26 July (Part 2) - Bexley council. It’s never their fault
I find myself disinclined to make complaints to Bexley council
at every opportunity, that appears to be the job of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group
(BCMG). Whereas I find the lack of straight answers to be a disincentive to expending
the necessary time, the BCMG refuses to let anything pass unchallenged. It may be some
sort of ‘cake and eat it’ hypocrisy but I admit to finding Bexley council’s excuses for
abrogating their responsibilities and proclaiming their eternal innocence fascinating in
their inventiveness. Here is the latest to have come my way.
When I showed up for the Audit Committee meeting last month, BCMG members were
in the Civic Centre foyer so I lingered awhile and they persuaded me
the Standards Committee would be more interesting. As a result we all dashed up the stairs
to the Public Gallery with barely a minute to spare.
The Committee wasn’t expecting guests and already seated around their table ready to go.
There were no spare chairs. A council officer jumped to attention, gathered her thoughts
and said she would fetch some. I went with her to help and BCMG member Michael Barnbrook
did the same. The two of us each carried a stack of chairs back to the Public Gallery
and placed them very close behind the seated councillors. Probably it was uncomfortably
close and we were made to shuffle them backwards.
Mick and Elwyn Bryant weren’t happy because although the Public Gallery has a hearing
loop no microphones were provided. Without them their electronic ear trumpets aren’t
a lot of good. They muttered their discontent though how loudly I am no longer
sure. We all spent the meeting leaning well forward to pick up what we could but
it wasn’t easy. Even one councillor at the table, Alan Deadman, said he was
having some difficulty hearing everything that was said.
Mr. Barnbrook, as is his way, put in a formal complaint about the lack of
facilities for the disabled and got a reply from Head of Committee Services, Kevin Fox; the same
man who invented the story that the council’s Standing Order
84 which allows for the public to be excluded from any portion of a meeting that
might discuss salaries, could be misinterpreted to prevent any meeting taking
place at all. How would he reject a complaint about the council’s failure to make any gesture towards
satisfying its responsibilities under Equalities legislation? He lied of course,
the alternative was to admit a council failure.
Mr. Fox has said in a letter that when Mr. Barnbrook “arrived the committee officer was in the
process of preparing the room”. This is totally false. I walked in alongside Mr. Barnbrook
and know exactly what happened. Unlike Mr. Fox I was there. The
committee officer was sitting at the committee table with her papers in front of
her seconds before the appointed start time. She responded quickly and I have no
criticism; the absence of chairs was rectified without delay. Why does Mr. Fox
feel compelled to say otherwise? Orders from above perhaps?
“The seating was arranged near to where members of the Committee were sitting” the
council’s letter claims, not the most precise of terms. I accept the seating was
“near” but it wasn’t near enough. Surely that much was obvious from the position
Barnbrook and Bryant chose for their chairs before being made to move them?
Mr. Fox
also wrote that members of the public must say if they cannot hear proceedings but the precedents for that set by
the pen jabbing mayor Alan Downing are not
encouraging. As he demonstrated in an ugly display of bad temper, mayor Downing
explodes in fury when anyone says they cannot hear. Having witnessed that,
Mr. Barnbrook may have been unwilling to make a big enough fuss to be noticed
by the chairman of the Standards Committee.
Fox’s wonderfully verbose conclusion is that in future “members of the public
with disabilities will be requested to contact that officer a reasonable time in
advance of the meeting to advise they will be attending a particular meeting so
that whatever provision is reasonable can be made”. It’s to become a bit like
wheelchair users who wish to get
a train to London from Erith only worse, at
least you can get to London on the down platform at half hourly intervals. If
you are deaf and wish to see Bexley council in action and hear them too, you
either give them notice or risk an intemperate pen jabbing. Take your pick.