The poison spreads........

In the light of last Tuesday's Council meeting, it was interesting to read an article published in today's Sunday Times on a similar situation unfolding in David Cameron's own constituency. The similarities are remarkable.

What is worrying is that other people are beginning to see that the abolition of the Standards Board for England might be a bigger mistake than anyone thought. Certainly, Minister Pickles clearly doesn't get the significance of the abolition. Or maybe he does. It may well be that Minister Pickles actually wants the ground floor of our 'democracy' delivered into the hands of self-interested Local, District and County Councillors. Maybe Minister Pickles is just hiding behind the 'Localism Bill' whilst he privatises this particular aspect of our democratic process.

Whilst I didn't attend last Tuesday evening's meeting, the reports that I have heard and read make it out to have been an unpleasant affair. Somerton's 'Old Guard' were in attendance and displaying the remarkable degree of 'denial' which has become their calling-card.

The disturbing aspect of their behaviour is the anger and intimidation that they display which, as is the case in the Cotswold example (above) can only be seen as suppressing the involvement of the wider community. In other words, obstructing democracy. But that was what Somerton's Old Guard has always been about. Plus sa change.............

Till next time, I'm still Niall Connolly

From the archive

With the publication of the External Auditor's Report, I thought that it might be interesting to reprint the first M&B entry from way back in 2006. It makes interesting reading now that we know a little more of what was going on.

Village Hall meeting - 27th November 2006

Somerton never fails to surprise me. On the surface its a quiet west country town with quiet residents and a reserved demeanour. But still waters run deep as they say and last evening's meeting about the proposed town hall is a case in point.

The meeting was held under the auspices of the 'Somerton Community Hall Support Group' in order to report progress with 'the project'. The first half hour was taken up with an exhaustive Q&A session with a range of questions put to prominent town councillors. The questions dealt with the hall as if it were a live project yet the councillors made frequent reference to the fact that funding for the project would only be available if and when town assets were sold. And about that there was no certainty whatsoever.

That was an interesting position to take when, at the same time, the Town Council were also displaying three sets of drawings of what the proposed hall might look like. These drawings were not a set of rough sketches but a set of well laid out architects drawings, produced by Messers Boon Brown of Yeovil. So clearly, whilst the project hasn't any funding and whilst possible funding is entirely dependent upon other factors, the Town Council are issuing instructions to one firm of architects to draw up proposals.

Another interesting issue was that of a possible building budget. The figure mentioned last evening was £400,000 as this was the likely sum of money to be raised by the Town's sale of the Etsome Terrace site to the local Primary Care Trust. Now that deal has been abandoned before and there is no certainty that it will go through this time but the assumption is that the money raised in the sale will be used to build the hall. But there are a number of caveats around that sum of money.

Firstly, if the land is sold, any community hall project must be started within 3 years of the sale or the County Council has the right to claw back £140,000 of the capital. (They sold the land to the Town for the express purpose of building a new hall and this clause is inserted to make sure that the site or the funds arising from any sale will be put to that purpose.)

Secondly, the £400,000 is not unencumbered. Some £140,000 is 'profit' derived from the rise in land value since the Town bought the site. But the balance ie the purchase price, was funded through a loan which the Town is still paying-off and will be for some years hence. So, if £400,000 is brought to the party only about a third of that sum is 'free'.

Another point which was mentioned was how the building might be built or, more accurately, how the materials and labour might be purchased. It was proposed to the meeting that Tony Canvin, the well known builder and local and district councillor, would use his 'buying power' to negotiate the best deals. It was proposed that there would be no tendering evidently because tendering is a tedious process which doesn't offer any benefit.

Now this last point is interesting. If there isn't a tender document, how will the Town ever know what its getting for the money? If there isn't a tender document, how will the money be accounted for? If there isn't a tender document, how will the Town know what the specification should have been? The answer is that without a tender document the Town will never know what it paid for and there will be precious little accountability.

And this is 'local democracy' Somerton style. I wonder what the Audit Commission would make of it all?

More later.

Niall

Rodney's Ramblings

The Western Gazette carries a report describing the Public Meeting held at the Tin Dunny (aka Edgar Hall) on the 29th February (The article is available in the 'Press Coverage' section of M&B). As the report describes, the meeting was well attended, particularly by members of Somerton's Old Guard including none other than Rodney Briggs. (Rodney is the husband of the current 'assistant' to the Town Clerk, Mrs Sherry Briggs.) Rodney made a rambling statement which is worthy of repetition here (please note that the capitalisation and punctuation are mine):

"We have just heard you repeat (Vice Chair read statement and letter) what seems to be Somerton Town Council's standard mantra for this business 'it was in the statement of fact' 'it was in the Auditor's revised statement of fact'. Who supplied the information for the statement of fact if it wasn't Somerton Town Council? The auditor was only in this office, in the council office for about half a day. After that you took it upon yourselves, I believe, to supply them with information. Am I correct? And you claim that you were doing it to save money, to save the costs of the Auditors coming to the office. Very laudable except when I put in a Freedom of Information enquiry to say how much money you saved, you couldn't answer me. You said, 'we don't know, ask the Auditors, they keep careful records'. But none-the-less, the Auditors received the information for this famous statement of fact from Somerton Town Council. Now this worried me a lot because our chairman was in charge of that operation and he demonstrated considerable bias against his predecessors in a meeting when he said, 'there's no smoke without fire'. So why on earth are we sitting here listening to this nonsense that's cost us so much money when quite frankly I think the whole thing was a complete stitch-up and we've just heard more of it."

From my reading of Rodney's contribution, and from my experience of Rodney in the past, Rodney isn't really interested in 'Public Documents' or the Public's right of access to such documents and, in that regard, Rodney has much in common with the Keenan/Canvin regime. No, it would seem that Rodney is bothered about the source or sources of information describing what went on within Somerton Town Council pre-27th October 2009. I don't know if Rodney is being deliberately thick but the source of that information is Somerton Town Council's own records, the very Public Documents which the Keenan/Canvin regime went to such extraordinary lengths to keep secret.  

When I started to research the Public Documents held by Somerton Town Council I was very quickly denied access by the Town Council. Ultimately, the Information Commissioner ruled against the Town Council but the Town Council's actions seemed to me to indicate that they would very much prefer that I did not have access to their records. Like Rodney, this worried me a lot and I did consider that there might be documents in the records that the Town Council would wish to hide. What I did not consider, and what the External Auditor has shown very clearly, was that it was not 'documents' that were the real concern. The real concern was the 'absence of documents'.

It is clear from the External Auditor's Report that Somerton Town Council was transacting much of its business in breach of its own rules and regulations and, as a consequence, decisions were taken in secret, out of public view and without any formal record of who did what, when and on whose authority, if any. But the failings catalogued in the External Auditor's Report were not isolated incidents. They were, in fact, more contemporary illustrations of a well established culture within Somerton Town Council which stretches back to 2002 and probably well before that.

Speaking personally, I doubt that the true scale of unlawful activities undertaken by Somerton Town Council will ever be fully understood. The records of Somerton Town Council, prior to 27th October 2009, were maintained in order to obstruct enquiry and I doubt that anyone will ever take the time to find out what was going on in previous years.

As I have often said, Somerton Town Council (pre-27th October 2009) was the perfect illustration of a delinquent Council, willing to ignore both its own rules and Parliament's legislation. People like Rodney should be concerned not about sources of information but about what the information (or lack of it) says about those that it describes.

Till next time, I'm still

Niall Connolly

Raybouldi declared insane.
News from colleagues of internationally renowned criminal investigator Gary Raybouldi suggests that the great man has gone completely mad. Un-named sources say that the stress of the failed 'Crockery Investigation' has caused Raybouldi to crack completely. At present he is held at a secure unit in Castello Pitnino where reports state that he spends his days dressed only in an outsize diaper and endlessly repeating the phrase, "It's a conspiracy". Raybouldi is not expected to return to active duty and will probably see out his time behind bars and well away from the public eye.