Barnhill by-election result could be over-turned by Courts. Hearing starts tomorrow.

The two day recount hearing for the Barnhill by-election starts tomorrow and as a bombshell curtain raiser the Kilburn Times today LINK  reveals that sacks of votes went astray at Clock Cottage, Kenton, which is one of the Council's storage depot.

The Barnhill Conservatives launched a petition to the High Court alleging that 100 votes were moved from the Conservative pile and transferred to the Labour pile. These were double votes - votes for the two Tories. If the recount transfers 100 votes to the Conservative they will be declared winners.  However the Council confidently told the Kilburn Times that they think the result will be upheld by the courts.

The Count is taking place in Room 73 (largest room) at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. 

The real issue has changed with the discovery of the missing sack which only emerged when the Court asked for the ballot forms.

As readers will know I hold no brief for the Conservative Party but I do believe that elections should be conducted fairly so welcome this hearing to clear up the matter. I was a Green Party candidate at this by-election along with my colleague Pete Murry.

This is the statement made to Wembley Matters by Stefan Voloseniuc who with Kanta Mistry was a Conservative candidate for the ward.

On 23 January this year, we had three by-elections in the London Borough of Brent and I was one of the Conservative candidates for Barnhill Ward, alongside my colleague Kanta Mistry. We worked extremely hard and managed to do well; however, on the evening of the elections during the count, a bundle of our 100 votes had been unduly moved to the Labour Party’s candidates votes, leading them to win by a small margin. Despite our persistent requests on that evening for a recount and a flick through the bundles the Returning Officer (RO) Chief Executive Officer Carolyne Downs rejected our requests entirely. 

After the election I spoke to the Electoral Commission about the RO’s behaviour at the count. I was informed that the RO ought to have allowed a recount and flick through of the bundles on the day. The sacks are supposed to be sealed as per the People’s Act 1983, which states that the RO has a duty to ensure that each sack containing the ballot papers must be sealed and stored securely, to avoid any interference with the ballot papers by any parties. As such, in order to have a recount, we needed to file a Petition at the High Court, asking for a recount. We followed this process and we managed to obtain a hearing to seek an Order for a recount to take place at Court with the Court giving permission for the seals to be removed and the recount to take place in the High Court itself.

To our surprise, a few days before the hearing the RO’s legal representatives informed us that the seals (of the Barnhill Ward alone, and not the other two wards) were found to be broken. We requested evidence in the form of pictures and witness statements. We were informed that further evidence will follow. Upon receiving this evidence in the form of witness statements on behalf of the RO, we discovered that they could not find the seals on the sacks You  will find upon reading the  statement made by the Head of Executive and Member Service, there has been serious breach in following the prescribed lawful procedure. 

Once we came to learn of this significant breach, we requested for the recount (which is listed to take place on 16 and 17 July 2020) to also include a count of all unused ballot papers in order to reconcile the total ballots printed (used and unused), particularly as the sacks were not sealed, open to interference by anyone. 

The RO refused our request for the recount and reconciliation of the unused ballot papers; however, the RO willingly agreed to a recount of the unused ballot papers ONLY IF the recount result went against the Labour Party candidates. I am sure you agree that this clearly points towards partiality in favour of the Labour Party, despite a duty by the RO to remain neutral.

The  witness statement made by Thomas Cattermole, Brent Council Head of Executive and Member Services to the Court sets out the events surrounding the seach for the missing Barnhill papers. 

The storage room at Clock Cottage was visited several times before they were found in a sack labelled "23/5/19 EU elections BP's' in pen. It had no seal and it was dirty on the outside.  It was upright and it was surmised that nothing had fallen out and nothing was found on the floor on checking. Cattermole said that he could only assume the papers were placed in a sack that already had the EU elections label on it. Photographs were taken in accordance with the Judge's Order.

The sack along with others from Barnhill ward is now secured in a locked, limited access area in Brent Civic Centre.

Will 'cronyism' allegations re-emerge after new Brent Council appointment?

I heard yesterday that Lorraine Langham had been offered one of the newly created Corporate Management Team jobs at Brent Council after interview.  The job of Chief Operating Officer is part of the senior management restructuring carried out by Christine Gilbert and Cara Davani. It is a one year fixed term appointment at salary of £125-142k. LINK

The restructuring saw the departure, with compensation, of Fiona Ledden, Head of Legal and Procurement and Ben Spinks, Assistant Chief Executive Officer, over the Christmas holiday.

I sought confirmation of the appointment from Brent Council press office at 9.30am this morning but they have still not got back to me at 2,15pm. However, I do think the appointment, if it has been made, is important background to the deliberations of the General Purposes Committee which will be discussing Michael Pavey's HR review at 6pm this evening.

Lorraine Langham, like several of the present CMT, has previouslly worked for Tower Hamlets Council and Ofsted. (See table below). Like Gilbert and Davani she also has her own private company. She is no stranger to controversy over her alleged friendship with Christine Gilbert as this hit the headlines in 2007 and again in February last year. LINK

The Daily Express reported:

In 2006 the wife of Labour minister Tony McNulty, Christine Gilbert, was appointed as Chief Inspector of Schools at the watchdog.

Within a year, Ms Gilbert had appointed a number of former colleagues to key positions within Ofsted.

Ms Gilbert - the former chief executive of Tower Hamlets council - recruited her friend Lorraine Langham to be Ofsted's £120,000-a-year director of corporate services.

Ms Langham had worked for Ms Gilbert at Tower Hamlets as communications chief through a company she ran called Verve Communications.

That company was paid £923,000 from Tower Hamlets over a two-year period.

The then-MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway, said at the time:  "You have a situation where this woman is a propagandist for probably the worst council in Britain and, lo and behold, she gets a job with her best pal.

"There is not a whiff of cronyism, there is a stench of cronyism.

"You would have thought Labour would have learned something but, clearly, they believe they are above scrutiny."

Ms Gilbert and Ofsted denied the allegation at the time, saying Ms Langham had been appointed after a thorough and transparent recruitment process.

Ms Langham remains Ofsted’s chief operating officer.

I am sure that this was also a 'thorough and transparent recruitment process' and that Brent HR made sure any connections and associations were declared.

Tony McNulty is a Labour Party activist working hard for a Labour General Election victory in Brent and Christine Gilbert is Brent's neutral Returning Officer.

For those losing track of Brent Council's version of 'Only Connect' here is a useful table:

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Name	Brent Position	Tower Hamlets position	Ofsted Position	Private companies
Christine Gilbert	Acting Chief Executive (current)	Chief Executive	Chief Inspector	Christine Gilbert Associates
Cara Davani	Director of Human Resources (current) Drew up Gilbert’s contract Second respondent in Employment Tribunal Case	Director Human Resources	Organisation change and HR Consultant	Cara Davani Ltd
Clive Heaphy	Director of Finance (left Brent after Gross Misconduct charges withdrawn.) Drew up Cara Davani’s contract, Now at HS2. His treatment was contrasted with that of Rosemarie Clarke in  the Employment Tribunal Judgment and was the basis of the Racial Discrimination finding		Interim Director of Finance
Thomas Cattermole	Head of Executive and Members’ Service (current)		Christine Gilbert’s Executive Assistant
Lorraine Langham	Chief Operating Officer (Current TBC)	Various interim roles	Director of Corporate Services	Verve Communications

The membership of the General Purposes Committee (if there are no substitutions) is exactly the same as the Cabinet except that Cllr Mashari is not a member of GP. Cllr Suresh Kansagara, leader of the Kenton Conservatives joins his Labour colleagues on GP.

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):