When is complaint not a complaint? – Part 2 Is there a 'cover up culture' at Brent Council

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Opening paragraphs of Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September 2024.

 

On 2 October, Martin published my guest post “Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease – When is a complaint not a complaint?” The email of 27 September above from Brent’s Chief Executive had been sent in response to my request for her to conduct a Final Review of the formal complaint I had made on 30 August. I requested that as I was not satisfied with the initial reply of 9 September from a Corporate Director, which did not even mention the word “complaint”.

 

The grounds for my complaint were detailed in a guest post a month earlier, “Bobby Moore Bridge – formal complaint submitted over advertising lease award”. Briefly, they were that the Officer Report to the Cabinet meeting on 28 May, and the recommendation to make the award under Option B, were biased, and that the main author of that report had an undisclosed conflict of interests, which had only come to light months later.

 

 I wanted to understand the reasoning behind the Council’s decision not to treat my “concerns” as a formal complaint, which had apparently made before the first response to that complaint on 9 September, and what evidence it had been based on. I requested some details in an email to Kim Wright on 11 October (the text is in the comments section under the 2 October guest post). The Council decided to treat this as an FoI request, and I received the response to that on 11 November.

 

If the information provided is correct (and you would expect it to be, as the response came from a Senior Brent Council Lawyer), the decision (that my formal complaint was not a complaint) was made between 30 September and 3 October, after the Chief Executive had told me of the decision.

 

In reply to my questions about what information the decision had been based on, that the matter I’d formally complained about ‘had not affected me personally’, and ‘had not caused me an injustice’, the response in both cases was: ‘Please refer to council officer’s emails sent to you dated 27/9 and 3/10.’ In other words, if Brent’s Chief Executive said that I had not suffered any personal injustice as a result of actions by the Council, or one of its Officers, that was sufficient evidence on which to base a decision justifying her claim!

 

Extract from Brent’s FoI response of 11 November 2024.

 

The response had already told me that the (apparently retrospective!) decision had been made by ‘The Complaints and Casework Manager in conjunction with the Corporate Director, Law & Governance.’ My final request had been for ‘any documentary evidence relating to’ the decision, and ‘any communications, and any advice sought or given, in respect of it.’ I was informed that the only documents were Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September and the Council’s Complaints Policy (a copy of which was attached). ‘No further communication is held.’

 

I have set this out in detail so that any reader who is interested can see how Brent Council operates. If it does not want to deal with a complaint, it says that it is not a complaint, without having to provide any evidence. It hopes that you will give up and go away, rather than admitting that something has been done wrongly, and trying to put it right! 

 

Anyone who knows me will realise that I am not put off by such tactics. This is the full text of an open email which I sent to Brent’s Chief Executive on 12 November:-

 

This is an Open Email

Dear Ms Wright,

 

Further to my email of 25 September, requesting a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint to you of 30 August 2024 (see copy attached), you will have seen my Internal Review request (sent yesterday evening) to the FoI response of 11 November, to the questions I raised in my email to you of 11 October.

 

This is getting complicated, and is taking up quite a lot of Senior Council Officer time. The reason for that is that you and other Council Officers appear to be trying to "give me the run-around", hoping that I will give up, so that you do not have to deal with a perfectly reasonable and genuine complaint that I raised.

 

This latest letter, from Brent's Senior Constitutional & Governance Lawyer, exposes that there is no valid basis in evidence to show why Brent Council should not treat my complaint of 30 August as a complaint within the Council's Complaints Policy.

 

It appears from her FoI response that the "decision", 'that this issue does not fall within the scope of the Council's normal complaints procedure', set out in your email to me of 27 September, was not made until several days after you had sent that email, rather than before Minesh Patel's original email reply, in your absence on leave, of 9 September, which is what you had suggested.

 

And that "decision", for which there is no documentary evidence, appears to have been founded solely on a claim in your email of 27 September that: 'In this particular case you have not suffered a greater degree of personal injustice than anyone else affected by the matter raised.'

 

There was no supporting evidence for that claim. In fact, you already knew that the open tender process for the new advertising lease from 31 August 2024, seeking best value for the Council, with separate bids that would give the opportunity for Cabinet to properly consider the tile murals in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway, had been my suggestion in 2021, which had been accepted by your predecessor, Carolyn Downs.

 

The process was meant to be fair and transparent, and I had put in a great deal of effort to try to ensure that it was. My complaint (there can be no other valid description for it) was that the Report and recommendation, which Cabinet accepted, had been biased, and that its main author had an undisclosed conflict of interests. How could that not affect me personally, or give rise to an injustice, not just to the people who signed the petition which I presented on 28 May, but to me personally?

 

I would ask you again to carry out a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint of 30 August, in the hope that this matter can be satisfactorily resolved without my having to refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman.

 

In answer to another FoI request, which I received on 14 October, I was told that the new advertising lease agreement between the Council and Quintain from 31 August 2024 had not yet been signed. If that is still the case, then my suggested remedy No.1 still applies (as does the second suggested remedy in my open letter of 30 August attached).

 

I look forward to receiving your reply. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

The Leader Foreword from the Cabinet Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease report, 28 May 2024.
(The “supplier” referred to is Quintain Ltd, through its Wembley Park subsidiary)

 

You will notice a reference to some other FoI requests I made, to which I have received some partial responses. Among the information gleaned on the Report to the 28 May Cabinet meeting is that the “Leader Forward” in it was not actually written by Cllr. Muhammed Butt himself (but by the Officer with the alleged undisclosed conflict of interests):

 

‘The foreword for the report was discussed by the Leader and Head of Communications, Conference and Events at a face-to-face meeting and the steer the Leader provided was included in the report and cleared by the Leader.’

 

My request for ‘copies of all email or other documentary contacts between the Contact Officers and the Leader … in the preparation of the Report’, was denied. The reason given was that:

 

‘complying with this request would exceed the cost limit set by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Under Section 12 of the Act, public authorities are not required to comply with requests if the estimated time to locate, retrieve, and extract the requested information would take more than 18 hours.’

 

I doubt whether it would cost that much to provide the relevant emails etc between two people from 1 April and 14 May 2024, so I have asked for an Internal Review of that response!

 

There was an Appendix to the Report, headed "Advertising Lease Bid Evaluation", and I had also asked for ‘all the information in that Appendix 1 which was not exempt information.’ That request has also been refused:

 

‘The appendix includes commercially sensitive details related to an ongoing procurement process, as well as market-sensitive information. The public interest in keeping this information confidential outweighs the interest in disclosing it, as premature disclosure could harm the commercial interests of the bidders and the council.’

 

But the procurement process is not ongoing (it ended at the Cabinet meeting on 28 May!), and I had only requested the non-exempt information, not any commercially sensitive details. Again, I’ve asked for an Internal Review of this response. What is Brent Council trying to hide?

 

I feel that the treatment I have received in trying to pursue my complaint demonstrates a “cover-up culture” at Brent Council, which appears to go right to the top of the organisation. That is not a healthy state of affairs, especially for a public body paid for at our expense!

 

Philip Grant.