4 January - Maximising personal gain?
I don’t know much about Councillor Maxine Fothergill. I’ve seen her chair
meetings in a reasonably proficient fashion but she has never been reported
as saying anything significant or especially silly at council meetings.
The first time
she came to notice as somebody with something to hide was when she removed
her address from the Register of Members’ Interests after the clueless Eric
Pickles provide the get out clause. Any councillor who said their life was in danger could claim anonymity under
Section 32 of his Localism Act.
Bexley’s flexible Monitoring Officer, Akin Alabi, was happy to oblige the paranoia.
Maxine Fothergill’s most frequent contribution to a meeting has been to say how
brilliant everyone else is and sometimes be repetitive as if she has not been paying attention.
She was once the subject of
a
blog devoted just to her. During the 2014 election campaign someone queried how a
resident of Gravesend could be a Bexley councillor at all. She still claims to
live at 51 Mayplace Avenue but it is widely thought to be little more than a P.O. Box.
Maybe a dubious residency qualification is not very popular among her colleagues and certainly
heaping praise on them doesn’t appear to have won many friends, how else would one explain so many
leaks of information over the past couple of weeks?
L-R. Head of Members’ Services, Dave Easton. Kenneth Atmore (†). Head of Committee Services, Kevin Fox. Councillor Stefano Borella (hidden behind Mick Barnbrook standing). Chairman Cheryl Bacon. Councillor Nigel Betts. Head of Legal Services, Akin Alabi. Lynn Tyler, Legal Team Manager. So called Independent Person, Rebecca Sandhu.
† Mr. Atmore is a former Independent Person called in to advise the newcomer although Council minutes (PDF) reveal that Ms. Sandhu’s 2013 appointment was due to end in May 2015. See below.
It is probable that the nine people in the image caption were later joined by Maxine Fothergill’s legal representative
and none were supposed to breathe a word outside the meeting, however one must assume that plenty of hints were dropped
to friends with varying degrees of detail. It may account for the variation between the many whispers
but at the heart of them is that Maxine Fothergill’s attempt to “confer an advantage
for herself” involved a vulnerable old lady moving out of
her house after what may have been a flawed valuation.
By all accounts - or should I say most accounts - the old lady was selling up to
finance a move to sheltered accommodation and she had no close or local
relatives. Maxine Fothergill in her role as Estate Agent was presumably involved in it
being obtained at an unnaturally low price, although only one informant actually says so.
However if that was not the case I cannot see how the “conferred advantage” was obtained.
A council employee was somehow persuaded to buy, some say for cash, although where the
money came from no one is saying, however almost everyone says that Councillor Fothergill was
able to get her hands on his house cheaply and rent it for a high price.
Whilst the detail remains a little vague at present there can be little doubt that
the property transaction must have gone somewhat beyond an Estate Agent making
an honest living. How else would Bexley Council justify the Misconduct tag? According to most people the sale actually went through, no one says it didn’t.
The rest of the story is largely incidental. It is said that the
allegedly nefarious transaction took place more than a year ago and a distant relative of the
elderly lady complained to Teresa O’Neill. Whether Bexley Council sat on it for
a year or the relative was slow to discover what had happened I do not know.
Maxine Fothergill’s legal representative was said to be Councillor June
Slaughter, a semi-retired solicitor. (Since confirmed by the draft minutes.)
I’m not sure why anyone’s first thoughts would be to go to Council Leader
Teresa O’Neill in such circumstances, my first ports of call would be a
solicitor and then the police. Unfortunately if reports of where the complainant
lives are true there is little chance of them stumbling across this blog and
providing first hand information.
The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Committee is Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Cray Meadows),
no
stranger to dishonesty herself but not, as far as we know, well versed in
the art of fraud. Councillor Nigel Betts (Conservative, Falconwood & Welling) is no angel either with
a history of covering things up. He backed
the move to publish the addresses of FOI requesters on the Council’s web site and more recently
wanted to ban the taking of photographs at meetings, contrary to law.
The third member of the Committee was Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, North
End). Whilst the range of sanctions on rogue councillors is restricted (see
below) I would hope he’d think a minor wrist slapping inappropriate for
Misconduct. Why choose
to remove Maxine Fothergill from the Appeals Committee with its record of
meeting only once a year, why not the loss of her £3,000 a year Vice-Chairmanship of the
Resources Scrutiny Committee?
Perhaps there is a link between the Appeals Committee and its responsibility for
the Members’ Appeals Panel. One can hardly have Fothergill hearing her own
appeal. Even in a borough as corrupt as Bexley that might be a step too far.
Exclude that and what sanction has there been? None.
There is no news on what has happened to Fothergill’s accomplice . the council officer.
In the couple of weeks in which I’ve been researching
Maxine Fothergill this little message has become apparent. Bexley’s secrecy
machine has gone into overdrive. Of course, if a Labour or UKIP councillor had
been in the frame, there would have been a Press Release to local news organisations.
As well as “conferring an advantage” on herself Maxine Fothergill has been found guilty
of bringing Bexley Council into disrepute. It is probable
that the Code of Conduct Committee’s meeting would have slipped by unnoticed if it was not for
a handful of old men who keep an eye on the calendar of meetings
and Bexley Council has tried very hard to suppress every bit of information. An unlinked URL like
http://democracy.bexley.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=1841&MId=28075&Ver=4
is not going to be a popular destination. Thanks to the Conservative councillor who drew my attention to it.
As the clear intention is that no one should know about Fothergill’s exploits, it could be argued that it is not
Councillor Fothergill who was likely to heap disrepute on Bexley Council but Bexley Council itself
will for engineering another of its infamous cover ups.
Seven sanctions were available to the Committee…
Only (a) and (d) has been applied and in the latter case only to the minimum possible extent.
There may well be sufficient councillors who take such a dim view of what Maxine
Fothergill gets up to to generate the whispers but she must also have sufficient
friends in high places to protect her from exposure in the press (g). People who live in glass houses etc…
