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.

 

Bobby Moore Bridge – formal complaint submitted over advertising lease award

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The Question and Answer from the Full Council meeting agenda papers.

 

When I wrote my 10 July guest post “Bobby Moore Bridge murals – where will the advertising money be spent?” it was on the basis of a fairly vague answer given by Cllr. Muhammed Butt to a Full Council meeting question from a member of the public. It looked as if some or all of the rental income from the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease would be spent on Brent’s “communications”, which help to promote the Council Leader and his Cabinet. 

 

The Report to the 28 May Cabinet meeting, which recommended the award of a lease which provided slightly more income but left the tile murals in the subway covered up for at least another four years, had been written by Brent’s Head of Communications. That appeared to be a serious conflict of interests, but I did not think I had strong enough evidence of where the money would be spent to make a complaint.

 

I did not know the person who had asked the question, but did manage to make contact with him. As he was also keen to get a more specific answer, he agreed to ask a supplementary question, and at the Council meeting on 8 July the Mayor promised that he would receive a written answer to it. It took a few weeks, but this is the response, which he has shared with me:

 

So there it is, from the Leader of the Council himself (who is also the Cabinet Lead Member for Communications, so probably knew where the money was going when he announced, without a vote, that Option B had been accepted). ‘All of the income generated from the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising revenue is allocated to the communications service budget.’

 

Now that I had the evidence to back up the case set out in my 10 July guest post, I sent an open letter to Brent’s Chief Executive on 30 August, making a formal complaint about how the award of the advertising lease had been dealt with. I will ask Martin to include a copy of my open letter at the end of this post, for anyone who would like to read it in full, but this is the text of the email that I sent it with, which summarises the position. (I have already received an acknowledgement to it, and a promise that Kim Wright will respond to my complaint):

 

‘Dear Ms Wright,

 

I am attaching an open letter to you, making a formal complaint about bias and a conflict of interests by a Council Officer (or Officers) in the Report and Recommendations to the 28 May 2024 Cabinet meeting on the award of the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease.

 

I am also attaching, as it gives further background and detail on my complaint, a pdf document copy of an online article I had published on 10 July, in response to the answer given to a public question at the 8 July Full Council meeting. 

 

That answer gave an indication of where the rental income from the advertising lease would be spent, but as the Mayor said, at the meeting, that a supplementary question had been asked, to which a written reply would be provided, I have waited for further clarity on the facts before making this complaint.

 

Please see the suggested remedies section, on page 3 of my letter, as urgent action may be required if the new advertising lease from 31 August 2024 has not yet been signed and sealed by the Council. Thank you. Best wishes,

Philip Grant.’

 

As the Chief Executive is only responsible for the actions of Council staff, not councillors, I had to restrict my complaint to that side of the award. But I also wanted to publicly express my views over the actions of Cllr. Butt, and this letter from me was published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 29 August. They published my letter in full, but did not use my suggested heading for it: “Leader abused his power”!

 

Philip Grant.

Bobby Moore Bridge murals – where will the advertising money be spent?

 Guesy post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

I thought that I’d finished writing about the Brent Cabinet meeting on 28 May, the “decision” to allow adverts to cover the heritage tile murals in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway at Wembley Park for at least another four years, and the cover-up of how the Council Leader failed to deal appropriately with the point of order which I raised. Then, this public question to Cllr. Muhammed Butt for the 8 July Full Council meeting was brought to my attention:

 

Extract from the 8 July agenda papers, published on the Council’s website.

 

I had no idea who the questioner was, but the publicity (on “Wembley Matters”?) about the award of the new Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease had obviously attracted his attention. My efforts had been directed at trying to persuade Cabinet members that it was worth accepting a slightly lower amount of advertising revenue, in order to put the tile murals in the subway back on public display. His question asked what the money raised would be spent on.

 

At the meeting on 28 May, Cllr. Butt had spoken about the money received from advertising on the Bobby Moore Bridge helping to 'provide residents with the services they depend on.' This was, presumably, his justification for accepting the Officer recommendation to award the new lease under Option B, because it ‘provided greater financial benefits’ (= more money).

 

Extract from the Officer Report on the advertising lease to the 28 May Cabinet meeting.

 

Cllr. Butt’s response to the Full Council public question contains a slightly different answer. Instead of services that residents depend on, he says that the money raised will be used ‘to inform residents about a wide range of council services and deliver communications campaigns.’ There is a difference between providing much needed services and simply telling residents about them!

 

Cllr. Butt refers in his response to informing residents about campaigns on ‘tackling fly-tipping’, ‘health inequalities’ and ‘community safety’. Here are some examples of how the Council does that:

 

Fly-tipping article from the Spring 2024 “Your Brent” magazine.

 

Double page spread health article from the Spring 2024 “Your Brent” magazine.

 

Brent Council press release on a community safety subject.

 

You will note that these are all positive stories about Brent’s (Labour) Council, which all feature photographs of smiling Brent (Labour) Cabinet members. As well as ‘inform[ing] residents about a wide range of council services,’ they are also promoting the Council’s majority political party, and particularly its Cabinet. Every (then) member of Brent’s Cabinet is pictured at least once in the Spring 2024 edition of the “Your Brent” magazine, with the Leader appearing five times and Cllr. Krupa Sheth topping the list with eight photos!

 

The Council has not been allowed to feature local politicians in its publicity material during the General Election “purdah” period, but on Monday 8 July (the same day that Full Council would be considering a Lib Dem motion on fly-tipping), Brent Communications was back in action, putting out a press release about a new Council campaign, with a photograph featuring … (you’ve guessed the answer!):

 

 

So, when Cllr. Butt said on 28 May that the recommendation to award the new lease under Option B had been agreed (even though no Cabinet members raised their hands or spoke their agreement – staying silent is said to be showing unanimous support for what the Leader says!), he and (allegedly) his Cabinet were deciding to put more money into the funds used for promoting themselves and their local Party! 

 

Cllr Butt, at least, must have known that is where the money would go, as his top “cross-cutting” area of responsibility (as the latest Cabinet Portfolios information shows) is ‘Communications’. That might explain why he ignored my reasonable request to allow his Cabinet the chance to vote for Option A, which would have provided a slightly lower annual rental figure (but still a minimum guaranteed figure of more that £90,000 a year).

 

I have pointed out in earlier articles that the Officer Report to the 28 May Cabinet meeting was heavily biased in favour of Option B. Although that Report was signed-off by the Corporate Director, Partnerships, Housing & Resident Services, such reports are actually prepared by one or more of the “Contact Officers” shown under the Report heading:

 

 

In this case, the main author of the Report appears to have been Brent’s Head of Communications! If, as it appears from Cllr. Muhammed Butt’s response to the question from a member of the public, the rental income from the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease was going straight into the Council’s Communications budget, then the Head of Communications had a clear conflict of interests. He would find it difficult to be (and I’m pretty sure he was not) impartial in making the recommendation in that Report, because Option B would provide more funding for his own department. 

 

There was no mention of where the money would go to, or the conflict of interests, in the Report. Not only was the “decision” to allow the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals to remain covered with advertising equipment for another four years a bad decision, badly made because the case for Option A was not properly considered (if at all), and badly handled by the Council Leader at the 28 May Cabinet meeting, it was another example of the “dodgy” way in which allowing Quintain to advertise on the Bobby Moore Bridge has been dealt with ever since 2013.

 

Philip Grant.

 

Democracy in Brent – Council and Leader responses to my open email.

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Martin reports Cabinet’s (in)action over my efforts to get 28 May minutes corrected.

 

If you have been following the saga over the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease, and what happened at the Brent Cabinet meeting on 28 May, you will know I feel strongly that the subsequent official minutes for item 7 are not a correct record.

 

On Sunday, Martin published a guest post from me, setting out the text of an open email which I had sent to the Council Leader, Cllr. Muhammed Butt, and all the members of his Cabinet. This forwarded an email I had sent to Brent’s Corporate Director (Law and Governance), which gave details of the changes I believe needed to be made to the minutes, to make them a correct record, which is what minutes of meetings are meant to be. I wrote: ‘I hope that you will approve those amendments at your meeting on Monday.’

 

In the hour before that meeting, there was an exchange of emails between the Corporate Director and myself, followed by an email from the Council Leader after the meeting. As Martin has published my views, I think it only fair that he should also publish the Council’s response to them.

 

Here are the full texts of the email exchanges on Monday 17 June, so that followers of “Wembley Matters” can read them if they wish to, and make up their own minds on the issues. All of the emails were copied to the Council Leader, Cabinet members and Brent’s Chief Executive. (As I am writing this, I will reserve the right to have the final word! You are welcome to agree or disagree with me in the comments section below.)

 

Monday 17 June at 9.15am, from Brent’s Corporate Director (Law and Governance):

 

Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your emails relating to this matter and I note your main concerns identified in your email of 14 June 2024 (now copied to the Cabinet and Chief Executive) following your consideration of Mr *****’s email of earlier that day.

 

The main purpose of minutes of a Cabinet meeting is to establish a clear record of the decision(s) taken.  The minutes should also establish the reasons for the decision(s) including any alternative options which are placed before Cabinet but not agreed.  This can be done by reference to the report relating to the decision.

 

The minutes meet these requirements.

 

Other details of the meeting are not required to be included.  In respect of what is included I cannot see that the minutes are inaccurate.

 

In respect of the first section you wish to substitute, the decision and reasons are required to be recorded in the minutes.  The minutes refer to the potential options being presented in the report, they do not state that the Leader specifically presented these options himself. You had of course already spoken about the Options so there could be no doubt that the Cabinet was aware of them and of the views of those who supported the petition to take note of them.  In agreeing the recommendations in the report, the Cabinet was agreeing to note items as recommended as Mr ***** explained.

 

Cllr Donnelly-Jackson thanked you for your contribution, which was for the purpose of representing the residents who supported the petition, and I think recording that as Cabinet thanking residents is not inaccurate.

 

There is no general requirement for Cabinet members to vote by a show of hands or to formally state their support.  Cabinet members were given the opportunity to indicate that they did not agree the recommendations which the Leader had proposed be agreed, for example if they had thought Option A was the correct choice.  None of them chose to do so.

 

In respect of your second proposed substitution and your intervention to raise a point of order, the minute clearly captures the import of the Leader’s response.  As a member of the public observing a Cabinet meeting you would not have the formal right to raise a point of order.  However, given you stated the point you wish to raise anyway, had the Chief Executive or Head of Law considered there was a matter of concern to address I am sure they would have provided advice.

 

In summary, although I wasn’t at the meeting, I have watched the webcast and do not consider the minutes to be an incorrect representation of the decision or the reasons for it, including the options which were presented by the report.

 

Best wishes

 

Debra

 

Debra Norman
Corporate Director, Law & Governance

 

Monday 17 June at 9.35am, my reply to Ms Norman’s email:

 

Dear Ms Norman,

 

Thank you for yoùr detailed response to the concerns I raised.

 

I note what you have said, but still believe that the minute for item 7 of the 28 May Cabinet meeting is NOT a correct record, and should not be accepted by Cabinet as such.

 

I would be grateful if you would, please, publicly make clear at the meeting that a member of the public involved at that meeting does not accept that minute as being a correct record, and have that included in the minutes of today's meeting. Thank you. 

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Monday 17 June at 9.59am (meeting started at 10am!), reply to me from Ms Norman:

 

Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your email.

 

This would be a matter for the Leader.

 

Best wishes

 

Debra

 

Monday 17 June at 11.08am, from Cllr. Muhammed Butt’s to me:

 

Thank you.

 

The minutes were accepted as a true reflection of the cabinet meeting held in May.

 

Regards

 

Muhammed

Cllr Muhammed Butt
Leader of Brent Council
Labour councillor for Tokyngton ward.

 

It is not often I agree with Cllr. Butt, but I think that what has happened over this matter, since the open email I wrote to him on 20 May (about the need for the voting on the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease to not only be fair, but to be seen to be fair) is a ‘true reflection’ of the state of Democracy in Brent under his Leadership.

 

I said above that I would have the final word. This is the reply I sent to the Council Leader, with copies to Cabinet members and Brent’s Chief Executive and Corporate Director … etc.:

 

Dear Councillor Butt,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

I will pass on your message to those who are interested.

 

I hope that you and your Cabinet colleagues will consider, along with the Chief Executive and Corporate Director (Law and Governance), the points I made in my email of 15 June, about the need for Cabinet decisions, and votes on them, to be more visibly seen to be considered and made, in the interests of open democracy.

 

That is also something where "Change" would be welcomed. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Brent residents deserve to be treated with more respect by our elected councillors*. The least we should expect in a democracy is that the decision-making body, Brent’s Cabinet, considers  decisions carefully and votes properly on them in its public meetings!

 

Philip Grant.

 

* They were democratically elected. Cllr. Butt topped the poll, receiving 1447 votes, when he was elected to represent Tokyngton Ward in 2022, and Labour councillors won 57.6% of the votes cast in Brent, on a 30.67% turnout. Under our first-past-the-post system, that gave Labour 49 out of 57 Council seats, and after such a victory it was unsurprising that Cllr. Butt’s councillors voted to give him four more years as Leader of the Council (a post he has held since May 2012).

Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meeting minutes a work of fiction?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting, published with the agenda for the 17 June meeting.

 

In March 2022, Martin published a guest blog from me entitled “Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meetings a Charade?”. This is a sequel, based on my own experience from the Cabinet meeting on 28 May 2024, including the incident reported by Martin in a blog later that day.

 

I am not suggesting that Brent Cabinet meetings are fictitious. They happen every month, usually with a similar 40 to 45 minute ritual, presided over by the Council Leader. Nor am I implying that everything in the minutes of those meetings is false. But the minutes of those meetings are meant to be a true and correct record, checked (and, if necessary, corrected) before they are signed by the Chair as the official record of what took place, a summary of what was said and what was decided.

 

“Minutes of the Previous Meeting”, from the minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting.

 

This is the official record of the checking and approval of the minutes of the previous meeting at Cabinet on 28 May. What actually happened was that Cllr. Butt said: ‘Can we just go through them for accuracy. Page 1, page 2 ….’ Ten turned pages in as many seconds, then onto the next item with no resolution or agreement that they were a correct record.

 

A similar thing will probably happen at the next Cabinet meeting on 17 June. But the published minutes of the meeting on 28 May are NOT a correct record, and I will explain why.

 

The countdown clock for my petition presentation to Cabinet! (That’s me in the corner)

 

I have no quarrel with the minutes for item 5 on the agenda. That was my presentation of the tile murals petition to the Cabinet meeting. The Governance Officer asked me to let him have a copy of the text for my presentation, which I sent him, so that it is an accurate reflection of what I said, and very similar to the version which Martin published the day before the meeting.

 

Where the minutes do not reflect the reality of what happened is at item 7, when the meeting dealt with the award of the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease. This is the first part of that section of the minutes:

 

The Report which Cllr. Butt introduced did clearly state, at the start, that there were two potential options as a basis for awarding the contract. But the Council Leader did not refer to the option which would have restricted the advertising to the parapets of the bridge. The petition, and my presentation on it, did refer to both options and made a strong case for that option, ending with: ‘I commend Option A to you, and ask you to vote for it.’

 

I have highlighted the wording which states that Cllr Butt “responded” to the points I had raised. He did not. He only made the slightest reference to my presentation, in part of a sentence, ‘how the contribution that Mr Philip Grant spoke about benefits the borough’. He spoke mainly about the benefits of working with developers, the CIL money this brought in, and the £210m in government funding taken away from the borough over the past 14 years. He wanted to assure residents that his Cabinet was on the side of residents, and that it would continue to provide those services that every resident needs and depends upon.

 

This second part of the minutes gets even worse, as far as accuracy is concerned:

 

‘The Cabinet thanked…’? Cllr. Butt said that he would open the item up for comments from Cabinet members. He glanced around for one second, but no Cabinet member had indicated that they wanted to speak before he moved on to ‘the Recommendation’!

 

There was no evidence that the Cabinet had ‘noted the comments made during the presentation of the petition’. Even if they had “noted” them, they had not discussed or considered those points. It was as if the Cabinet members had decided, or been instructed, that they should not interfere with how the Leader wanted to deal with this matter.

 

It was very soon clear how he wanted to deal with it. The minutes again refer to the two options, and set out what they were. They give the false impression that the “Resolution”, or decision, was made how it SHOULD have been made, along the lines which I set out in an open email to Cllr. Butt on 20 May.

 

In order that the decision between the two options was not only fair, but could be seen to be fair by members of the public interested in the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals, I had written:

 

‘From my previous experience of watching Cabinet meetings, you would usually ask members whether they agree with the recommendation(s) made by Officers in their Report. 

 

In this particular case, I am requesting that you invite individual votes for “those in favour of Option A” and for “those in favour of Option B”. In the event of an equal number of members voting for each option, you would, of course, have the casting vote as Council Leader and Chair of the meeting.’

 

Straight after his very brief invitation for comments from Cabinet members, Cllr. Butt moved on to the recommendation in the Officer Report, saying that this was for Option B, ‘advertising on the parapet walls of the bridge, plus the underpass walls excluding the mural with plaque.’ He then asked, ‘Can I take this in agreement from Cabinet members?’ With hardly a glance, and in virtually the same breath he said ‘Agreed. Thank you very much.’

 

I was watching, as was Martin, and a fellow Wembley History Society colleague of mine who had signed the petition and come to support it. We are all agreed that no Cabinet member raised a hand, or spoke, to show their agreement!

The final part of the published minutes deals with what happened next:

 

I am pleased that the minutes do mention my point of order, but I did not only “seek” to raise it, I DID raise it. Immediately after what I saw as a procedural irregularity over the “agreement”, I went to the public speaker microphone and said “Point of Order”, an action which should have led to the Chair of the meeting asking me to state what my point of order was.

 

But even as I was approaching the microphone, Cllr. Butt put his hand up and said “No!” He continued to speak over me as I made clear what my point was: ‘‘Point of Order. You said it was agreed, but not a single member of the Cabinet put their hand up to agree.’

 

“No!” Cllr. Butt trying to stop me from speaking. (from the webcast recording of the Cabinet meeting)

 

The minutes say that Cllr. Butt ‘advised he was not minded to accept’ my point of order. That is untrue. He did not even acknowledge that I was raising a point of order. The minutes do not include what my point of order was. If they had included it, and if Cllr. Butt had listened to it, then the “reason” given in the minutes (that I’d already had the opportunity to speak, when presenting the petition) is shown to be nonsense. My point was that the “decision” he had just declared as “agreed” had not been agreed by the Cabinet at the meeting. 

 

What Cllr. Butt actually said, speaking over me, was: ‘Mr Grant. Thank you very much. Mr Grant. Thank you for your contribution. There is no further …’ I continued to explain that I was raising a point of order, and what it was. Cllr. Butt then tried to humiliate me, saying: ‘‘Why are you embarrassing yourself like this?’ At this point, Cllr. Nerva tried to intervene:

 

“Chair. On a point of order …’ (From the Council’s webcast recording at 16:00)

 

Cllr. Nerva appeared to be trying to explain to the Council Leader how he should deal with a point of order which had been raised. However, Cllr. Butt ignored him, and continued to direct his words at me: ‘I’m truly disappointed in yourself. It just shows….’ As I had stopped trying to speak, he finished with: ‘Thank you very much. We will move on. Cabinet has agreed the recommendation for Option B. We will move on.’

 

The reality of what happened is very different from the record in the published minutes!

 

Brent’s Chief Executive, who was sitting next to the Council Leader at the meeting, but kept quiet throughout this, clearly realised that I had raised a point of order, what it was, and that Cllr. Butt had failed to deal with it properly. She wrote to me the following day, with what appears to be the response she thought Cllr. Butt should have made (and not the one included in the minutes!).

 

She wrote (and I have underlined the last part, for emphasis): 

 

‘I noted that you spoke again at the Cabinet meeting at the conclusion of the item that you had spoken to at the beginning of the meeting, in relation to there not being a show of hands in relation to the decision. For clarification, Members were not required to vote in this way, …. The Leader asked for confirmation that the other Members were in agreement with the recommendations and the agreement was unanimous through a verbal process, rather than a show of hands.’

 

My reply to her was:

 

‘There was definitely no show of hands, but a 'verbal process' suggests that Cabinet members spoke their agreement. 

 

There was silence. There was no vote. There was no evidence of agreement at the meeting, other than Cllr. Butt claiming that the recommendation had been agreed.’

 

Silence when Cabinet members were invited to discuss the (heavily biased) Report, and my petition presentation which put forward an alternative view to balance that. Silence when Cabinet members were asked for their agreement to the Officers’ recommendation. Paul Simon summed it up in a 1960s song:

 

Sounds of Silence. (Album cover image and lyrics extract from the internet)

 

Although I have shown that parts of the minutes for item 7 of the Cabinet meeting on 28 May are “a work of fiction” (you can confirm this from the webcast recording on the Council’s website, from 11:50 to 16:23), I don’t wish to blame the Council Officers whose task it is to prepare those minutes. They may have been following instructions. They may have prepared correct draft minutes, but been forced to make changes, after the Council Leader or a Senior Officer went ‘through them for accuracy’. I don’t know. All I do know is that these minutes are not a true and correct record!

 

Philip Grant.