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?

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.

Riots

So we got riots in Nottingham too. We can still kick it with the big boys eh? We're still nationally relevant aren't we?

Obviously I'm being ridiculously obtuse for comic effect. Or it would be comic effect if it was actually funny. I ummed and ahhed about writing about any of this because I really wasn't sure if I had anything useful to say. Time will tell I suppose.

The thing I've been asking myself is why did riots occur in Nottingham? It's not like the entire country has been engulfed in civil disorder, it seems to have been confined to a few urban areas, London obviously, Manchester/Salford and Birmingham as far as I know saw significant problems, although there was some less serious trouble in Leicester. Why these and not, say, Leeds or anywhere in Scotland or Wales.

An easy answer of course is poverty. The Guardian made an interesting map of the London riots against deprivation and there certainly appears to be some visual correlation there. Nottingham does have areas which are very much at the upper lower worse end of deprivation indices. It's also probably not controversial to suggest a certain 'copycat' element  and of course, the reality is that individuals are making bad, selfish, destructive decisions about how to behave.

It's this latter element that the right wing tends to concentrate on in isolation whereas us lefties are duty bound to think about the first. I think there's more to it than that and it's important to remember that just because one explanation has merit doesn't mean that none of the others do. As a lefty I would never try to argue that a person in a hoody making his way into town and smashing his way into JDSports is entirely blameless and had no choice in what he was doing because it's poverty innit. Such a person is an individual and is capable of making his own decisions. However, context does, I believe have an impact in how often those decisions turn out to be bad but that context does not mean the individuals shouldn't be held to account.

Another crucial aspect of context is, I believe, the example set by authority. Again there is a certain amount of selectivity in how this is discussed by the right, concentrating almost exclusively on bad parenting, as if our parents are the only examples of behavioural standards in our lives. Of course this can be a factor and it's right to discuss that. But what is often forgotten, mainly because our politicians have an absolute vested interest in never acknowledging it in any way whatsoever, is the example set by those in power. I'm talking here about how politicians, police, judges, media bigwigs, councillors etc behave.

Things the British public have been expected to swallow uncomplainingly include MPs massively defrauding their expenses with only a tiny proportion held to account, bankers looting our financial system with barely a job lost, being bailed out by public funds and then going out and doing it again with bonuses back at boomtime levels. Meanwhile we're told that because of this bailout we have to endure years of austerity.

We have had to watch how the phone hacking scandal has unfolded after years of denial from the Metropolitan Police, now followed by numerous media figures arrested and a growing list of resignations and investigations into senior police officers.

Locally we have had to sit by as the Housing Allocations scandal has been covered up by local politicians who then feel able to threaten rioters (or their parents) with eviction*. There have been absolutely no evictions for illegally obtained council houses and one councillor publicly implicated was rewarded with a spell as Lord Mayor with the investigation into his behaviour strangely making no progress throughout his entire term of office and now extending way beyond the election. While our local police force appears to be dealing with the current disturbances well, they were entirely complicit in allowing NCC to cover up the housing scandal.

The Post has said the police are expecting an extra bill of £400k for the riots and this is clearly bad news but let's remember that they were happy to shell out £700k on a doomed and corrupt operation to stop a protest at Ratcliffe power station. A fine example to us all.

I understand of course that, just as we were all told by our teachers when we were very small, two wrongs don't make a right. But if you constantly see these powerful people constantly getting away with allsorts, while you can't get a council house and maybe got beaten up by the police at a demo recently, you may not feel as committed to the high minded principles of law and order and responsibilities for your actions as you once did. Multiply this up to a societal level and the chances of a breakdown of law and order is bound to increase as more people think 'why bother?'

So yes, of course those individuals have individual responsibility for their actions down at JDSports but our politicians and other people of power need to get their own houses in order and accept their responsibility for creating this context. I would at least then feel a bit more enthusiastic and supportive of the calls for condemnation that are being parrotted robotically by our politicians at the moment.

*Addendum - they have also issued calls for private landlords to evict people as well.

Approved Rebellion

Funny old world this. One day you get an email from Nottingham City Council including the following;

"We were successful because of the link to the riots of October 1831 when a crowd of Nottingham citizens surged towards the Castle, furious with the residing Duke of Newcastle who had just openly declared his opposition to the Reform Act. This banner is a representation of the democracy the Nottingham rioters were protesting for.

The people of Nottingham burnt down castles for the right to vote. What a talking point for the electorate of the city today!"

Riots! Protest!! Burning down castles!!! Heady stuff. This concerned the planned transformation of the castle which will include a museum of rebellion.

Another day we get this in the paper from Leader of the Council Lord JoCo;

"[Staff] were subject to some frankly appalling behaviour from protesters at the weekend when they vandalised this building at significant cost to local council tax payers.
 
Let's be absolutely clear, they were not homeless, there have not been homeless people in any number in any of those protests. We are talking about the same people who have been involved in taking advantage of Mickey Summers around his particular issues, and Tom Crawford around his particular issues.

This is a small number of antiestablishment protestors whose interest is in protest, damage, threatening and actually, from time to time, violent behaviour towards council staff."

Anti-establishment! Appalling behaviour!! Chalk on buildings!!! What a wanker.

You see, there is approved rebellion eg, that which happened a long time ago or which was against someone else, and there is forbidden rebellion, that which tackles the unfairness and injustice happening today which the council is at least partly responsible for. This is the kind of thinking that requires us to celebrate burning down castles yet condemn chalking slogans on the Council House.

Fun fact; this celebrating the reform act riots was actually my idea, I included it in an April Fool post about 6 years ago. We all know they read the blog (nasty letters threatening me over the state of my garden tend to coincide with my now occasional flurries of blog posts or anti-council Twitter rants) but strangely, I haven't been given any credit yet.

Wonder if the homeless camp will find it's way into the forthcoming 'Museum of Rebellion'?

Fun fact 2; more people have been arrested and/or charged over the homelessness camp and associated protests than over the entire housing allocations scandal which saw hundreds of council houses misallocated and several disappearing off into dodgy right-to-buy deals. It also included a council employee attacking squatters with a cricket bat...

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.

Jane Todd Departs the Plastic Throne

So. Farewell then. Jane Todd*...

As you might have heard, Jane Todd has become the first Nottingham City Council Chief Exec in around 10 years to depart for reasons unconnected with JoCo's megalomania. Joking apart, she's going so that she can recover from an operation to remove a form of brain tumour which is seriously nasty stuff. I genuinely hope that she continues to improve and returns to full health asap.

I'm no fan of hers professionally but neither am I particular a hater. There will be puff pieces in the local media but we don't really do puff pieces over here. So what follows is, I hope, a small analysis of Ms Todd's record in the context of the rather vexed history of the NCC Chief Exec post.

As many know, the Chief Executive Post at NCC has not had a happy recent history. Ms Todd is the forth postholder in about 10 years, with the three predecessors leaving with large payouts. Much of this was blamed on JoCo's apparent inability to get on with his Chief Execs, a point of view supported by the infamous Hardmoor Associates report. Ms Todd's immediate predecessor, Michael Frater, did not necessarily have a reputation as being a particularly nice man but he is known for rooting out corruption. Some might wonder whether his rather swift departure and huge payout, even by NCC standards, might be connected with that.

So in swans Jane, initially as an 'interim' 'consultant' chief exec. She'd been a senior officer at the council before and was generally regarded to have kept links with the local Labour Party establishment. She wasn't expected to rock the boat and no-one was surprised when she got the job on a permanent basis in December 2008.

It wasn't long before she started fulfilling her promise. When the Hardmoor report was leaked she leapt into action with a somewhat cringeworthy defence of her political colleagues. She deftly sidestepped the massive elephant in the room that the chief suspect behind all the trouble was still in position while trying to convince us all that there was nothing to see here. I'm afraid I thought that she made rather a fool of herself.

A quick pause here. I think there can be absolutely no doubt that Ms Todd is an extremely able woman. You don't get to inhabit the very senior positions in both local and central government without that being the case. And I also have no doubt that she deserves all the plaudits she has received from the top NCC politicians because she has, without a shadow of a doubt, delivered everything that they could have asked for her.

With that in mind, the list of her achievements on first reading doesn't look over generous. Maybe that's because her main achievements can't really be stated out loud and, while JoCo and the politburo have much to thank her for, it's less clear that the ordinary Joe and Joesephine of Nottingham should feel so grateful.

Forgive me for another digression. Essentially, local government is based partly on a separation between the political side i.e. the councillors and the paid staff i.e. the officers. For the most part ( there are exceptions e.g. political assistants), the officers are supposed to remain politically neutral. The politicians' job is to decide policy, the officers' job is to deliver it, without fear or favour.

That sounds simple but difficulties emerge when the politicians expect the officers to join in with some of the more political aspects of public life. The Hardmoor report touched on this. One of the tasks that the head of paid staff has to negotiate is to keep this separation and to support those officers below her/him in doing so too.

Let's have a look at the 'achievement' described as 'effective partnership working with Notts Police has contributed to major reductions in crime'. A big chunk of this 'major reduction in crime' is the joint decision by NCC and Notts Police that the worst local authority housing housing scandal since Dame Shirley Porter was doing the rounds wasn't really a crime at all and the resultant massive cover-up. Now most of the blame deserves to be laid firmly at the feet of the politicians but the papering over of the cracks could not have been achieved without some serious input from senior paid staff. As the head of the paid staff, and with a scandal that goes to the heart of the authority's reputation, that puts Jane Todd firmly in the spotlight as an accessory after the fact.


So, looking at what we know, including largely circumstantial evidence, reinforced by the findings by Hardmoor Associates, what I find myself concluding is that Jane Todd's predecessors did make some attempt to keeep the political separate from the officers but Ms Todd was less fussy. It doesn't take a full blown conspiracy theorist to suspect that is the chief reason why she and JoCo worked so well together and her valiant defence of his past battles supports this. Like I said, she has done everything the politicians could have hoped for. Whether she did everything WE could have hoped for remains very much open to question. The two are not the same thing.

So to summarise, I'm glad Ms Todd is still alive, because her illness I'm sure could well have been life threatening, and I hope she carries on in rude health for many years to come. But I'm not that sad that she's left her post to tell the truth. I think she got too far into bed with the dodgy politicians, forgetting that her role was to deliver the policy, not the personal agendas.

Of course, the next thing to worry about is who the hell we're going to get next. There were many rumours that Nottingham was seen as a bit of a poisoned chalice in Chief Executive circles and that's probably not gone away. Luckily the bunch on the next tier down appear sufficiently supine so I predict an internal appointment.

*Legally required intro for article about anybody leaving, passing on etc.

Housing Scandal Pratfalls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News Round Up

Couple of stories in the media that are of interest.

Firstly, an excellent analysis of NCC's Supporting People cuts in the Guardian yesterday. There's a bit of a ding-dong going on between Housing Minister Grant Schapps and JoCo over whose fault the cuts to SP are and, as is so often the case there's no straight answer.

Have a look at the article but my take on it is that it is mainly the government's fault beause the level of cuts imposed on NCC's formula grant is shocking. However, NCC could do more to alleviate the effect on vulnerable people. For example there are no cuts to the Community Protection Officer budget and I can see no reason why this service should be immune as it's largely a waste of oxygen and second hand police uniforms, why can't some of their funds be moved across to SP?.

The second thing is the news that Cllr Tony Sutton has written to the IPCC to ask that they look into Notts Police's lack of an investigation into the housing allocations scandal. Obviously an IPCC investigation isn't the most terrifying thing to happen to a police force and I doubt it will go anywhere but at least someone's having a go.

Update - Cllr Sutton has submitted a motion to the full council meeting on 7 Feb requesting the council to back his call for the IPCC to look into the issue.

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.

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.

Dodgy Councillor to be Next Lord Mayor

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Early Contender for Least Surprising Event of the Year

I mentioned before that Cllr Tony Sutton submitted a motion to full council asking that it support his call for the IPCC to investigate Notts Police for their criminal and likely corrupt decision not to investigate the housing allocations coruption scandal at Nottingham City Homes. Over to the Post to tell us what happened with that one but before you click on the link try guessing the result. Go on give it a go.

Yup you were right. The motion was defeated with the vote split clearly on party lines i.e. apparently every single Labour member voted against.

There's a rather sinister quote from Cllr Chapman -

"Why would we want to cover up? The easiest thing for us would have been to get a few heads rolling, get a few martyrs – guilty or not guilty – prosecuted and we could have got on with it."

In other words, Cllr Chapman thinks it's more honest to cover up corruption using the time honoured method of hiding the matter under the carpet as opposed to the alternative one of fitting somebody up. Notice he doesn't see the third option i.e. of actually catching the real perpetrator and handing them over to the police. That's because the perpetrators are either still in power or working with some of NCC's most favoured 'partners'.

So let's round up what has happened so far -

JoCo called Cllr Sutton a 'prat' fpr mentioning that he himself had contacted Tyrone Brown on behalf of a tenant who was then handed a property outside the normal procedures.

The Standards Committee quietly rejected a key Audit Commission recommendation that councillors should be required to declare any personal relationship with tenants on whose behalf they make representations. Apparently it would be too complicated for them.

Cllr Grocock has been openly named as having dishonestly tried to help someone get a property by saying he was his grandson. Despite there being no apparent dispute over the facts of this the Standards Committee has still not completed its investigations into the matter. I'd bet £1.50 of my own money that they won't do either until after the election. In the meantime he has been severely punished by, er, being appointed as Lord Mayor which just happens to carry with it an extra £25k personal allowance.

One part time temp has been let go. This is the sum total of disciplinary action taken. Similarly, no houses have been repossessed.

The council's internal investigation has cost £100k (or £150k if you believe Cllr Chapman's latest claim). This is apparently as much as can be justified*, although compare with this the £700k spent on the investigation and prosecution of the Ratcliffe environmental activists. Different organisation I know but let's not forget that JoCo is the Chair of Notts Police Authority too.

Furthermore, and if this isn't the clincher on this being a cover up I don't know what is, this £100k was spent on paying external solicitors to do NCC's Legal Services' normal work while they did the investigation themselves. Why? Surely a fresh set of eyes would have been more appropriate for the investigation rather than make them all learn NCC's systems which they would be completely unfamiliar with. Even on an efficiency aregument this was the wrong way round. It's difficult not to conclude that the idea was to make sure no-one looks in the wrong (right?) places. Where this leaves NCC's lawyers' professional standing I don't know.

All this is dodgy as fuck and, in theory should result in Labour being shown the door at the next elections in May. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen, I rather expect postal voting to play a pivotal role in the final result.

*To put this into context I reckon my employment tribunal case cost them over £40k including internal staff time.

Collins (and others) Cover Up #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PS Happy New Year all.

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

Some Are More Equal Than Others

It's been a while since I last wrote about Nottingham Equal. I've been chasing up a few Freedom of Info requests here and there which has shed a bit more light on the help they have received with their fundraising activities.

I have been writing about concerns with possible conflicts of interest between NCC's decision to end funding for the now closed Council for Equalities and Human Rights Nottm and Notts and the funding of Nottingham Equal for some time. These were initially based around Hassan Ahmed's involvement in the NE and jointly making the CEHRNN funding decision.

Let's have a bit of a recap. Ahmed and Cllr Chapman made the decision to stop CEHRNN's funding immediately in March 2010. In October that year a portfolio decision was published to fund Nottingham Equal to the tune of around £70k which seemed a bit of a coincidence. This funding came via One Nottingham. In April 2011, a further year of funding was allocated, the decision to do so citing 'satisfactory monitoring information' as a justification.

I was quite interested in this 'satisfactory monitoring information' so I put in a FoI for it. An interesting point this revealed is that the monitoring information concerned a period from April to December 2010 and reported on performance on a service level agreement which was only signed by representatives of Nottingham Equal (one of whom was Tyron Browne) on 19 January 2011. In other words, we have a report on outputs and outcomes before those outputs and outcomes were even agreed. Odd that.

What is also apparent is how closely that Nottingham Equal matched its targets. The target for the number of organisations supoorted was 8 and the number of organisationas actually supported was 8. The target for getting individuals involved in 'dialogue' on decision making was 30 and, you'll never guess, the number of individuals who became involved with 'dialogue' was, happily, 30. One target was exceeded, they organised two meetings against a target of just one, but of seven targets, six were met exactly. There was a week between the SLA being signed and these outputs reported. Thank the maker for happy coincidences.

In the meantime I had been trying to get hold of the tender consideration meeting minutes for this decision from One Notttingham who eventually refused. I went to the Information Commissioner who decided that, although ON weren't subject to FoI, the council should have responded instead because I had copied them into my review request. Not the result I was expecting but I have now had the minutes of the meeting, held 10 May 2010, and they make some interesting reading.

Firstly, the attendees include Hasseeb Ahmed, NCC's Head of Equalities. He was CEHRNN's project officer and wrote the damning (and seriously flawed) Equalities Impact Assessment which resulted in CEHRNN losing their funding. He was also listed as Nottingham Equal's project officer on their SLA but whether he had become involved by the time of this meeting I don't know.

Secondly, the original NCC portfolio decision confirming funding for Nottingham Equal (see link above) said that funding an alternative organisation had been considered as an option but that 'no comparable organisations existed'. The minutes contradict this somewhat because there was an alternative tender from an organisation called 'HRN'. In the remarks it was noted that their 'delivery vehicle' was CEHRNN.

Now then, due to Haseeb Ahmad's previous involvement with CEHRNN there is a strong argument that he had a massive conflict of interest being involved in this decision. He cannot possibly have come to the discussion with an open mind and assessed a bid involving CEHRNN dispassionately. Two other members of the panel expressed 'concerns about the delivery vehicle - CEHRNN' which strongly suggests that HRN never stood a chance. Nobody expressed any concerns about Nottingham Equal, despite Hassan Ahmed being a founder member and at the time of the meeting being before Standards for England accused of breaching the councillors code of conduct, nor of Tyron Browne's involvement when he had figured rather large in the housing allocations scandal.

If you've followed the story of CEHRNN, Nottingham Equal and the associated individuals it is extremely hard not to seriously wonder whether it was a king sized stitch up to take the funding from CEHRNN, pass it over to a more friendly organisation in the form of Nottingham Equal and do it via One Nottingham to make it more difficult to scrutinise what happened. This latest information in the form of the tender meeting minutes only adds to that impression.

One Nottingham And Its Voluntary Sector Representatives

While we're on the subject of One Nottingham (see previous post wrt workfare issues) I thought we might have a look at the categories of voluntary sector reps that serve on its board because it's a bit odd.

As mentioned previously the board has a 'faith' representative, a BME representative and a 'general' representative.

Personally I think this is a bit odd. I absolutely agree that an organisation such as One Nottingham should have at least one board member representing BME communities but why is this only as part of the voluntary sector? Don't black people work in banks too?

I also wonder about whether a faiths representative is justified. Yes, I know the majority of people in Nottingham identify with a religion but I suspect only a tiny number of the 44% of Nottingham people identifying as Christian actually bother turning up of a Sunday. I'm sure levels of devotion in other religions is much higher but I suspect there's a lot of overlap between BME and non-Christian faith issues. Maybe combine the two?

That said, a sound justification for having a 'faith' representative is that, like race, it is one of the protected characteristics in discrimination law. However, that opens several worm-cans as One Nottingham appears to have no representation for the other major categories of women (yes, I know it's actually 'sex' but it's generally women who face the discrimination side of things), disability, older/younger people and LGBT communities, other than via the 'general' VCS rep. It's this that concerns me the most and I have no idea what the justification is. Please feel free to write in if you do.

It seems to me that a better way of doing things would be to have board reps representing the above sections of the community, based around the protected characteristics rather than on a particular service sector. Don't get me wrong, a voluntary sector rep is still justified as they are important service providers in the city. However I think it's wrong to assume that the interests of that particular business sector are necessarily the same as the people they serve.

What got me thinking about this is the current elections to the VCS reps on the ON board. While looking into this an aspect of the organisation of the vote for the BME rep concerned me a little and that is the involvement of Nottingham Equal;-

"The BME candidates will be elected by an electorate who have been notified to ON primarily (but not only) by Nottingham Equal."

Why does Nottingham Equal play such an important role? I've written quite a lot about this bunch in the past, largely due to its connections with two of Nottingham's dodgier characters, Hassan Ahmed and Tyron Browne, as well as the coincidental rise of this organisation concurrent with the demise of the former Racial Equality Council, more recently the Council for Equalities and Human Rights Nottm and Notts, which had Ahmed's fingerprints all over it. Browne is, of course still involved with NE. He is/was also involved with PATRA which did quite nicely out of the Future Jobs Fund (Prop. Hassan Ahmed).

I seem to remember that NE 'facillitated' the VCS BME rep election where the Chief Exec of CEHRNN was voted out of the role back in 2010 which left a bad taste in the mouth. Now they appear to effectively be the gatekeeper for the BME rep this time round.

With this latter point in mind it seems quite astonishing that one of NE's own board members, Prof Cecille Wright, is running for the BME rep post on the ON board. Have they never heard the phrase 'perceived conflict of interest'? Prof Wright is also a board member for PATRA too which is quite a coincidence.

So Nottingham Equal seems to have the entire BME sector in Nottingham in lockdown, quite an achievement for an organisation little more than three years old. How much of this is down to Browne's influence cannot be quantified but it's certainly true that NCC, and thus One Nottingham, have a very big motivation to keep him on side. After all, nobody knows better where the housing allocations scandal bodies are buried.

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...

More on the Whitewash

The Post has an article today quoting a former senior police officer saying that he is 'baffled' that the police haven't investigated the housing allocations scandal. There are later subtle hints about the closeness of the relationship between the police and senior members and officers of the council.

More interesting to me though is the following extract -

"The city council has now decided to drop the investigation, claiming it had spent £100,000 on in-house solicitors.

The majority of this money was spent on employing other people to carry out the solicitors' normal work while they conducted the investigation."

I did question the use of in-house solicitors carrying out the investigation the other day on the basis that NCC is normally very keen to bring in external consultants so it's strange that they don't bother in one of the situations where it would be extremely appropriate to do so. Now it seems that they DID bring outside lawyers in but not to do the investigation, just to free up the internal legal teams who presumably could be relied on not to look in the 'wrong' places.

This just gets murkier by the day.

Differing Fortunes

I've previously written quite a bit on the decision by NCC to cease funding the Council for Equality and Human Rights Nottingham and Notts but there was an interesting aspect that I'd missed.

Councillor Brian Grocock used to be on CEHRNN's board. His annual report from 2008/9 confirms he was an NCC appointed member of Notts REC (CEHRNN's previous name prior to its widened remit) and I have been told that he was there right up to the decision to stop the funding before resigning.

Now NCC have made all sorts of claims and criticisms about CEHRNN's service (a few of which they accept) so, assuming the principle of collective responsibility, surely Grocock is as much to blame as anybody?

And yet, while CEHRNN has had to resort to m'learned friends and making redundancies, Grocock has been rewarded with a posh new frock and an extra £25k in his new role of Lord Mayor.

Considering that Grocrook was fingered in the housing allocations scandal and is being (very slowly) investigated by the Standards Committee over that, you have to wonder exactly what it is he's doing right in order to warrant such resilience.

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.

Riots # 3

One of the surprising things about the Nottingham Riots is that I haven't seen a single word of criticism about the way Notts police handled things. In fact everything I have read points to them dealing with matters pretty much as you would hope they would.

Also refreshingly we don't appear to have had any of the ridiculously over the top sentencing for what are often minor offences so far. A judge has thrown himself into the verbal attacks on those before him but you kind of expect that these days.

What a good job therefore that we can rely on fucking idiots like Jon Collins vigourously wanking themselves into a frenzy of frothy revenge fantasy in order to keep up appearances. This is the lying bastard who has done everything possible to protect the crooks who stole Nottingham's council houses as well as looting taxpayers' funds to pay his consultant mates £100,000s with no lawful authority*.

Stinking hypocrite, it's people like that who should be up in front of the beak.

*And Collins, if you're reading this, remember that if you sue me you'll have to produce the evidence that Tinworth was lawfully engaged which your officers have been unable to do so far. And we both know that the last thing you want is a court looking into the housing allocations scandal.