2 February - Something to hide?
It
seems to be entirely possible that @tonyofsidcup is more widely appreciated than Bexley Council would like.
The sender of the associated message is somewhat bashful because he/she is a well known figure in Bexley who
needs to keep in the Council’s good books while behind the scenes being one of
its more thoughtful critics. A head teacher, a BID manager, someone senior in
one of the emergency services, a General Practitioner or Consultant in a
hospital. Someone of that ilk who feels compelled to toe the establishment
line but not believing a word of it.
Nominations for the Civic Awards are a waste of time anyway, we already know that
the
Scouts will walk off with the bulk of the prizes.
@tony definitely performs a public service; personally I don’t much like him picking fights with Councillors right across London which in my opinion is a little obsessive,
but the Court took his side and not Bexley’s.
Without @tony we would be in far greater ignorance than we actually are.
In recent years I have been unsure whether Bexley Council has been cleaning up
its act or become a lot better at hiding the truth. I was erring towards the
former but the fact that we have the same Leader now as we did in the bad old
days must cast some doubt on that conclusion.
Recently a number of things have shaken my faith in Council honesty and I have
prepared this Freedom of Information Request. It will be my tenth in 16 years so
hopefully not enough to be declared vexatious.
From various sources including Council communications I have formed the
impression that the Council’s data retention periods are unreasonably short.
Under FOI regulations please provide answers to the following time related
questions and a copy of any relevant instructions to staff…
1) After what period does the Council destroy the email of persons who have left
the Council’s employ for any reason?
2) Ditto for emails to and from Councillors who in any manner lose their elected position?
3) When are emails more generally deleted? Are Councillors in office at the time
treated differently?
4) After what interval are letters shredded or otherwise lost? Planning objections excepted.
5) When are the Telephone calls recorded for training or any other purpose erased?
6) Webcasts are lost to public view after three months. Are they archived for later retrieval if needed?
7) Much of the Council’s business is conducted via Zoom/Team or similar
electronic means. For how long do those recordings remain available to
participants or non-participants?
8) Minutes and Agendas of Public Meetings are generally available for many years
after the event but not always. Specifically how many requests have there been
in the past 24 months to remove potentially embarrassing verdicts from the
minutes of Code of Conduct meetings to protect Councillors past or present? What
was your justification for erasing Council history? (I know that you have.)
In an age when data storage has never been cheaper what benefits accrue to
the Council from destroying records prematurely?
I lost a few emails in 2000 due to a disc failure
and a three month gap in the backup regime but since then have used RAID and
have everything sent and received this millennium and a few more besides. Needle
in a haystack job to find them sometimes but they are all there.