As
reported yesterday the only questions allowed at council meetings are on
policies, nothing else, that haven’t been mentioned before and from residents who have not been
blacklisted. More and more enquiries will have to take the FOI route (Freedom of
Information requests), however it cannot be long before Bexley council looks for
disreputable ways of restricting those too.
Councillor Campbell, supported by councillor Betts, has already
proposed publishing
the names and addresses of those requesting information and councillor Philip Read
has resorted to Twitter to insult those who make FOI requests and called them ‘prats’
within their hearing. His point about information being available on the
council’s website might have some validity if things were easier to find. When I
visited the Contact Centre to present my
Subject Access Request the staff there
failed to find it on the website and because of that didn’t know what to do with
it. They rang the office dealing with FOIs but got no help there either.
If you follow developments closely you will know I have been
listing FOIs that I
know of and it is already suggesting that too many FOI requests are answered outside
the statutory time limit. I rang the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) this
morning to ask if he would accept the late answers as formal complaints and the answer was
in the affirmative. I shall recommend complaining when they are ten days
overdue; I don’t want to be accused of being unfair.
The council on the other hand plays fast and loose with the law. The Information
Commissioner makes it very clear that provision must be made to cover the
annual leave etc. of the individual(s) coordinating FOI requests. A council
source assures me that Bexley doesn’t do that. The ICO also says that the 20 day countdown
must start from the day after the request first hits any (council) inbox. Only
today I have been shown evidence that Bexley doesn’t work like that.
When I was in the Contact Centre it was displaying large posters advising
visitors that enquiries made electronically via their web form would be answered
within two days and emails and letters within five. The last message I know of
sent via web form went in last Friday and had not been acknowledged by yesterday
lunchtime when I last checked on progress. Emails and letters fare no better. I
have given up sending them - except that Tony Hughes who looks after certain maintenance issues
in my neck of the woods can be relied on to respond within minutes. Apart from
that the last time I sent in a detailed complaint the reply after much prompting was
“your comments have been noted”. I know for a fact nothing was done about it.
Notomob have had emails to
councillor Craske, the Parking Manager and Will Tuckley the CEO ignored for a couple of
weeks or so. No response apart from Craske’s nonsensical “Your allegations
against me are 100% false”.
The email contained no allegations.
BBC London News picked up
last Monday’s report on dustbin thefts and have been
trying to contact Bexley council about it. I wish them the best of luck. Everywhere you look we see Bexley council not wanting to answer questions, everywhere
that is except in today’s News Shopper where
the Star Letter is headed “Our
councillors do listen to the public”. I’ve never heard anyone say that before.
Avoiding meetings because people attended when none were expected is more their
style. A letter praising Bexley council and Teresa O’Neill to such a degree is
likely to be a specially commissioned ‘plant’. It’s
a trick that Bexley council
has pulled before and there’s no reason to suppose they wouldn’t pull it again
in newspaper columns, especially as their own attempts at
self-justification backfired so spectacularly in The Bexleyheath Chronicle.