It's Uncanny...

Bloody 'ell, stick Gollum in a suit and see what you get


"Ohhh, precious police authority..."

Despair at Windows of Opportunity

I hear that Windows Of Despair now has some pictures up although some of them are NCC's own stock images, presumably added to try and make the scheme look popular.

More seriously, the pics sent in by actual punters have not been credited. Understandably, some of them are pretty unhappy about that.

Harold Tinworth - An Update

Had a further response to my FoIA request about the decision to commission services from Harold Tinworth's company 'Regional and Local Associates'.

As you can see, NCC are saying that they have no further info regarding the decision to spend over £25k pa on a consultant to provide unspecified services. That's not good.

Apparently the Audit Commission is investigating this one and I'll hopefully be able to update you further on that fairly soon.

Hassan Ahmed Found Guilty of Breach of Members Code of Conduct

Blimey, I reckon I must be psychic. Barely an hour after finishing my post about complaints about councillors and codes of conduct the news comes in that Hassan Ahmed has been found guilty of breaching the members code of conduct by the Standards Board for England because he failed to declare a number of interests.

Despite this the board decided to take no further action accepting that -

"...there is an inherent risk for any member who is involved in the number of organisations that Councillor Ahmed is involved in, of inadvertently failing to consider the requirements of the Code to register those interests, declare those interests at meetings of the authority, and consider those interests when approaching officers of the authority."

Oh for fucks sake. How hard can it be? Harder than being an executive portfolio holder? Does he need someone to remind him where he lives? After all, he does own two properties, must be very easy for him to get them mixed up.

But in a spectacular combination of breathtaking arrogance and delusion he told the 'Post' -

"I am delighted that, after a thorough investigation, I have been exonerated. The Standards Board found that I had no case to answer."

Erm, no mate, you weren't exonerated at all you were found to have BREACHED YOUR CODE OF CONDUCT. That's not the same as being exonerated. Being exonerated would have meant that you were found to have NOT BREACHED YOUR CODE OF CONDUCT, which wasn't what happened.

Do you see the difference Councillor Ahmed? One is being exonerated, the other is being found guilty. You were the latter. I realise that telling the difference is almost as difficult as remembering which pies you've got your fingers stuffed in but keep working at it you bullshitting fucking twat.

One of the factors that helped Ahmed escape any sanction was that -

"The ESO found that there was no evidence that Councillor Ahmed had attended any council meeting, while a portfolio holder, at which one of his registered, or unregistered interests had been discussed or where funding or grants had been considered or approved."

Well no, he wouldn't have been. That's because, unless it was a very big grant (>£500k) virtually all funding decisions are taken by a single portfolio holder. Unless Ahmed happened to be that portfolio holder (and I think that would be too brazen even for him) he wouldn't be formally involved. But that ignores the informal influence that any councillor might have and the Standards Board should have taken that into account.

And of course, as we've written about previously, Ahmed was very much involved with a decision to suddenly end all NCC funding for the Council for Equality and Human Rights Nottm + Notts which is arguably a potential competitor to Nottingham Equal, one of the organisations Ahmed was involved with. Although this decision was made after he was forced by the Post to declare his interests, a councillor's involvement in an organisation is not only relevant to how NCC deals with that organisation but how it treats its competitors. It may or may not be relevant to note that the details of this decision was kept secret.

Interestingly, Ahmed has recently submitted a new register of interests which no longer lists Nottingham Equal as one of his interests. Wonder why that is? (older edition here)

Do You Know How to Complain About a Councillor?

Being a stroppy so-and-so, I recently decided to submit a complaint about one of our elected representatives (more about this if it goes anywhere).

Naturally I first had a look around NCC's website to find out how to go about it. To give you an idea of how well that went here are the results of a Google search for the term 'complaints against councillors Nottingham'.

As you can see, precious little information specifically about how to complain about a councillor at Nottingham.

Compare with the results of a search for 'complaints about councillors'. Evidence of quite a few councils across the UK providing details of how to make a complaint against one of their councillors.

Just to be sure, here are the results of using the search facility for 'complaints against councillors' on NCC's website. As you can see, lots of details about how to complain about anything from social workers to the cleaner and his dog but not councillors.

This is an important omission because complaints against councillors can only be made on the basis that they have breached the code of conduct and they have to be sent to the council's Standards Committee. While using NCC's generic complaints system MAY result in it getting to the right person, not knowing the basis on which a complaint must be made will only result in more complaints that aren't specifically about code of conduct issues and which cannot be upheld and that's a waste of time for everybody. That's presuming that people aren't put off by the lack of any info on the website about how you go about it.

So, for your future reference, here is the Standards for England page on how to make a complaint against a councillor, you have your link to the code of conduct above and here is the link to the various Committee Administrators' contact details page. I strongly advise that you at least copy any complaint about a councillor to the Standards Committee Administrator, he seems like a nice man and he does seem to acknowledge emails pretty quickly, which is more than can be said for the generic complaints system.

Nottingham Set for an Elected Mayor?

In my usual late to the party way I learn that our shiny new coalition government has got Nottingham in line for an elected mayor (see page 12 of this document). It seems that not everybody is uniformly ecstatic about this.

Saturday's Post carried a selection of characteristically thoughtful and considered comments from Councillor Collins, the leader of the council in its current executive format and as such the person whose wings would be clipped the most by the installation of an elected mayor. Not that that would influence him in any way as I'm sure you realise.

So what does Leader Collins think of the proposals then?

"I think it's a stupid policy, it was stupid when Labour proposed it, it's stupid now."

Blimey.

"In Doncaster it led to a failing, dysfunctional council, in Hartlepool they elected a monkey."

[NCCLols translation service swings into action -

"I'm still massively bitter about not getting the Nottingham East gig and I'm running scared of losing most of my power to Su Pollard or some chump in a Robin Hood costume."]

Seeing as JoCo has brought the subject up, I'm not sure that an elected mayor necessarily LED to a failing, dysfunctional council in Doncaster, they seemed to have mastered the art of being a basket case some time before although an 'English Democrat' mayor with no knowledge of local administration issues and a bagful of bigotry hasn't helped.

As for Hartlepool, that monkey's real name is Stuart Drummond and last year he became the only elected mayor to be re-elected to a third term, despite failing in his sole campaign promise of free bananas for all local schoolchildren.

And Collins could do with checking the condition of his glass house before he goes around dismissing others as being dysfunctional.

So, what can we expect from an elected mayor? In terms of powers, an elected mayor would have broadly the same powers as the council's executive committee has now. The legislation for elected mayors is not new, it was introduced by the Local Government Act 2000, which required all local authorities to decide on one of three possible types of executive arrangements. They could choose from a leader and cabinet system, where the executive is drawn entirely from councillors (as NCC has now), a mayor plus cabinet system (which is the proposal in the government's plans) or a mayor plus council manager system. Only one council initially opted for this last system, Stoke on Trent, and they have changed to a leader plus cabinet system now.

Interestingly, in order to implement either of the elected mayor options, the proposal would have to be put before a referendum, whereas the cabinet plus leader system didn't. It's perhaps not surprising therefore that this is the option that most councils went with.

Once elected a mayor is entitled to appoint a cabinet committee from serving councillors and can delegate powers to them. In this sort of arrangement, if we imagine that JoCo went for and got the role of elected mayor, NCC's executive arrangements would probably work in a very similar way to how they do today in practical terms , as Collins is clearly very much in charge of the current Executive Board. It's just that some of the hats would have different names on them and Collins would not be accountable to councillors but directly to the electorate (afterthought; disturbingly the councillors on this form of cabinet committee would presumably be answerable to Collins - or whoever - as far as their executive powers are concerned, rather than councillors).

Bearing that in mind, I can only assume that Collins' lack of enthusiasm for an elected mayor system means that he is far from confident that he would get the nomination from the Labour party and/or that if he did, there are too many unknown variables between him and success in an election. He must be genuinely worried about this because he has effectively talked himself into a corner now, if he did decide to go for it he would look like a little bit of a hypocrite.

For myself I do have some reservations about elected mayors. There is the problem that a maverick could end up in post as a result of a protest vote. There's also the very real possibility that a mayor from an opposing political party is elected and it results in deadlock. In the latter case problems could hopefully be solved by everybody growing up and adopting coalition style working practices in order to get along, I just can't see that happening in Nottingham with the Labour Party's assumption of its right to rule. I also worry that local politics would end up being only about one person leading to people taking even less interest in local (ward) elections than they do already.

On the other hand it could all go swimmingly. You would have someone with a genuine democratic mandate in charge providing that oh so desirable 'strong government' and we all live happily ever after.

Just don't let it be Collins or a man in green tights...

Victoria Leisure Centre Finally Done For

I missed this tweet from LibDem Cllr Alex Foster earlier.

Seems that the much contested plans to rebuild Victoria Leisure Centre were approved for planning permission today.

Theft from Former Post Office?

Some new info just in concerning the somewhat dodgy removal by NCC of 'Save Carrington Post Office's campaign materials from the former PO site.

It turns out that the campaign has reported the loss to the Police and it has been recorded as theft. Seeing as NCC has admitted that they removed the items this looks like a bit of an open and shut case. The courts really should make an example of this sort of thing.

Anyway, the campaigners have done a bit of rooting around and apparently the affair was triggered by an anonymous call to the fly-tipping team at NCC complaining about "blatantly political advertising". A further phone call complaining about the area looking run down and saying that "that sort of advertising" did nothing to help was found to have been made by a serving NCC councillor who had previously told campaigners that she supported the campaign. This couldn't be a case of a councillor telling local people what they want to hear with one face while behind the scenes working to support the former government's line on closures with the other could it?

Another councillor has apparently privately apologised and promised to make enquiries but as yet the campaigners have heard nothing on this, nor from Jane Todd who they had written to previously.

Compare and contrast this with the account of JoCo's Gordon Brown style granny cuddling following NCC workers' removal of England flags that she had hung across the road. As far as I can see, it was quite lawful for them to do so (although arguably a little unwise but you could argue about that all day) and they did in fact leave the flags behind so there's no issue of theft unlike the SCPO case.

Yet within a day the Leader of the City Council has turned up on her doorstep with apologies and flowers and she has been invited to a 'tea party' with the Lord Mayor Cllr Brian Grocrook who presumably is going to discover that she is a long lost relative and bump her up the waiting list for a new house as part of the charm offensive.

But of course SCPO have yet to hear anything. They need to get an ENG-ER-LAND supporting little old lady on the team.

Snippets

According to the Post, Jon Collins is in the running to become Chair of Notts Police Authority. The Post also reports a "Labour source" as questioning whether this is a good idea but predictably, they asked to remain anonymous. There are two other candidates and the decision will be made on 27 May.

As well as being a councillor in St Anns and Leader of the City Council, JoCo is also the Chair of 'One Nottingham', Chair of the Crime and Drugs Partnership, Chair of the Renewal Trust and a member of the East Midlands Development Agency board. He is also already heavily involved in NPA as Chair of its Change Management Committee and has been no stranger to controversy there. It's not been revealed whether he will give up any of these if here to be given the new NPA role.

(Update - just found out he is also Vice-Chair of the East Midlands Leaders Board)

Following the lift accident at Viccy flats, which may or may not be due at least in part to NCC's decision to make the lift maintenance team redundant last year, NCC have shown a keen sense of irony in loudly reporting its prosecution of a Radford shop owner for a defective lift which caused a strikingly similar accident to the Viccy flats incident. Still, at least they got a guide figure for the size of the fine.

Quite a risky PR strategy really because, although NCC will probably be able to pass the buck on to Nottm City Homes for Viccy flats, there are still a number of NCC buildings with lifts in which are probably just at risk.