Guest blog by Philip Grant
-->
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:-
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 4th 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):
