23 July (Part 2) - Bexley council arguing with Eric Pickles again
Eric
Pickles the Communities Secretary labours under a quaint misapprehension that
councils have the best interests of their populations at heart and given the
choice between honest transparency and secrecy and deception they will choose
the former. In Bexley that is never true.
The prime example was the way Bexley council
changed its
Constitution for no other reason than to thwart
Eric’s guidance on handling
“armchair auditors” and “citizen journalists”. And they are still at it.
Mr. Pickles put out a ‘Recommended practice for local authorities on data
transparency’ for consultation. The item that grabbed the headlines was to list the names of local
government employees who earn more than £58,200 a year. Talking about their
over-inflated salaries,
Bexley has the sixth
highest in the country, is anathema
to Bexley council, they even deliberately misapplied inappropriate rules to
suppress discussion on the subject
after 2,219 residents asked for a debate.
Bexley council is campaigning that Pickles shouldn’t be allowed to get away with his
ideas for opening the books to public scrutiny. It has asked him to exempt from
publication any sums handed out to voluntary organisations that are £10,000 and
under. Please keep them secret they plead. Are they handing out money to organisations
that are a little too close to home perhaps?
“Bexley believes that £58,200 for the disclosure of senior salary levels
is set at too low a threshold. We feel that only the salaries of Chief Officers
should be published.” So there they go again. Bexley wants absolutely nothing to
do with openness and transparency and is fighting a rear-guard
action against their own government. Everywhere you look they don’t want you to. There must be a
reason for it and it’s not going to be an honest one.
Link to pdf file.