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News and Comment December 2023

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4 December - Here they go again

I used to think that Bexley Council was the most dishonest organisation I had ever encountered in my life. Maybe I had better rephrase that more accurately. There was a time when I knew that Bexley Council was the most dishonest organisation I had ever encountered and there is quite enough evidence within these pages to support that view.

A Chief Executive and Council Leader who colluded to allow the former to transfer his employment to another Council with a Golden Goodbye and huge sickness pension which taxpayers are still funding. A Council Leader who abused credit cards and received a suspended prison sentence. A Deputy Leader who refused to report her boss to the police. A Leader who worked hand in glove with the police to stifle criticism and a Chief Executive who colluded with them to get criminal charges dropped. I hope that is enough for now but there is more if you remain unconvinced.

Very few of the senior officers were honest. We had a husband and wife Director and Deputy team with one marking the other’s annual assessment and another who did not possess the professional qualifications which his job description demanded. Fortunately every last one of them has gone and with one or two possible exceptions their replacements appear to be in an altogether different league. At the time I wouldn’t have trusted more than one of the Cabinet Members but if I overlook the one I saw commit perjury in a Crown Court witness box the present crew appear to be both honest and reasonably competent, well most of them anyway!

I have speculated in the past that the spotlight of social media, webcasts and maybe even BiB had steered a thoroughly rotten borough into the realms of respectability but another thought has recently occurred to me.

I used to know of and regularly cooperate with five Council agitators who would ask questions at every meeting but for various reasons they have all gone now. One specialised in submitting Freedom of Information requests. My favourite was “Please provide a photocopy of the Mayor’s official diary for Friday 21st March 2014”. It was refused but the Information Commissioner intervened. The diary entry showed that the denied strip show in unlicensed premises was an official Council, or at least Conservative, event.

Probing Freedom of Information requests were effectively banned when Michael Barnbrook, a man who was friends with Stephen Lawrence and his father before Stephen was murdered and who financially supported a little mixed race boy who would otherwise have had a much more miserable life was labelled a racist by Bexley Council. Racists can’t make FOIs apparently and the ICO confirmed it.

Mick had asked one too many questions about a black Council employee who he was sure was being less than honest - and perhaps he was because he lost his job soon afterwards. But it was a way to silence Mick who had submitted around 100 FOIs over about five years, many of them close to being duplicates because the first question was never answered.

This is pretty much what Mr. Shvorob said at last month’s Council meeting. He was accused by the Council Leader of submitting 15 FOIs and he told her that if the Council answered questions in the first place most would be unnecessary. Revenge has now been taken.

Just like Mick was ten years ago, Mr. Shvorob has been banned from submitting more Freedom of Information requests. An Appendix to his banning letter lists 115 from the past 18 months, in excess of Mr. Barnebrook’s tally and over a much shorter period.
Vexatious letter
The letter goes on to accuse Mr. Shvorob of submitting FOIs that cause staff distress; poor things. Mick was accused of that too when his FOI responses proved their dishonesty.

Mr. Shvorob occasionally sends me copies of his FOIs; about once a month if my email Inbox is any guide and once or twice I have found them to be at the trivial end of the scale. Of the 100 I knew nothing about many appear to be duplicates, presumably because Bexley Council has employed its favourite trick of not answering the original question.

So now we have no one I know of regularly keeping a watchful eye on Bexley Council.

Scrutiny meetings are no substitute for FOIs. As has been noted here many times, Councillors’ questions are very often not answered properly and most Councillors meekly accept the situation as if they were not very interested in the answer anyway.

The banning letter was signed by the Leader’s loyal servant Kate Bonham, Deputy Director, Finance & Corporate Services.

Note; His friends and supporters may wish to know that Mick Barnbrook has been in and out of hospital for the past two years and is currently in a very serious condition in Margate Hospital. His many friends will no doubt be wishing him all the best.

 

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