Berwick Town Council Crisis More propaganda being peddled on other Social Media sites, the kind of cynical tactics employed by totalitarian dictatorships against those they feel threatened by..! Children are suffering now, apparently, because of me and my supporters - unbelievable and desperate. Some points to bear in mind (non-exhaustive because of the sheer length this has been going on for) 1) The crisis began after the Councils mishandling of the takeover of the Portas Pilot in September 2013. The independent investigator, in the report in Portas, which has been concealed because it contains inconvenient truths, found that mistrust built up in the process because the Clerk and others appeared to be following an agenda of their own which was not backed up by council policies and procedures. It was found that the Clerk had mishandled the situation, not followed standing orders and the failure to produce a risk assessment (summary of effects on council) was a significant breach as it is a key part of a Clerks duties. The investigator also concluded that this mismanagement had brought the Council into disrepute in the eyes of the local community and press. This clearly fuelled public suspicion (my words now) and has, amongst other things, led to a number of freedom of information requests, including from journalists and other transparency campaigners in different parts of the country. This has added to some degree to the Offices workload but to try to imply this has meant they cannot meet other obligations is disingenuous and, even if true (which is doubtful because I think there can have been little more around 8 FOI requests made in the last year), the fault lies with who has caused this complete breakdown in public trust. I also imagine, that the Clerk has spent more time constructing her grievance and code of conduct complaints against me than answering FOI requests! It is also a time-consuming exercise generally covering your tracks.. Suspicion continued to be created when further things emerged about Portas, such as the Tourism Forum, set up and chaired by the Clerk and with Cllrs Robertson and Lang as members, completely without legitimacy or accountability, approved £50k-£70k spending of the Portas money with John Lord of Arch in the interim period. 2) The first complaint was proposed by the Clerk against me on 26th September (grievance, legal action and a code of conduct complaint), including for alleged bullying, and the Council as a whole, this was in the immediate aftermath of my criticism of the handling of Portas. As I have recently detailed, this complaint was clearly made maliciously to try to silence me. It should also be noted that 4 councillors had colluded with the Clerk to manufacture this complaint by offering to act as peace brokers and then printing off and passing on a personal email of mine to the clerk which was cited in her apparent complaint. The Clerk took 11 months to bring this grievance and then withdrew it at the last minute. As I have previously said, the fact that the Clerk was allowed to sit on this proposed complaint without pursuing or withdrawing it (when the desired effect was not achieved) and after refusing my offer to mediate was a disastrous mismanagement on the Councils part and extremely injurious to the Council, the town and me personally. 3) The Council continued to act in a way which concerned the public and further fuelled suspicion. Notoriously, Cllr Jones proposal at the EGM of December 2013 which was to give the staffing sub committee of three the power to throw out, without appeal, complaints, requests for information, calls for inquiries etc. This was clearly an attempt to throw out my counter complaint and requests for an investigation into Portas. 4) The independent investigator produced three reports in January. These found that the Clerk had a case to answer (it was also found, amongst other things, that in her original complaint she had given a dishonest account that the monitoring officer had somehow validated her complaint), the mismanagement of Portas and that there were numerous problems with our policies and procedures (being not fit for purpose). These reports, properly dealt with, could have facilitated a positive way forward for the Council but the staffing sub-committee decided to sit on these. A press release and public statement on Portas, for example, citing the findings of the report, would have gone a long way to draw a line under the controversy. On receiving these reports, the Clerk went off on absence for three months. This clearly had an effect on Council work, I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions on all this and where the fault lies! Given the way the Council was being run, sums being spent on advertising etc, some may argue that the Office doing less work was not a bad thing..! 5) I have constantly made requests for dialogue, suggested ways forward for the council (i.e to get everyone round the table, agree terms of reference for the necessary investigation) but these have been refused or ignored. In short, the Councils failure to address these issues properly, those with personal and political agendas and/or after succumbing to manipulation have tried to sweep inconvenient truths under the carpet and frame the whole sorry business entirely about and against me. That is the reason why the Council is now dysfunctional and they never learn and keep on digging and employing all sorts of tactics to gag me in the hope it will all just go away..
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 13:02:30 +0000
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