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News and Comment November 2020

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12 November (Part 2) - Bexley Council’s distasteful past

While the Government successfully curtails my freedom of movement the site upgrade can continue. Most photos are being re-provided at higher quality, comment that looks in retrospect to be a little too unkind is being removed and a very few blogs quietly lost.

ChequeOver and over again I am struck by just how dishonest Bexley Council was back in 2012 and earlier. Some reports which may have made sense to those who followed developments closely back then remain but are too complex for regurgitation now. Police protecting assailants when they discover that he is the friend of the investigating copper, parking fines so unjust that a Deputy Director sends the victim a cheque in payment. A bit too complicated to pore over all over again but some old blogs are much easier to understand.

In 2011 Bexley Council’s cupboard was so full of skeletons that my suspicion at the time was that the only way they could ensure none escaped was to say nothing about anything and answer no questions if at all possible. Many was the time that the Council refused to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling.

They had tried false answers to questions to Full Council and planted questions from supporters to waste the 15 minutes time allowed. They also tried not answering questions at all and filibustering or simply losing them.

They hired bouncers for Council meetings to intimidate the public in case 27 police officers was not sufficient and they rejected the advice of the Under Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government (Bob Neill, MP at that time) to open up meetings to “Citizen Journalists”.

And then they went for the big one. Change the Constitution pertaining to questions.


• To prohibit questions deemed to be in any way similar to another asked within the last six months.
• Residents whose questions are accepted to have their personal details, name and address etc. published in the Agenda and on the Council’s website.
• Questions relating to staffing levels and salaries not to be permitted.
• The Mayor to ban any question or questioner that at any time he or she has deemed disrespectful, the judgment being entirely the Mayor’s. (One had written to a resident at his home address for being “parsimonious” with his applause at an awards ceremony.)
• If the questioner fails to attend the meeting his/her question to be rejected. (Something subsequently ignored when the answer was favourable to the Council.
• If any question is accepted but rewarded with a non-answer or falsehood the questioner will not be allowed to raise a secondary question.
• Questions must be about policy and not procedural matters.


On 7th December 2012 the Mayor was Councillor Alan Downing. The following question was submitted to him…


Why do members of the public have to have their private addresses published in the agenda for full Council meetings when asking a question, rather than checked and verified as being correct, whereas councillors, many of whom do not show their private addresses in the register of members interests, do not have their addresses published?


He rejected the question and his reason - verbatim - was…


Your question will not appear on the agenda for the next Council meeting. This is because the Mayor does not consider it to be a policy matter and is not therefore permissible under the Council’s agreed protocol.


The policy of not including Councillor’s home addresses in their Register of Interests but insisting on publishing residents’ addresses was not a policy and could not be questioned. Let that sink in. It mattered not to the Council that the questioner might, for all they knew, be a lady taking refuge in a safe house. The policy disenfranchised her.

The Localism Act allows Councillors to withhold addresses from their Register of Interests if they can convince the Monitoring Officer that to do so would put their lives in danger. 15 such permissions had been given in the whole of London, eleven of them were in Bexley.

Eventually the Information Commissioner took an interest in Bexley’s malpractice and a dishonest Council backed down.

 

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