Fo! about FoI to Brent Council results in no information held!

It is rather odd that a Brent Labour councillor has to resort to a Freedom of Information request to his own Council about their performance regarding Freedom of Information requests. This is what Cllr Dan Filson did on Thursday. He got a response the next day which is amazing, However he did get fobbed off like the rest of us often are:

I am still waiting for the answer to an FoI request made on November 28th 2014. I hasd heard that the maintenance of large trees had been left out of the Publc Realm contract in which Veolia took over parks maintenance. It had been suggested to me that this was an oversight that would result in additional expenditure.

This is the  response to my intial request:

 1. State who is responsible for safety checks, maintenance, felling and replacement
of trees in Brent's parks, open spaces and cemeteries.

The Contractor is only responsible for minor tree works which can be carried out
whilst working at ground level. The Council is responsible for major tree works.
Grounds maintenance staff from Veolia and the Council’s monitoring officers
(horticulture) would look at trees when they are working in the park or carrying out
monitoring visits. The Coucnil would then engage specialist contractors to carry out
the major works.

My follow-up which is still awaiting a response:

-->

1.     Is the cost of major tree works by a sub-contractor included in
the Public Realm budget out-sourced to Veolia?

2.    If not, what is the expected annual cost of this sub-contracted
work (recognising it might vary considerably due to major weather
events such as storms)?

BREAKING NEWS: Having posted this article at the weekend I got this answer about 9.30am this morning:

 1: No
2: The Council’s street trees maintenance contractor is Gristwood & Toms. The budget for street tree maintenance works was £500,000 in 2014/15, but this is expected to fall to £450,000 in 2015/16.


 

Brent Council public consultation on 'Brutal' cuts on January 13th

Brent Council's Borough Plan puts much emphasis on working with the voluntary sector to deliver services in an era of cut backs.

At Scrutiny Committee last night Cllr Mary Daly asked if any figures had been put on what was expected from the sector.

Deputy Brent Council leader Michael Pavey responding said:

To be perfectly honest I don't know how much the voluntary sector can absorb. Cuts of £54 million will be brutal. We will just have to do what we can. We are working hand in glove with the voluntary sector to ameliorate the impact of cuts.

Pavey welcomed the Budget Scrutiny Task Group's report and its emphasis on equality but said:

 But I have to be candid. There will be a disproportionate impact on the less well off. That is the reality.

He felt the Task Group had been harsh to question the limited choice in the budget options. The Group had said:

The range and extent of public consultation, both with regard to the draft Borough Plan and the council budget options was welcomed by the scrutiny task group. However, given the severity of the financial reductions the group was concerned that the degree of ;choice; between various options was still limited and this needed to be clearly set out during the consultation events planned for January 2015.

Cllr Eleanor Southwold remarked that residents who had put much effort into responding to the consultation on the Borough Plan had been disappointed with the draft Plan and felt that it did not reflect what they had said.  Cllr Dan Filson said that although the suggested cuts of £54m was exceeded by the budget proposals which totalled £60m, giving some leeway in terms of the final decision, £35m still had to be cut in the first year.  He said that efficiency savings were much easier to find in a 'steady state' authority than one facing such drastic changes.

Cllr James Allie was keen to find out more about improving returns on Brent investments. He was concerned about always having to look at cuts and wanted to look at income:

If it is just about cuts I have to ask myself, what is the point of being elected?

Cllr Pavey replied that reserves were lower and investing for a higher return would be a risk and Brent Council already had experience of that (a reference to the Icelandic banks).

Michael Bowden, Operational Director of Finance, said that the budget proposals contained no assumptions about the level of  Council Tax or changes in the Council Tax Support scheme. Responding to Cllr Cowill he said that the Council Tax base had increased by 4% as the result of new build which was about £3.8m. The return on investments was average for comparable London boroughs. Any long term borrowing by the Council would currently be at an interest rate of 4.5%.

The Council will be holding two consultation events on the budget on Tuesday January 13th and these will be followed by consultations at the Brent Connects meetings. The paper on savings/cuts that went to Cabinet on December 15th can be found here LINK

The Council is expecting a high attendance at the January 13th meetings with media in attendance. It is likely that much discussion will centre around what services can be 'saved' given the £6m that can be clawed back from the £60m worth of cuts proposed. This could lead to a sort of bidding process between proponents of different services and leave the whole issue of whether the council should be implementing Coalition cuts to one side.

This is what appears on the Brent Council website:

Budget consultation event

13 January 2015, 2pm to 4pm, Brent Civic Centre

13 January 2015, 7pm to 9pm, Brent Civic Centre

See events in: Civic centre events, Public consultations

We have to make £54 million worth of savings over the next two years and we want to hear your views about this.
Over the last few years we have already made a number of savings but, with around a 50 per cent reduction in central government funding between now and 2018 coming we have to do more.
Our budget plans so far include the further streamlining of our senior management, renegotiating contracts with suppliers to get a better deal and focusing the biggest cuts on back office services such as IT, Finance and HR.
Despite these steps, significant and wide-ranging cuts to frontline services are 'inevitable' the Leader of the Council has warned.
Come along to have your say as we look to make further cuts to our budget.

Former Executive member Cllr James Powney makes some interesting comments on the complexity of budget consultation and whether some of the proposed cuts are realistic, or indeed legal, on his blog: LINK

'No prosecution' decision in Kensal Rise Library email fraud investigation provokes anger

--> Brent Council has been informed that the Crown Prosecution Service is to take no action regarding the fraudulent emails sent in support of Andrew Gillick's original planning application for Kensal Rise Library.
Arnold Meagher, Brent Council's Principal Lawyer, Housing and Litigation Team wrote:

I write to advise that the Council has been informed of the outcome of the investigation regarding Mr Gillick and the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there is insufficient evidence to support any prosecution against Mr Gillick and therefore, no further action will be taken against him.

The Council has been advised by the Metropolitan Police that the partnership Brent Borough Chief Inspector, Andy Jones, is aware of this decision. The Metropolitan Police has requested that any queries regarding the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service go through Andy Jones.

70 or so fraudulent emails had been sent including one using the name and address of local business woman Kirsty Slattery.

Reacting to the news this afternoon she said:

I think the whole process has been purposely drawn out and detrimental to the people and businesses it affected. 

So somehow no one is responsible for these acts of fraud (?) according to the CPS and at no point has anyone even received an apology from Brent Council. 

The fraud affected my business as it misrepresented my standing in the community. This should never have been allowed to happen, someone ought to have been held accountable for these deceitful actions and the very least I would expect is a sincere apology. 

Kensal Rise Councillor Dan Filson was even more scathing: 

This news seems released by the CPS deliberately at a time when attention is elsewhere. Shame on the CPS.

I am appalled that an attempt - by whoever, though the email thread heading may offer a clue - to pervert the planning process had not resulted in a prosecution. 

It would be useful to know if the reason for this decision is insufficient evidence linking the alleged perpetrator to the offence(s) or an unclear charge upon which a prosecution could be hung? 

A dangerous precedent has been set, that a fraudulent attempt to mislead a planning authority as to the level of support for a planning application from the community and as to who in that community is supporting it by way of impersonation. We don't now know whether this stunt has been pulled in respect of other applications in this or other boroughs.

Questions should be asked in the House of Commons

The issue of the fraudulent emails has been a long and complicated affair. In September 2013 The Save Kensal Rise Library Campaign wrote on their website:

We are expecting the council to pursue the origins of the fraudulent submissions of support for the planning submission as reported in The Kilburn Times and The Evening Standard last week.
We have been promised an investigation and report as soon as possible.

Help us to keep up the pressure on the council to find out where this dodgy support comes from by writing to the Leader of the Council and your local councillors asking them to make sure the council makes every effort to find out who is guilty of this fraudulent support. We can’t allow local democracy to be undermined  by such abuse of the consultative processes of the council.

The police later appeared to have dropped the investigation but after the demolition of the pop up library in February 2014 both the Council and Muhammed Butt made statements to the Willesden and Wembley Observer:

A spokesman for Brent Council said:

The council undertook its own detailed enquiries before referring the matter to the police and provided the police with a summary of the outcome as part of the agreed referral process through the National Fraud Reporting Centre. The council remains very concerned about the way that the planning portal was used on this occasion and has subsequently made changes to forestall future problems arising. The council wants to continue to maintain the highest level of integrity with its planning process, since the authority continues to have statutory responsibilities to consider planning applications that are submitted. 

Labour leader of the council Muhammed Butt said:

It is bitterly disappointing that the police have chosen to ignore the evidence found in the council’s own inquiries and drop their investigation. When the future of the building affects hundreds of Brent residents and the entire Kensal Rise community, any issue of alleged fraud must surely be a priority in order to maintain the trust of local people. 

Whilst I know that this Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government has cut the police force by a fifth in the last three years, I am troubled that this investigation has not been carried out as a matter of urgency. Brent Council will be writing to demand that the police review their original decision and launch an appropriate investigation.

The investigation was reinstated with various sections of the police  responsible at any one time and recently there has been a long silence on the matter despite frequent requests for information.
I agree that the final outcome is far from satisfactory.

The death of Brent Council

Brent Live, the live transmission of Council meetings, failed last night, but in a broader sense Brent Council itself died.

The first reading of the 2015-17 budget included a limp defence of the 'dented shield' approach by Council Leader Muhammed Butt and his deputy, Michael Pavey, called on local people to help decide where the cuts should fall.

At times it appeared that there was a collective failure of imagination as councillors failed to grasp the enormity of what might unfold over the next few years, although Dan Filson acknowledged 'it is a nightmare, we have dreadful decisions to make'.

It is the death of a Council that serves the people.

It also died in a moral sense when Labour combined to defeat a Brondesbury Conservative motion calling for an independent inquiry into the Employment Tribunal case which found Brent Council guilty of racial discrimination, victimisation and constructive dismissal. In a cogent speech Cllr John Warren said that the same team responsible for that verdict were now undertaking the staff restructuring and would be managing the cuts in staffing resulting from budget decisions. He asked how staff could have confidence in that process and urged them to write to him with their concerns.

Labour councillors listened to him in silence and then in response Cllr Butt was reduced to making sweeping statements about valuing diversity and accused the three person Brondesbury group of not being diverse.

Cllr Wilhelmina Mitchell Murray appeared to be having difficulty in stomaching what was being said and got up and left the chamber as the vote was called. She returned after the vote.

The 'official' three person Kenton Conservative group failed to vote with their three person Brondesbury Park colleagues.

A number of councillors were absent including Cllr Zaffar Van Kalwala. He was the only one of the group for whom apologies were not read out.

Kensal Rise Library development decision deferred pending legal advice on fraud

The planning application by Andrew Gillick  for the redevelopment of Kensal Rise Library, closed by Brent Council, was deferred tonight at a dramatic meeting of Brent Planning Committee,

Committee membership was reduced by two members when Cllr Shafique Choudhary and Cllr Dan Filson withdrew on the basis that they had expressed strong views prior to joining the Committee.
This left 5 members, including the chair Sarah Marquis, to make the decision.

It had seemed that the fraudulent email investigation had been ignored when the meeting went ahead without any statement about deferment pending the outcome of the current police investigation into fraudulent emails that had supported Mr Gillick's last application.

Karl Abeyasekera, speaking as a member of the public drew members' attention to the fraudulent email issue saying that the 'guilty party' could benefit materially from this application. He called for the Committee to defer pending the outcome of the police investigation.

Stephanie Schonfield of the Friends of Kensal Rise Library spoke in support of the application  and said they had put their trust in All Souls College and the developer and hoped they would reciprocate by supporting FKRL to manage the community space. She regretted that they were only the preferred bidder and not the named occupant.

Horatio Chance, the Committee's legal adviser  told members that the 'binding agreement' with All Souls College was excempt from the Localism Act and had no relevance to the Kensal Rise building's Asset of Community Value status.

Following other contribututions, including a question from Cllr Amer Agha about the email investigation, and the developer's agent saying the community space had to be offered to other voluntary organisations  and ot resreved for FKRL, it looked as if the Committee was about the vote when chair Sara Marquis dropped her bombshell. She made a statement from the chair. She said that despite legal advice to the contrary she could not see why an ongoing police investigation into the previous application could NOT be a material consideration.

There followed a potentially testy but lawyerly interchange with Horation Chance, the Committee's legal adviser, on whether the Committee were legally bound to make a decision on the application on purely planning grounds, ignoring the email investigation. Chance in near exasperation declared that the legal advice  was clear and had come from no less a person than Fiona Ledden.

Marquis insisted the Committee needed further legal advice on whether the fraud investigation should be taken into account and when Chance could add nothing further she said that the Committee should vote on deferment. Various officers warned that the applicant might appeal to thre Secretary of State over the delay and seek compensation.

Cllr Roxanne Mashari, a Cabinet member and former lead member for Environment, who played a large part in brokering the deal with FKRL, made a late attempt to speak. Cllr Marquis rejected the request as the section for contributions had finished and she pointed out that the councillor had had the chance to put in a request to speak with the two days notice required of councillors.

The Committee voted on whether to hear the planning application, and only Cllr Kasangara, perhaps reflecting Conservative values, said that fraud was of no account and the vote on the application should go ahead.

The Committee then voted 3 for  (Cllrs Marquis, Agha, Hylton), 1 against  (Cllr Kasangara)and 1 abstention (Cllr Lia Colacicco) on the motion to defer the decision on the application until further legal advice had been obtained. This will mean the application  returning on the next cycle to the Committee that meets on July 16th.

This was not a vote to await the outcome of the police investigation but to decide if the investigation was something that the Committee should take into account.

It was also clear from the councillors' questions, or lack of them, that they were only concerned about minor aspects of the application itself, so it looks likely to eventually go through given the number of supporting letters. Unless there are further developments...

Cllr Sarah Marquis deserves credit for showing the sort of independence and toughness that one should expect from a Chair of Planning.

Marquis is a lawyer and specialises in fraud and white collar crime.

As a newly elected councillor, chairing her first committee, she has already made her mark.

Kensal Rise Library not on next Planning Committee Agenda

The controversial planning application for Kensal Rise Library, subject of vociferous debate on this blog, will not be heard at the last planning committee meeting before the local elections, The agenda for the meeting on May 14th has now been published LINK

The next meeting, subject to confirmation, will be on June 17th.

Campaigners argued for deferral of the item on the grounds that the application should not be heard until police investigations into fradulent emails suporting the developer's previous application had been received. Kensal Green Labour candidate, Dan Filson, revealed in a comment on this blog that the investigation had been 'slow-moving, owing to the ISP hosting the bogus email senders not cooperating with the police'.

It is unclear how Filson got this information as the police have said they report to the Council and not to individuals on  progress on their invstigation. As a candidate Filson is of course at present a private individual.,