1 June - Secrecy always prevails
A common theme that runs through the way Bexley council chooses to conduct its
affairs is secrecy; why is open to conjecture. There have been indications
that it is to hide illegal activity for which the simplest defence is to crack
down on all information, just to be sure nothing incriminating leaks out.
Probably complete openness would embarrass those councillors who are in it only
for the networking and money making opportunities their position provides. A
simple example is the matter of their own allowances.
As reported two
weeks ago, in order to fully comply with their legal obligations, Dartford council
published the name of every single one of their councillors in the local
newspapers alongside what job they do and the money they are paid to do it. Last
week Bexley council made their own lame attempt to do the same.
Hidden away on page 56 of last Wednesday’s News Shopper was the list of
allowances seen on the left - only smaller.
Nowhere is there any indication of who gets what. Don’t bother looking at
councillors’ Register of Interests, there is nothing there. The only way you can
dig the information out is to search meeting agendas and even then it is not all
in one place, some is in separately published appendices to agendas.
Clearly Bexley council is none too keen on making the information public, which presents
a unique selling point for this website.
All but one of the allowances listed in the table have been allocated to the names
on Bonkers’ list of councillors so you can quickly see who is pocketing what.
The list is available in
alphabetic sequence or
electoral ward sequence. The
content of both is identical because all the information is pulled in the chosen
sequence from a common source.
Despite much scouring of documents I have yet to discover who is the lucky
recipient of £4,260 for being the councillor responsible for Cabinet/Scrutiny
Liaison.
Click image to double to enlarge.