Bexley Council became the borough where more Councillors hid behind the
Section 32 [address] exemption than all the other London boroughs combined when a local
blogger hiding behind his own pseudonym of Olly Cromwell joked that he was going
to organise a bus tour past all our Councillors’ homes. The idiots took him
seriously and ran for the hills. It needed a slightly bent Monitoring Officer to
authorise the exemptions but there has never been a shortage of those in this
town. One Councillor - I have all the documentation to prove it - retaliated by
signing a false witness statement for the police which saw Olly prosecuted. The
Baroness thinks that is qualification for a Cabinet post in Bent Bexley.
@tonyofsidcup
is of the opinion that the Section 32ers are a bunch of undemocratic cowards and he
may be right but I am unconvinced that any harm comes from hiding a home address unless of
course it is the Leader’s overooking an abandoned school playing field which is
thereby protected from development until you move out and hope to get away with it - but that potential criticism falls flat on
its face because her address was not hidden.
Let’s see if @tony can come up with a better argument…
5. Courage Under Fire
“Should you be a councillor if you are afraid to
tell constituents where you live?” I would like to ask this question to
Cllrs Asunramu (Lab), Carew (Con), Christoforides (Con), Dourmoush (Con), Ferguson (Lab), O’Neill (Con), Ogundayo (Lab), Smith (Con), Taylor (Lab) and
Ward-Wilson (Con). The ten councillors invoke Section 32 of the Localism
Act to avoid publishing their “beneficial interests in land” - a good
proxy for one’s address, as most people only own or rent the place where
they live - in Register of Interest disclosures, available for inspection
on Bexley’s web site.
Section 32 allows councillors to not publish their
interests when such disclosure “could lead to the member or
co-opted member, or a person connected with the member or
co-opted member, being
subject to violence or intimidation”. Are a full quarter of Bexley’s
councillors really scared of violence or intimidation if they disclose
where they live? Genuine personal-safety concerns should not be dismissed
- although my question still stands in that case - but it seems far more
likely that Bexley councillors abuse Section 32 - because they can,
unafraid of pushback from the Monitoring Officer or their party group’s
leader. (Of course, one of the leaders, Cllr O’Neill, is part of the Section
32 squad herself - however, this is a new development, possibly related
to her House of Lords status). Who cares about the high standards of
public service and all that claptrap? “Take the perks, avoid the
responsibilities” - now that’s a motion Bexley Conservatives and Bexley
Labour can agree on.
While the practice was niche before the 2022
election - I think there were four councillors invoking Section 32; only
two of them still do - the know-how was enthusiastically adopted by the 2022
intake. Asunramu, Carew, Christoforides, Ferguson, Smith,
Ward-Wilson - all
of these are new councillors. The way things are going, will every Bexley
councillor “go off the grid” in 2026?
Note the role of Bexley’s
Monitoring Officer, who needs to approve a councillor’s application for a
Section 32 exemption. A Freedom of Information request asked the MO (a) if
any Section 32 applications were rejected in 2022, (b) what sort of
reasons were advanced by councillors - no need for names or details - in
support of their requests.
The council responded to the first question -
there have been no rejections - but declined to answer the second,
raising privacy concerns. I asked the council to reconsider - after all, the
request expressly asked for anonymised information - but had no luck.
Surprisingly, the Information Commissioner accepted Bexley’s reasoning, as
if repeatedly falling to see the word “anonymised”. On to the last stop
in the FOI journey - the first-tier tribunal. In a couple of months, a
judge will either side with Bexley and ICO, or require Bexley to disclose
this information.
PS. St Mary’s & St. James’ ward has already been special, as
Bexley’s “bluest”: even in the bad-for-Tories 2022 local election, there
were 1·7 Tory votes cast for every Labour vote, whereas across Bexley, the
ratio was only 1·08. (“Decisive victory”, according to Council Leader
O’Neill). The dashing Cllrs Christoforides and Smith were duly elected -
and each made their address secret, with Cllrs Christoforides going on a
virtual Section 32 rampage and invoking Section 32 to block publication of
his address, his employment, and his partner’s employment. Google tells me
otherwise, but I think that Kurtis works for MI6 - and this is great.
When bombs start exploding in Sidcup, we need a man who won’t duck for cover.
Yipee ki-yay, the 61-year-old man from Horsham!
(Unless, of course, the Tory identity prevails).
PPS. A few months ago, I emailed the Section 32 club, gently asking the councillors to
reconsider the practice. I received one response, from a Labour
councillor, who threatened to report me to the police for harassment. [Dear Tony. I think you should tell me who that was to avoid blackening all their
names.] Oh well. However, as I was preparing this post, I found one councillor who
used Section 32 but no longer does. A second point for Bexley Conservatives.
Cllr Adams, I am willing to forgive your silence on the subject of the
ULEZ Task and Finish Group. Welcome to @tonyofsidcup’s Nice list.
Am I alone in being amused by the fact that @tony wil not let me publish his real name?