Your rights as a Brent citizen

 

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I will let readers decide whether this works in practice. Source Brent Constitution changes LINK
 

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Citizens’ Rights 
The Council welcomes participation by its citizens in its work. Citizens have a number of rights in their dealings with the Council. Some of these are legal rights, whilst others depend on the Council’s own processes. The local Citizens’ Advice Bureau and Community Law Centre can advise on individuals’ legal rights. Citizens have the right to:

·      vote at local elections if they are registered; 


·      contact their local councillor about any matters of concern to them; 


·      obtain a copy of the Constitution; 


·      attend meetings of the Council and its committees except where, for example, confidential or exempt information would be disclosed; 


·      petition to request a referendum on an elected Mayor; 


·      contribute to reviews conducted by the Scrutiny Committees and/or their task groups; 


·      find out, from the Forward Plan, what Key Decisions are to be decided by the Cabinet, Cabinet Committees or officers, as well as other decisions to be taken at a meeting of the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees and when; 


·      attend meetings of the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees, except where exempt or confidential information is being discussed; 


·      see reports and background papers, and any record of decisions made by the Council and the Cabinet; 


·      complain to the Council about its service provision; 


·      complain to the Ombudsman if they think the Council has not followed its procedures properly. However, they should only do this after using the Council’s own complaints process; 


·      complain to the Monitoring Officer if they have evidence which they think shows that a councillor has not followed the Council’s Code of Conduct; and 


·      inspect the Council’s accounts and make their views known to the external auditor. 


Does Councillor Butt have too much power?

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Guest blog by Philip Grant

The article below was submitted as a comment on the blog about the possible delay in filling the Stronger Communities Lead Member role on Brent’s Cabinet LINK t
I am repeating it here, for comment and discussion, as part of Local Democracy Week.

In my earlier comment, I explained why I believe that Cllr. Butt is within his rights, under Brent’s Constitution, not to appoint a new Lead Member for Stronger Communities straight away, but to take on the responsibilities of that role in addition to his role as Leader. This does not mean that I believe it is the right (i.e. correct) thing for him to do. Overall, I believe that Cllr. Butt has too much power, and some of it is a result of an abuse of Brent Council’s Constitution.

That Constitution (in its own words) ‘…sets out how the Council operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which are followed to ensure that decision making is efficient, transparent and accountable to local people. Some of the procedures are required by law, while others are a matter for the Council. The Constitution is divided into 8 Parts. …. In particular, Parts 3 and 4 set out the rules governing the conduct of the Council’s business and which part of the Council is responsible for various functions.’

“Responsibility for Functions” is an important area, which should mean that there are “checks and balances” to ensure that power is shared across the Council, so that no single person or group within it has too much (to guard against that power being abused). The Constitution gives the Leader, or the Leader together with the Cabinet, considerable powers, but there are also ‘functions which cannot be exercised by the Cabinet’, ‘functions not to be the sole responsibility of the Cabinet’ and ‘functions that may only be exercised by Full Council’.

One area of particular concern is the General Purposes Committee, which ‘carries out a number of functions on which the Cabinet cannot take decisions, including public rights of way, setting the Council Tax base and approving staffing matters’.  The committee has eight members, and the Constitution used to say that at least one of these must be a member of the Executive (the previous title for the Cabinet). That proviso, which gave a very strong hint that most of the committee should be made up of back-bench councillors, has been removed, and for the past few years seven of the eight members have been Cabinet members, with the official Opposition Leader as the eighth.

Cllr. Butt is Chair of the General Purposes Committee, and of its Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee. This has given him considerable influence over the Council’s senior staffing structure, who is appointed to the Senior Officer posts, and the terms on which they are appointed. There are suspicions that, during the time that Christine Gilbert was interim Chief Executive and Cara Davani was HR Director, the Leader of the Council may have been complicit in some of their alleged misconduct over staffing matters.

The appointment of the Council’s Head of Paid Service (Chief Executive) is one of the functions which can only be exercised by Full Council, and not by the Cabinet or the Leader. Despite this, Cllr. Butt was able to appoint Christine Gilbert in September 2012 as ‘interim Chief Executive’, supposedly for a few months while the Council advertised for and appointed a permanent Chief Executive. In June 2013, Full Council was asked to extend Christine Gilbert’s role as interim Chief Executive – it agreed to do so, but only for a FIXED TERM which should have ended in June 2014.

The permanent post was still not advertised, and at the meeting in September 2014, Cllr. Butt extended Christine Gilbert’s tenure (eventually until September 2015) without seeking the consent of Full Council. The minutes recorded:

‘The Leader referred to the decision taken in June 2013 regarding the appointment of a new Chief Executive.  He stated that the external auditors were reporting back on how the Council was operating and whilst there was progress being made, stability within the Council would enable further progress to be made.  The current arrangements would therefore remain in place until a recruitment process began in the new year which would tie in with the launch of the new Borough Plan.’

Does Cllr. Butt have too much power? I would suggest that he does, and that the Council’s Constitutional Working Group, chaired by its properly appointed Chief Executive, Carolyn Downs, should consider ways to ensure that the functions of the General Purposes Committee and its sub-committees are carried out independently of the Council Leader and the Cabinet.

Philip Grant.

Tories seek to strengthen Brent Council Scrutiny and accountability at AGM

Cllr John Warren (Conservative) has sent me the following regarding proposals to be put to Brent Council's AGM on Wednesday:

Item 13 of the Council AGM is "Changes to the Constitution." So I put forward a number of amendments for consideration by the meeting, but Council officers told me that they could not be considered because my amendments were nothing to do with the amendments being proposed in the report!!!

So what is " changes to the constitution,"  supposed to mean?

Anyway, I shall be speaking on this item and will circulate my amendments at the AGM. My proposals are in three categories....... 

1.To delete the elaborate and impossible procedure which currently exists if members wish to remove the Council leader.I propose that we revert to the time - honoured tradition of a straightforward yes or no vote on the night.

2.A radical restructuring of the scrutiny process .....it has failed abysmally over the past year.I cannot think of a single occasion when it has shown any teeth.I believe that each lead member and their portfolio should be subject to separate sub- committees so as  to scrutinise in a more forensic way.I also propose a separate sub- committee to scrutinise the Leader and deputy.I propose increasing the number of scrutiny members to 20 so that the heavier workload can involve more members. 

3.I am also proposing a " People's Question Time ."This should be a 15 minute slot whereby the Cabinet can answer questions from Brent residents without notice of the question in the same way as PMQs.

Pavey Review not yet available but notes on Constitutional challenge released

The Agenda for Thuursday's meeting of the General Purposes Committee has now been published. The meeting is due to discuss the Pavey Review of Brent Human Resources but the report is not yet available on the Agenda web page.

I understand this is because there are some late additions being made. Instead of the report there is a placeholder:

Following the loss of an employment tribunal case in September, 2014, Councillor Pavey, Deputy Leader, who has Cabinet responsibility for Equalities and the Council’s role as employer, agreed to take stock of the Council’s policies and practice to see where improvements could be made.  Councillor Pavey has now completed his review and will present the findings to the General Purposes Committee.

Although the fullest possible report is obviously desirable, it is unfortunate that members of the committee, the press and the public won't have time to consider it in detail before the meeting.

The Annual Brent Diversity Profile LINK  has been published and this graphic tells its own story about racial equality (Sc3 is the lowest and Hay the highest). Overall % of council workers who are BME is 62%):

Meanwhile the indefatigible Philip Grant is now able to pass on notes of his meeting with Brent Council Leader Muhammed Butt following a resident's successful Freedom of Information request.

Philip asked for a meeting to raise his concerns over the Council's respect of its constitution.

Cllr. Butt had agreed that Mr Grant should take a note of their discussions, and that these should be sent to him for checking, with a view to producing an agreed accurate record of those discussions. It was Cllr. Butt's change of mind on that agreement which means that the Council now claims they are no more than Mr Grant's 'own personal recollection of the meeting'.

Regular readers of Wembley Matters will be able to put a name to the anonymised "AB", especially if they follow those initials in alphabetical order.

Information not so free at Brent Council when it comes to respecting the Constitution

Philip Grant has written to Fiona Ledden, Director of Legal and Procurement at Brent Council, regarding her refusal of a resident's  Freedom of Information request  about the meeting Grant had with Muhammed Butt on 'Respecting Brent's Constitution'.

Philip Grant wrote:

Dear Ms Ledden,

I have just come across the attached document, a letter from you on behalf of Brent Council on 18 September 2014 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by a Mr Benazi, on the "What do they know" website.



The request concerns a copy of the notes of a meeting, which I prepared after I had met with Cllr. Muhammed Butt at the Civic Centre on 26 June 2014, notes which I wished to put in the public domain, but which I did not feel able to do for reasons explained in a "guest blog" which was posted on the "Wembley Matters" site in July 2014 LINK

I am writing to point out that the explanation you gave for not providing a copy of the notes to Mr Benazi was incorrect, for the following reasons:

The "information" (the notes) was held by Brent Council, in that Thomas Cattermole (Head of Executive and Member Services), who had been present at and taken part in the meeting, held a copy of them.

My meeting was not with Councillor Butt 'as a Councillor', but with him as Leader of Brent Council, to discuss matters involving the Council, its workings and the actions of Council Officers, and not any personal matter as a "constituent" (which I would have raised with one of my ward Councillors for Fryent Ward, if that had been the case).

The meeting took place at Councillor Butt's invitation, and not at my request.It was to discuss matters which I had raised in a letter to him (jointly with Cllrs Kansagra and Lorber) following a "Soapbox" I gave at a Brent Connects meeting in February 2014 on "Respecting Brent's Constitution", and which he had not yet dealt with. [You may remember that I sent you a copy of the letter, and of the text of my "Soapbox" on 13 February 2014, with an email headed 'Working together on Respecting Brent's Constitution', after you had confused that letter with another matter (a complaint I had made to Christine Gilbert about the actions of three senior Council Officers) in dealing with a request made to you by the then Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group.]

For these reasons, I can see no justification for dismissing Mr Benazi's request, as the information would have been within that which should be supplied by Brent Council under the Freedom of Information Act. I hope that the Council will now, belatedly, comply with that FoI request. Best wishes,

Mysterious Brent Full Council Meeting change may have unintended consequences

This is the rather terse statement on the Brent Council website announcing the very unusual change in the meeting of Full Council.

Peter Goss gave me rather fuller information just before his office closed on Friday:

Councillors have this afternoon been notified that the Full Council meeting on 17 November has been moved to 8 December in order that the outcome of the consultation on the borough plan can be considered as part of the 1st reading of the budget.  The web site has been amended to reflect this change.

However, this raises rather more questions than it answers.

1. Who made the decision and under which provision of the Brent Constitution?
2. When the Council has a carefully constructed Forward Plan how was this major item missed in the calendar?
3. With the Borough Plan consultation not closing until Friday November 28th, how will it be possible for the Brent officers to compile a report for Full Council in just 5 working days?

 I remain sceptical about the reasons for this decision.

One consequence of the three week delay is that some councillors may be caught in the six month rule. This disqualifies councillors from office if they have not attended a council meeting, which they are expected to attend, in a six month period.

Unless some special dispensation is granted, or councillors presently not on a committee are drafted on to a committee that meets before November 24th, there appear to be  three councillors who face disqualification as a result of the postponement.

These are John Duffy (Kilburn), Zaffar Van Kalwala (Stonebridge) and Ahmad Shahzad (Mapesbury).

This may (or may not) be an unintended consequence of the postponement decision but it would be absurd, and expensive, if as a result of the postponement three by-elections are triggered.

A 'secret' meeting with Councillor Butt

Guest blog by Philip Grant

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The need for independent investigation of a number of important matters which appear to be going wrong within Brent Civic Centre has been the subject of a number of “blogs”, and hundreds of comments on them, in the past few months, most recently in Martin’s article about ‘Diminishing democracy in Brent’ on 13 July:- 

http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/diminishing-democracy-in-brent-update.html
 

I was one of the people who urged our Council Leader, Cllr. Muhammed Butt, to publicly answer the allegations which were being made, both in comments made and in emails sent to him both before and after the local elections in May. I also had outstanding matters from a letter I had given to him on 4 February 2014, at a “Brent Connects” meeting where I had spoken out in a “soapbox” slot about Senior Council Officers failing to honour commitments in Brent’s Constitution about proper consultation and working effectively with the community (the report back to the following “Brent Connects” meeting in April had incorrectly informed the public that ‘the Leader’s Office has responded to Mr Grant’).

I was therefore pleased when one of my emails finally received a reply, from Cllr. Butt himself, on 24 May saying: 

‘Let’s meet up soon so that we can discuss the points that you have been highlighting. I need to be appointed as leader again on June 4^th at the agm of the council and if all goes ahead fine we can sit down soon afterwards.’

After some delays at his office, I finally met with Cllr. Butt, and his assistant Thomas Cattermole, in his office at the Civic Centre on Thursday 26 June. I am a retired Civil Servant, and right at the start of the meeting I made it clear that I wished to make a written record of our discussions. This is how I recorded it in the “Introduction” to my notes of the meeting (the only part of them which I feel I can disclose, for reasons which will become apparent):

Respecting Brent Council's Constitution

This is the 'Soap Box' delivered by local resident Philip Grant at the Kingsbury Connects forum last night. Apparently it was well received by the 40 or so people present.

I will begin by reading three short extracts from Brent’s Constitution:

The purpose of the Constitution is to support the active involvement of citizens in the process of local authority decision-making. (Article 1.4)

The Council is committed to involving the community through effective consultation and two-way communication. (Article 10.1)

The Council recognises that meaningful participation can only take place ... where community spirit is fostered so that people care enough to want to take part, and are encouraged to do so. (Part of Article 10.2)

Last October I was one of six local history society members who “cared enough” to take part in a stakeholder meeting at the Civic Centre, to contribute ideas which will help the Council to draft a new Museum and Archives Strategy. That Strategy will go out for public consultation next month, and be decided this Spring.

At the meeting on 16 October we asked that a staff restructuring exercise at Museum and Archives should be put “on hold” until the new Strategy was in place. The Head of Libraries, Arts and Heritage, who had only told staff about her plans the previous month, would not discuss this, claiming it was ‘an internal matter’.

Our request made sense, because until the Strategy had been consulted on and decided, how could anyone know what staff would be needed to deliver it? This Officer’s actions were undermining any effective consultation on the Strategy, because she was imposing her ideas of what staffing the service needed, while the decision-making process was still taking place.

I contacted Senior Officers at Environment and Neighbourhoods about this breach of the commitments in Brent’s Constitution. They ignored the constitutional point and simply backed their Officer’s actions, refusing to discuss the matter further. I complained to Brent’s Interim Chief Executive, and she also declined to take any action, while sidestepping the clear breach of Brent’s Constitution which was involved.

This is one of a number of examples I have come across in the past three years where Brent’s Officers have ignored what are supposed to be Council commitments about consulting with the community, and engaging in proper two-way communication. 

I believe that much better results can be achieved for our community by local people, Council Officers and Councillors working together. I try to work positively with the Council in areas where I can help, but community involvement needs to be seen to work in practice.

I have written an open letter to the Leader of the Council, and to the leaders of the other political parties on the Council, about this problem. I would ask that they work together to find a solution to it, so that everyone at Brent Council respects the commitments in its Constitution, for the benefit of our community.