tinworth, murky because no-one has ever seemed to have formally agreed the expenditure to pay for his services and there is no formal record of what he actually does.

The District Auditor has now completed an investigation into the matter and, while the total lack of any sanction is hardly going to be much of a disincentive against frittering away £111k of public money with no records kept again in the future, NCC have now been told to formalise the arrangement and to issue a proper tender for the work required that is compliant with NCC's financial regulations. I thought I'd get in quick and ask for a copy of the tender under the Freedom of Info Act.

The reasons why the DA decided not to look further into this matter are somewhat disappointing. She says that her remit is limited to investigating years that haven't yet been subject to full audit. Because of this restriction as far as she is concerned the amount of money at stake is negligible. 'Negligible' in as much as it would have paid for a social worker for the best part of a year that is. Essentially, what is being said here is that if you can keep your skullduggery under wraps for long enough, you have a much better chance of not being investigated.

Of course, we might do well to remind ourselves that the person at the centre of this is the leader of the council Jon Collins. The invoices all said that the work charged for was 'services to the leader' and Collins seemed to be the only person who knew what Tinworth was up to.

This is the second time that a Collins scheme has escaped proper scrutiny. He was at the centre of the Radford Unity Complex debacle which the District Auditor was looking into, before abandoning the investigation when the sale fell through.

NCC Annual Meeting

I just found the minutes to the council's annual meeting. That's not to to say that I'm claiming they were previously well hidden, simply that I hadn't really bothered to look.

Anyway I was interested to see the minute of the exchange between Tory Councillor Georgina Culley and Cap'n Collins over his alleged 'personal mentoring'. For more details on the background to this see here. Let's quote it in full -

"Councillor Culley asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

Could the Leader of the Council explain the nature of the personal mentoring that he has received since 2005/06, and what value the public has received from the £111,000 spent to date?

Councillor Collins replied as follows:

Thank you Lord Mayor. As I have previously made clear in a question to Council on this matter, I have not received any personal mentoring. I cannot therefore comment on the nature or value of something I have not had."

Remember, these are the official minutes of the meeting and are therefore supposed to accurately report formal replies in full even if (and they often do) go on a bit.

Two issues strike me here. One, if that is all he said, it is a woefully inadequate answer to a question about over £111k public expenditure which nobody seems to be able to trace. Secondly, and possibly partially in Collins' defence, Charles Walker at the 'Post' seemed to hear him say quite a bit more. Shouldn't all that have gone into the minutes? (Update - see comments for an explanation of what actually happened)

I do note Collins reference to a previous reply to a question to Council and maybe the extra detail was given there and Walker or his sub-eds conflated the two for simplicity. I haven't been able to find any trace of this earlier question on the issue and I'll keep looking but if anybody else can enlighten me please do.

By the way, I received a message from the District Auditor telling me that she had been in Nottingham last Friday but hadn't been able to conclude her enquiries at that time. It does look like there is quite a bit to look into.

As to why this is an important issue, well there is of course the value for money question, what did we get for the cash? This appears to be the only aspect that the Tories were looking into (happy to correct this if one of them wants to get in contact). However, to me, a bigger issue is the lack of accountability behind the spending of this money on our behalf.

The fact is that Collins could have quite legitimately made a portfolio holder decision to employ a consultant to do whatever it was that Tinworth was doing (presuming it was within his remit, if not I'm sure he could have got the relevant portfolio holder to do it for him). This decision would have been published and we would have some idea of what was going on. He could also have quite legitimately formally decided not to go to an open tender because NCC's finance rules allow it to do that if the circumstances justify it. That would also be recorded on the portfolio decision. Essentially, two pieces of paper and a couple of signatures would have made it all above board.

The thing is, when the Leader of the Council doesn't follow those simple accountability measures, and over a hundred grand gets spent on somebody who Collins does appear to have history with (Tinworth was involved in trying to rescue the One City Partnership, the predecessor to 'One Nottingham' which Collins has been running as his personal fiefdom until very recently*) then we have the right to wonder if there is a bit of a stinky fish involved.

Anyway, moving on. I was interested to see that both opposition parties tabled some fairly detailed amendments to the budget. With the current political make-up of NCC their amendments had no chance of being passed so you might wonder why they bother. I for one am glad that they did. If nothing else it gives us some insight into their parties' thinking on the issues (e.g. both seem to want to see expenditure on the Arrow reduced and the Lib Dems also suggested ending the ridiculous 'Proud' campaign, the use of Executive Assistants and to scrap the Viccy Centre 'rebuild') and at least keeps alive the impression of democracy happening. Must be a thankless task drafting those amendments for what may be essentially a symbolic gesture but again, I'm glad that they do.

Lastly, there were a large number of questions from the public about the Radford Unity Complex debacle, to which Collins provided the response. He mentions the 'unprecedented' Call-in Sub-commmittee meeting held just four days before but this time doesn't repeat his (subsequently revealed to be false) claim that selling it would raise £320k. In fact, a buyer had been offered it last Autumn for less than half that. It's difficult to see how Collins couldn't have known about that and why he failed to include it in his response. The Audit Commission were keen to look into until the sale fell through which I reckon Collins can count as a lucky escape.

All in all, it's worth reading and comparing the not entirely identical stories he gave to the sub-committee and full council, especially in light of how it all fell apart when the dodgier bits of the deal found their way into the public domain.

*Of course, it's likely that he will continue running One Nottingham as his personal fiefdom via a proxy.

Always Happy to Help...

I've been getting a small number of hits from a Nottingham City Council address via a Google search for

"Prepare a brief report identifying the main business activities of nottingham city council"

Rather looks like someone's going for an internal job application doesn't it?

By an extraordinary coincidence the 'Appointments and Conditions of Service' committee is meeting to discuss the recruitment to the Corporate Director for Communities post which emerged from the top level restructure that has already done for Sallyanne 'Shit for Brains' Johnson and Barry Horne. The post has been caretakered by Michael Williams who, pre-restructure, was known as the Corporate Director for Community and Culture. His role included, among many other things I've no doubt, making a brief but costly and pointless appearance at my employment tribunal hearing.

Ok, I'm obviously linking the two purely for the purposes of humour but the mental image I have of Williams trying to fill in his application form via google just wouldn't go away and the resulting fantasy that he found stuff here to use made me giggle.

So I'm concluding that Williams is being required to apply for his own job, the background being that a colleague jumped before she was pushed and another failed to make the grade. He might be excused for feeling a little edgy. Do you think this has anything to do with Mr Williams' sterling support for JoCo at the recent 'Call-in Sub-Committee' hearing into the Radford Unity Complex fiasco?

Radford Unity Complex Sale Falls Through

Just a quick note to say that I've received word from the Audit Commission that the sale of the Radford Unity Complex has fallen through so they are suspending their investigation.

Where this leaves the tenants I have no idea. Presumably they're still on notice of eviction and NCC still presumably still sees RUC as 'surplus to requirements'. After all, the decision to sell couldn't have been due to any back room deals could it?

Coincidentally the minutes of the Call-in Sub Committee reviewing the decision are out in the wild. The explanations for the notices to quit predating the decision to sell are farcical.

So another resounding success for Leader Collins. Anyone want to give me odds on a 'redevelopment' resulting in the demolition of RUC being announced in the next six months?

There's Just Nothing We Can Do...

A bit older this one.

Last July NCC got all bullish about so-called 'Griminals' who make the place look untidy and jeopardise winning 'Britain in Bloom'.

Then, a couple of weeks later this story about a notorious 'grot-spot' found it's way into the 'Evening Post', complete with stern looking Tory PPC for Nottingham South (click on story for bigger version).


It concerns a property on Greencroft in Clifton that has apparently been empty for some time and has attracted the usual community bugbears, grafitti and 'anti-social behaviour'.

The Tories, in an early outing for their rather successful campaigning method of highlighting NCC failings in order to get themselves in the media and put Labour in a bad light, took up the issue with NCC. (I know I've been somewhat cynical about this and I'm not convinced of their new 'community champions' persona for a second but I have to acknowledge their approach's success as a campaigning tool. They got lots of media mileage from the Radford Unity Complex issue which will have done Rowena Holland absolutely no harm on May 6th.)

The 'Post' reports that the answer they got back was that NCC couldn't serve an enforcement notice to get the place cleaned up because they owned the property and they couldn't serve a notice on themselves. I mean, there is a whacking great hole in their logic there for all to see but we'll let it go for now.

Because later in the article, Cllr Alan Clarke said that the property was on a long lease to a Housing Association. So really, as far as enforcement issues are concerned, this means that NCC isn't the owner at all, the (unnamed) housing association is. So why can't a notice be served on them?

Next I'd like to introduce you to a little known but extraordinarily draconian piece of legislation known as S.215 of the Town and Country Planning Act. Essentially, this allows a local council to make a subjective decision that the condition of a piece of land or property is affecting the 'amenity' (whatever that is, it's not defined) of an area. It can then serve a notice requiring the owner or occupier to clean it up and if you don't comply you can be fined and you'll have a criminal record. The legislation is completely open-ended and, as far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent it being used by a council who decided one day that all front doors on a street should be pink. An increasing number of councils are finding it especially useful for those things that they don't like but which don't require planning permission such as tall hedges because of its handy catch-all nature.

So, you thought an Englishman's home was his castle eh? Not if your local council decides they don't like the colour of your turrets it's not.

And now I have a confession. I have been on the receiving end of this nasty little piece of legislation and found myself in the Magistrates' Court yesterday. Yes, I'm afraid I have an untidy garden. It's got brambles, tall hedges and raggedy bushes. I'm not proud of this fact but, on the other hand, I don't really think it makes me a bad person either.

You see one of the effects of depression, of which I suffer following NCC's appalling treatment of me when I worked for them, and which is defined as a disability under the Disability Discrimination Act, is that you often find that you can't really cope with getting out of bed, never mind doing the gardening. Frankly, if you find the outside of my house offensive you should see the inside.

And the point here is that the sole effect of my garden on the wider community is cosmetic, it doesn't actually hurt anyone. It does however attract increasingly large amounts of wildlife, last summer I saw more butterflies and bumble bees than ever before, both of which are in serious decline but that doesn't seem to be classed as a positive effect on the 'amenity' by NCC. Because, let's remember, they get to make up all the rules.

So, NCC caused my illness and disability and then attempts to prosecute me for not being able to fully cope with all aspects of my life as a result of that disability. As you might guess, I feel a little on the bitter side about that.

So, why do you think that NCC would prosecute a disabled person under S.215 but not a housing association, even though the above property in Clifton would be a much more appropriate case seeing as it is unoccupied and boarded up, creating much more of an eyesore and attracting the dreaded ASB? You don't think it could be because they don't expect the disabled person to be up to fighting back, allowing them to secure an easy prosecution, get it in the media and frighten everybody else into being fully compliant little Stepford Wives? Whereas of course, a housing association is likely to have those inconvenient legal teams staffed with expensive lawyers who probably WILL find all sorts of loopholes and fight back quite determinedly. And of course, being a local authority, you never know when you might need a housing association on your side when government inspectors start looking at how well you deal with the provision of social housing.

No, much easier to bullshit the press and politicians with some nonsense excuse and look the other way. More fool the Tories and the Post for falling for that one.

So I don't know how my case is going to go. I'm probably not helping myself blogging about it but this is partly blogging as therapy and I think the issues are important. The case yesterday was adjourned on NCC's application on the basis that they had 'just' found out that I 'may' be disabled. Ignoring the fact that I am pretty sure that I'm fairly well known amongst NCC's Legal Services team, there's also the fact that I told the Environmental Health guy last year when I caught him sneaking about my property taking pictures.

As I've said in previous posts, there does appear to be a bit of double standards among enforcement decisions by NCC.

By the way, according to the Committees Terms of Reference as part of NCC's Constitution (see p38 of this document and also this page from the NCC website), all enforcement decisions have to be approved by the Development Control Committee. I've checked all their agendas back to September 2008 and they haven't been told about mine.