25 May - Zero transparency leads to wanton waste
It all began twelve years ago when Bexley Council, rather more bent than it is
now, was in panic mode about what might be uncovered by Social Media
users and bloggers. A newish phenomenon at the time. A joker from Crayford was the most vociferous and
occasionally foul mouthed critic and touted the idea of a bus trip around the
borough to see what sort of houses Councillors lived in. There was no way he
was going to do it and even less chance of anyone coughing up the price of a
ticket but the Councillors of the day, fresh from reporting every identifiable
critic to the police, went into headless chicken mode.
The bus trip idea provoked several Councillor lemmings into invoking the then new Section
32 of the Localism Act 2011 and
followed Councillor Craske into obscurity. Never being keen on justice Bexley Council
decided that hiding their addresses should be counterbalanced by
publishing those of their critics.
A London wide check of
Section 32 exemptions
found 15 in the whole of London, eleven of them among Bexley Conservatives and most
of those new applicants scared of buses.
To be exempted from registering an address in the Register of Interests a
Councillor has to persuade the Monitoring Officer that there is a danger of
violence or intimidation.
Currently 13 Bexley Councillors hide their addresses from public view. Zainab Asunramu,
Larry Ferguson, Sally Hinkley, Mabel Ogundayo and Nicola Taylor; all Labour, and Conservatives
Teresa O’Neill, Frazer Brooks, Bola Carew, Kurtis Christoforides, Andrew Curtois, Andy Dourmoush, Cameron Smith and
Janice Ward-Wilson.
You can see who has claimed the exemption and we know it can only be because of the threat of violence or intimidation.
The observant may notice that the man who had the most
reason to be fearful in 2012 no longer considers himself to be at risk.
Councillors Cheryl Bacon, and Chris Taylor have similarly jumped ship.
What we don’t know is what sort of reasons
for issuing an exemption certificate are accepted by the Monitoring Officer. Dimitri thought we ought
to know and in April 2023 submitted an FOI. Not for the specifics relating to
individual Councillors but just a general idea of what is enough to convince the
Monitoring Officer. Bexley Council wouldn’t play ball and neither would the Information Commissioner. Secrecy and
rule bending is the name of their game. Dimitri is not a man to give up easily so he took the case to law.
The verdict was delivered last week; a little progress but not much.
The ICO, always ready to move the goalposts, had claimed that the information
provided to the Monitoring Officer was personal and therefore exempt under
Section 40 (not 32). He went off on a ridiculous tangent about them declaring interests
before Council meetings, as though that was relevant to a home address. That was
essentially Dimitri’s grounds for Appeal and the fact he hadn’t asked for personal information.
The judgment confirmed Bexley Council’s incompetence by revealing that Councillors
were able to merely phone the Monitoring Officer requesting a Section 32
exemption. Nothing was written down and Bexley Council genuinely has no idea why the
exemption was granted. (And we pay our useless Monitoring Officer £104,522 a
year!) A
mild reprimand was given because the correct FOI response should have been ‘Not
Held’ rather than the refusal to cooperate.
Only five Councillors had made their applications in writing and the inference to be drawn
is that their reasons relate to things going on in their personal lives. One case was
more extreme than the others - the Judgment refers to it as a Special Category.
This is likely to be the special circumstances of the Baroness. Going into detail may well allow identification of individuals and for that
reason Dimitri’s request for more information was not accepted.
Another big waste of money then? Yes, but clearly Bexley Council’s fault. All
that was requested was anonymised reasons for the granting of Section 32
exemptions to which the answer should have been “Five Councillors are at risk
from their personal lives and relationships while in the remaining cases we regret that we failed in
our responsibility to take adequate notes”.
The ICO would not have had to make up excuses and the Tribunal Appeal Panel
would not have been required.
All that has been gained is confirmation that Bexley Council has never been blessed
with competent Monitoring Officers and the ICO is inclined to make up the rules as it goes along.