How Desperate Can You Get?

An interesting little farce was played out at Monday night's Manorbier Community Council meeting whose main objective seemed to have been a desperate attempt to hamper the working of the Council. One wonders who might be behind this latest effort to obstruct normal council business. Whoever they are, they have now become desperate enough to involve members of the public in their destructive little games.

The only item on the agenda was discussion of the impending court case being brought by ICT Marketing.

Because of the confidential nature of the discussion the Council passed a resolution to exclude members of the public. The reason that the Council voted to exclude the public was to avoid putting any information into the public domain that would be of assistance to ICT in their case against the Council. It seems only sensible not to give your opponent ammunition to use against you and the Council's decision to exclude the public was a perfectly legal one. The Chairman also reported that ICT had obtained information from the website run by Clr Calver that they intended using in the court case.

The only two members of the public present at the meeting were Mr & Mrs Tew.

When the Chairman asked members of the public to leave, Mr Tew left the meeting but Mrs Tew decided she was not going to acceed to the Council's lawful decision and remained seated.

It is worth noting at this stage that Mr Tew left the meeting without bothering to ask his wife why she was staying. This leads us to ask the question, could Mrs Tew's refusal to leave have been pre-arranged attempt to disrupt council business and who, besides Mrs Tew, was involved in planning this little event?

When asked by the Chairman, Mrs Tew declined to give any reason for her refusal to leave.

The Chairman then told Mrs Tew that he had no alternative but to call the police. Mrs Tew still refused to leave.

When the police arrived the Chairman explain the situation. The police officer then requested that the Council adjourn the meeting and councillors leave the hall so that he could talk to Mrs Tew in private.

Councillors reluctantly agreed to leave and as they got up to go grins were exchanged between Mrs Tew and Clr Calver who, incidentally, was the only councillor to refuse the police request and who remained in the hall while the police officer questioned Mrs Tew.

Eventually Mrs Tew agreed to leave and the police officer then explained to members of the Council that Mrs Tew had refused to leave, when the resolution to exclude the public was passed, because she thought it was wrong for the Council to conduct its discussions of the ICT court case in private.

Perhaps I could suggest that she asks her husband if she can borrow his copy of 'Local Council Administration' by Charles Arnold-Baker and look at chapter 7 para E where Arnold-Baker discusses when it is appropriate for councils to exclude the public and press. I quote "As a rule,however, it is desirable to treat the discussions of the following types of business as confidential:- .... (c) preparation of cases in legal proceedings".

I await Mrs Tew's reply, if any, with considerable interest.

The Smoke Filled Room

Since my post 'On the Question of Bank Signatories' appeared several new blogs have sprung into existence, two of which take the same general line, namely, that the information contained in the post was in some way confidential or restricted. I'll comment on an extract from one of these new blogs posted by Llamedos (A fan of Dylan Thomas or Terry Pratchett?).

Quote:

"Broadcasting information of a restricted nature in any other organisation is called ‘leaking’.

Does it now mean that no council matter can remain confidential. If information has not been mentioned or discussed in a session open to the public and press then it is confidential and should remain so until it becomes mentioned at an open council meeting."

I'm sorry to have to drag you into the 21st Century, Llamedos, but in these days of 'Open Government' and the Freedom of Information Act very little information in the possession of the Council is either restricted or confidential.

This is a verbatim extract from Dept of Constitutional Affairs website.

"The Freedom of Information Act came into force on 1 January 2005.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, anybody may request information from a public authority which has functions in England, Wales and/or Northern Ireland. The Act confers two statutory rights on applicants:

• To be told whether or not the public authority holds that information; and if so,
• To have that information communicated to them."

Now this is a very simplistic summary of the Act but it means that, with certain very limited exceptions, which the Act defines, no information held by the Council can be deemed either restricted or confidential and thus withheld from the public and press and certainly the Council cannot arbitrarily decide that a piece of information is restricted and it doesn't need to be discussed in open Council before it is released. Even if a particular piece of information is covered by one of the permitted exemptions there is still the requirement to apply a test of 'public interest' which means that if it can be shown to be in the public interest to reveal it then it must be revealed. The days of conducting Council business behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms should be a thing of the past. I would also be interested to know why you think this information should have remained 'confidential'. Don't you think the Community have a right to know? This affair will no doubt cause more than a little embarrassment to individual councillors, the ex-Clerk and indeed, the Council as a whole, but that is no reason to suppress the information.

On the Question of Bank Signatories

What do you call a man who signs cheques for Manorbier Community Council without proper authorisation?

.

The answer is Clr Malcolm Calver.

.

Every cheque that the Community Council pays out must be approved by a vote of the full Council and must be signed by two properly authorised councillors.

.

The process of authorising councillors to sign cheques on behalf of the Council is twofold.

.

Firstly a vote in Council is needed to approve the individuals as cheque signatories.

.

The second step of the process is that the individual who is approved by the Council to become an authorised signatory must provide proof of identity to the bank and sign a bank mandate. This is a legal requirement on all banks.

.

We now find out that, for several years, Clr Malcolm Calver has been signing cheques drawn on the Community Council bank account without being properly mandated to do so.

.

The bank has no record of Clr Calver ever completing the legal requirements necessary for being approved as a signatory by them.

.

I’m sure that if any of my readers were asked to become cheque signatories for an organisation of which they were members they would make very certain that all the legal requirements were in place before they started signing any cheques.

.

Apparently Clr Calver doesn’t think such legal niceties are important enough to apply to him.

.

You will not be surprised when I tell you that, shortly after the news of this very serious financial blunder had become public, the Chairman of Manorbier Community Council, Tony Wales, received a rather hurried email from Clr Calver stating the he no longer wished to be a cheque signatory for the Council. In this email he adopts his usual “It wasn’t me Guv it was three other blokes” approach to apportioning blame by implying that his decision was prompted by actions take by the Chairman. He has also visited the bank to tell them he is withdrawing as a signatory. They, in turn, no doubt told him his trip was unnecessary as he wasn’t a legal signatory anyway.

.

Surely Clr Calver doesn’t think that opting out at this late stage is going to absolve him from his share of responsibility in this deplorable state of affairs?

.

At this moment he will, no doubt, be busily compiling a list of all the people who, in his opinion, are responsible for his blunder and you can be certain his name won’t be on the list.

.

Let us consider who should bear the blame.

.

It could be argued that the bank has a degree of blame in this affair because they have been accepting these cheques for some years without query, but as anyone who has had a reasonable amount of dealings with banks will realise they don’t check signatures.

.

Without doubt Clr Calver must shoulder his share of the blame. The Code of Conduct that all Councillors sign requires them to conduct themselves according to the law and not do anything to bring the Council into disrepute.

.

I’m sure that to any reasonable person this affair would be seen as bringing the Council into disrepute.

.

Whether signing cheques without proper authorisation is within the law I will leave others to judge.

.

There is someone else who must also take a share of the blame. Until recently the Council had a Clerk who was also the Responsible Financial Officer. In this role she was required to look after the Council’s financial affairs included in which the proper control of Council banking played an important part. Since it only took two or three telephone conversations between the Chairman and the bank to discover this problem, why in the years she was carrying out the role of Responsible Financial Officer, when she was no doubt speaking to the bank on a weekly basis, did the Clerk never bring the matter to the attention of the Council?

.

Now perhaps I may be allowed to pose a few questions that I don’t have the answers to.

.

Were all the cheques sign by Clr Calver legal?

.

What action might be open to the bank?

.

What action might be open to the Council?

.

Will the External Auditor feel obliged to intervene?

.

Should Clr Calver be reported to the Ombudsman and Monitoring Officer?

.

What do you think?

National Park Delays MOD Night Firing Decision

The National Park Planning Committee have delayed consideration of the MOD Night Firing Application until Wednesday 17th May.
.
The reason for the deferment given by the national park is that, despite requests by the park’s planning office, the MOD did not submit the recent sound-monitoring figures in time for appraisal by the authority’s sound consultant and inclusion in April’s meeting.
.
A spokesman for the National Park said that the MOD figures were received by the Park last Tuesday and passed on to their noise consultant. However, this means the planning officer will not have enough time to compile her report, which is sent out to the Development Management Committee before the meeting.
.
It is understood that the MoD's submission of the necessary information to the authority was delayed because their noise specialist was ill.
.
“The results of the noise monitoring is essential for the report which has to be written some time in advance of the actual Development Management Committee,” said a National Park spokesman.
.
“As the next Development Management Committee meeting takes place on April 19th there will be insufficient time in which to prepare the report to committee and the application will therefore be deferred.”