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News and Comment June 2013

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1 June - Secrecy always prevails

Allowances 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.

 

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