Basic consultation on new Leisure Centre in Bedlington not yet underway, with only 5 months to 'Purdah'

Purdah is the name given to the period of Council inactivity prior to an election period. In Northumberland one of murky's comments is that since May 2017 the whole Council including its political-wings have been in a complete state of disarray.

The local press have been bulling up the possibility of a new leisure centre complete with a swimming pool in the parished town of west Bedlington.  Its three Councillors who stood as independents have shown full support for the damaged and accused of corruption by the Councils Chief Executive, minority Tory administration whose leader Councillor Peter Jackson was sacked by his colleages recently. The independent councillors from Bedlington were accused of selling their vote as they attempted to save the beleaguered Councillor Jackson in order to secure the promise of a multi million pound vote winning spend. 

 

The Council has not yet agreed to shift funding towards the Bedlington scheme. It is believed in the leisure trade that the development of another centre in South-East Northumberland would lead to at least one of its current centres closing. Some of which sit in the county's poorest areas suffering transport deprivation, huge numbers of obese adults and children along with a rapidly aging population facing all the problems of ex heavy industry and mining health problems. The closure of any of its current sites will lead to Northumberland slipping back rapidly in the healthy communities league tables.

 

To make a decision of this magnitude, the Council needs to survey all of its Leisure Services users to see they assist their decision to close a centre to appease their independent associates from Bedlington whose votes they now rely on. They haven't bothered but are still leading their gang by the nose and they haven't noticed the nose string is being tightly twisted.

 

Currently covid-19 aside the Councils leisure team struggle to attract business from outside of the County to assist in developing a break even trading account. During the last labour administration its regeneration company ARCH supported leisure services with £1m in revenue each year, a process that was subjected to the now famous lies spun out by the Tory Party under Councillor Peter Jackson but its accounts lodged with companies House tell the true tale.

 

ARCH was scrapped by Councillors Jackson and Wearmouth in 2017 changing it to ADVANCE Northumberland at huge expense to the Council taxpayer. Topping that by losing £4m in each of the first two years acounts are available for public viewing, assisting the Council to lose its external auditor into the bargain. Something even tories can't be proud of.

 

Guide to the Arch Accounts Filed at Companies House;

 

Arch has in the period 2016-2017.

 

Made a charitable contribution of £1m to Active Northumberland during both 2015/16 and 2016/17 (Page 7)

 

Seen turnover increased from £10.3m to £22.4m during 2016/17, with gross profit increasing from £7.1 to £16.7m (Page 7)

 

Observed a substantial increase in fixed assets values from £137m to £318m during 2016/17, largely funded through the use of the groups "commercial loan facility" with Northumberland County Council (as quoted on page 7)

 

Shareholder funds increased by £6.6m to £60.1m during 2016/17 (Page 7) meaning that if they sold Arch tmrw they would bank £60m after all debt was paid off.

 

Inward investment and strategic account management has contributed to the leverage of £143m private sector investment into Northumberland and the creation of 409 jobs (Page 8)

 

It secured funding of £24.8m for the acquisition, remediation and reclamation of the former RWE site at East Sleekburn (Page 9) Energy Central.

 

Completion of 100 (38+38+24) new residential properties through Ascent homes during 2016/17 (as quoted on page 10). As an aside this would have directly benefited Northumberland County Council through an increased New Homes Bonus Grant amounting to approximately £600k over a 4 year period) (100*£1485*4 years)

 

Made a profit during 2016/17 £5.5m (page 15)

 

Projects under construction (regeneration in progress) increased by £9.5m to £17.9m during 2016/17 (Page 28)

 

Revaluation gains on assets purchased of £6.6m, with impairments of £1.4m (this may have been the Ashington hole), producing a net gain to Arch and Northumberland County Council of £5.2m (Page 28)

 

Interest payments to Northumberland County Council through the commercial loan facility of £8.3m, an increase of £5.1m during 2016/17 (Page 32)

 

Total payments to Northumberland County Council of £9.4m, including interest on the commercial loan facility, business rates, council tax, planning applications, section 278 agreements and other services (Page 34)

 

Average staff numbers within the Arch group increased by 52% from 74 to 113 during 2016/17 (page 7)

 

Other points of reference

 

Future plans Page 3 the Chairman Cllr Wearmouth states " The business will continue to trade whilst preparations are made to dissolve the Arch Group and the assets will then be disposed of in an orderly fashion"

 

The Auditors have issued an unqualified audit opinion, and as part of that they state adequate accounting records have been kept i.e. they have no issues to report! (It stands for 'pathetic failure' in their audit speak) (page 14)

 

Page 10 includes the "risk of Northumberland conservatives manifesto pledge to scrap Arch"

 

All in all one of the biggest and most successful development companies in the North East of England if not the UK, has now about to be sent to the dogs to appease the prime donors to the Tory Party in Northumberland: and Morpeth Freemasons of course!

 

Your Granny, your Binman and your District Midwife are to blame for the Tories mismanagement of Covid and the Budget

 

Murky has had difficulty getting to grips with why a political party would hack at its largest group of supporters who breached the ‘red wall’ to bring them into power.

According to the city of London media, premier Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is set to slash Pensions, Welfare Benefits and freeze Public Sector Pay for the next four years in order to lay the blame for the Government’s handling of the pandemic firmly at the feet of the poorest paid in society.

His policies and off the cuff decision making to ensure he falls in line with the wishes of Dominic Cummings and his puppet premier Johnson to create an underclass that can be ordered to do as they are told has already seen him slash Universal Credit by £1200 per annum, at a time when only the lack of household spend is holding inflation down.

His total mismanagement of the national budget has seen it spin into BREXIT deficit of £350Bn with £190Bn lost to Covid. His Government are sitting in no mans land without any possibility of help from their former partners through the intransigence of the second most inept Tory ever behind Johnson, David Cameron.

After promising to deal with matters surrounding deficits flexibly and creatively he changed his mind and decided that he would give tax breaks to UK business and Farmers to help them get over the worst of Covid and gift the costs of this diabolical financial gambling decision over to your granny, your binman and your district midwife.

After a huge family Sunday Lunch Sunak has told the media he is more than considering scrapping yearly inflation-linked rises in welfare payments and public sector pay, while he is also trying to convince Boris Johnson of dropping the pension “triple lock”. The triple lock sees pensioners’ payments rise every year of the largest of inflation, average wage increases or 2.5 per cent.
In Northumberland you need to ensure you lobby your MP and the rudderless Administration at County Hall to try to stop the Tories pillaging your County, for as we will see in the next few weeks unemployment is not geographically separated and families in some of the places considered better off in the County will suddenly find themselves in queer street and don’t think the Council will not force you to pay your taxes, that relief is only for their inept Councillor from Corbridge!

 

Murky wonders if the new leadership at County Hall will make Councillor Oliver reimburse the money owned.

 

Surprised at Northumberland Supporting Future Lockdown Proposals?

Add caption

Rudderless Tory led county council licensed a fair but didn’t oversee the event!

Many people on social media were surprised when Northumberland County Council became completely embroiled with the City of Newcastle and Gateshead’s need to suppress Covid 19 with much stricter lockdown procedures as Northumberland appeared to have very low infection rates as well as much lower former death from Covid rates than its urban neighbours.

So as the Tory led Council announced its partnership we thought that Murky should find out why!

Our online investigations located the problem moderately quickly, a fair was held in Ashington which attracted hundreds of young people who after being locked down and then decried by the media, thought it would be a good idea to let their hair down and attend an open licensed public event.

Their phones were red hot and flocks of young people from across the County attended the Fair put on by Richardson Amusements and licensed to run by the beleaguered County Council from 10^th to 14^th September.

Originally this Fair was to be an element of Ashington Town Councils ‘Fair weekend’ a now major event in the county calendar of Country Shows, Ex-Miners Galas and Music Festivals.

Following the announcements regarding the lockdown by the Government,  Ashington Town Council correctly informed the licensing authority (Northumberland County Council) that their Fair weekend had been cancelled, yet the County Council still accepted a ‘risk assessment, fee and issued a licence to the fair company to hold its event’.

As the only event in the County of that type this month the licensing officers of the County Council should have been all over the site like a rash to ensure Covid safety distancing was being observed. They didn’t bother at all and the number of attendees swamped the organisers.

The Police became embroiled in the matter and the County Council eventually turned up and after a brief conversation the organisers decided to halt what had by the 13^th September become the most popular event in the North East region.

The County Council ran one of their spin stories out via their web site in an as usual back covering exercise and we can only hope that this dreadful disease has not been passed on between the young people in attendance and that the North-east lockdown partnership becomes a simple paper exercise!

And these Tories work for us?

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/News/2020/Sep/Organisers-agree-to-close-fair-in-Ashington-to-sup.aspx





   

 

Soft Market Testing (or how to keep a paid position even when the public are against your administration):

 Murky and many of you will remember the fight put up by the Labour Group and the Trade Unions from 2010-2012 in opposition to the IMPOWER report a privatisation scheme being worked up by the LibDem Councillor Andrew Tebbutt, and his contracted cohort in their partnership, Councillor Peter Jackson, with Councillor Wayne Daley used as the go between by both Northumberland and North Tyneside Councils.

They were fashioning a public private partnership deal with their friends neighbours and colleagues, the Tory Group and Mayor from North Tyneside MET in order to level down Council workers wages to that of the competing contract sectors and in doing so slash the future retirement benefits of thousands of Northumberland local government workers pensions.

They worked on this project for over two years and eventually commissioned a report through the offices of a well known local government consultant in order to soft market test all services in readiness for their coup.

The following services were to be exposed to full competition and Councillors from the partnership group of Tories and Lib Dems were to become paid directors of the new companies set up to do the work. This would effectively give them paid employment when the political merry go round removed them from office:

 

1) ICT Services

o    Information Service Group

o    Information & Applications

o    Infrastructure

2) Financial Services

o    Head of Financial Services

o    Transactions Management

o    Accounts Payable

o    Accounts Receivable

o    Pensions Administration

o    Council Tax and NNDR

o    Benefits Service (excluding Fraud Investigations)

o    Insurance Administration

o    Cashiers

o    Systems Administration (AP, AR, Employee Services)

o    Revenues & Benefits Management

o    Alnwick and Berwick databases

o    Area Management

o    Quality Assurance

o    Business Systems

3) HR & Employee Services

o    Employee Services (including Payroll)

4) Front Office Services

o    Libraries

o    Tourist Information Centres

o    Customer Access Points

o    Customer Services

5) Procurement

o    Procurement Admin – Sourcing & Requisitioning

o    Category management & Controllable 3rd Party Spend

6) Property Services & FM

o    Property & Estates Services (excludes Land & Assets)

o    Facilities Management

o    Schools Crossing Patrols

7) Transport

o    Fleet Management

o    Parking

8) Highways & Engineering

o    Highways Services

o    Engineering Services

o    Street Lighting

9) Neighbourhood Services

o    Street Scene

o    Countryside

10) Regeneration

 

The Partnership aimed to deliver services as cheaply as possible and got up to the stage of soft market testing these services when the proverbial happened and the battle between the not included Social Services section of both Councils were caught out with the public exposure by officers who’s careers were to suffer fighting against those who still sat safe and sound under the Council banner followed by an e-mail from Councillor Ian Lindley to staff, copying in Councillor Grant Davey the trade unionist leading the Labour Group on Northumberland County Council at that time which culminated into the scheme faltering via a proper royal mess at County Hall in Morpeth forcing a split in the love story between the LibDems and the Tories whose Leader Councillor Peter Jackson regularly forgot the process when approached by the press.

The story surrounding the IMPOWER report is well documented but what has been kept under wraps until the suspension of CEX Daljit Lally was the scope of the project and an explanation in leaked e-mails of the Tories wish to replicate IMPOWER in a rush to safeguard their own incomes prior to the May 2021 elections hidden in a report issued within this years budget papers days before the lockdown commenced.

 

The aims of the LibCon pact were as follows:

 

 

The link to the Tories new report:
http://committeedocs.northumberland.gov.uk/MeetingDocs/45991_M9494.pdf

As you will see the similarities with the IMPOWER report are many, 10 private companies, Directors running the companies, no Trade Union involvement, the only thing really missed out of this plan is ‘soft market testing’ the report explains contracts are already in place as the Tories of two administrations ago learned that soft market testing was the weak link in the process as the advertisements had to be let out into the press and the publics outcry at losing the people who keep Northumberland running being handed over to who knows whom would be dreadful.

Several questions have arisen that we must point out to the public:

1 Leaked e-mails show that the disgraced Councillor Oliver who has not paid his obligatory taxes to the Council even after he was sent a bill during the Xmas period of 2019 by the suspended CEX has been running this process under the cover of Covid 19 his disgrace will ensure he does not win his seat in Corbridge 2021 yet he will possibly be a lead director of a company that will run your Council for evermore unless this process is stopped?

2 Was the falling out between the secret Tory cabinet and their CEX and then the resignations from Councillor Wayne Daley (Childrens Services portfolio) and Councillor Veronica Jones (Adult Care/Health and Wellbeing portfolio) the result of Social Services and Childrens Services being scoped into this privatisation scheme that will lead to lower staff wages and reduced pensions? Or was it that the CEX and her officers suddenly found out they would have their influence slashed by the outcomes of this two page report?

3 The now well known threat from Councillor Sanderson that he will bring back Councillor Jackson into his cabinet if elected as Leader by the full council, is that to ensure the No2 behind Councillor Oliver’s plan for personal cash protection is not blackballed out of a seat on the future Council Companies?

4 What is the Labour Party Leader Councillor Susan Dungworth and the Trade Unions doing about this? To safeguard properly paid employment and Council Services in the County, as well as the long term protection of retail jobs which will be severely damaged if pension payments from Northumberlands largest employer slip down in value through this process, which they will. The latest from them seems to be ‘Lets dissolve Advance Northumberland’ we at the real Murky expect that its scoped into some of the yet to be leaked appendices to the published report so the new Company (Northumberland Enterprises Limited) can scope in the full IMPOWER processes.

 

Even if your not interested in your fellow man or what happens to the public purse in your County you will be when the your Council in future can’t get the work you need completed without being ripped off by companies managed by directors who have already proven to fail you and in some cases change policy to dodge paying their taxes.

 

Here at real Murky were sure a myriad of other questions will be asked by employees of the Council, those who need the Councils services and those who are being kept in the dark by the Tories ‘Secret Council’ we ask that you keep them coming out on social media to ensure that the culprits and protagonists of what has been labelled a corrupt council can’t hide from view.

 

 

 

 

Sanderson and Dodd for Leader and Deputy Councillors vote on 23rd September for

 

‘NO’ real change at NCC

The Northumberland County Council Conservative cabinet team have had to accept a change to their line up following Councillors from all parties and political persuasions joining together to kick out its former Leader, Councillor Peter Jackson.

The Conservative Group met on 11^th September and chose Councillor Sanderson its current Deputy Leader to head the front rank team and Councillor Dodd to move from his Business Chairs position to the throne of Deputy Leader.

The full Council meets via a zoom type format on 23^rd September to ratify or deny the changes suggested by the Conservative Group. In this short article we would like to explore the reasons why denial should be the stance promoted to Councillors by the public..

The Cabinet of Northumberland Conservatives have been reported to the Police and allegedly accused of Fraud, Bullying, Dodgy land dealings, Sexism, mismanagement of public funds, non payment of Business Rates, dishonesty in public office, and on top of that the residents of the County from all walks of life are openly commenting on how they have failed to instil trust into people that they all get a fair share of the spend on public services County-Wide.

As the only changes to that Cabinet Structure emanating from County Hall in Morpeth was to fill the vacancies left by Councillor Wayne Daley and Councillor Veronica Jones who resigned on principle following the suspension by Councillor Jackson of the Councils Chief Executive. Glen Sanderson was bumped up to the Council Deputy Leader Position and Jeff Watson brought in to replace Councillor Jones.

These moves have brought social media into play to point out that the whole cabinet which is and has been very secretive in its democratic processes, having halved the number of meetings where the public can have their say on the Councils progress since May 2017 is made up primarily of men who wear the Apron and even that they may have broken the handle off the lodge trowel trough their antics of late.

We thought we would look at their central team and the accusations made against them by the press and their own colleagues:

The attached company Advance Northumberland chaired by the now silent Councillor Richard Wearmouth finds itself embroiled in legal action that could cost the Council taxpayer over £5.5M on top of its recorded losses of £4M in each of the last two financial years in which accounts have been filed all because the Chairperson and the Company CEX could not follow an instruction from the Council shareholding officer, its suspended Chief Executive Daljit Lally OBE.

Councillor Glen Sanderson JP – Regional Lead Peer for the East Midlands, North East and Yorkshire & Humber for the Local Government Association a position from which he drives forward improvements in Council processes and practice. The question has to be asked, why when the Council lost its external auditor an almost unknown happening in Local Government through not following its agreed Governance Plan did he not drag his organisation, the LGA into the Council to report on its problems and as a Justice of the Peace why did he not get the Police involved and left it to an officer who his cabinet was tangled up in suspending. He is also accused of bullying highways engineers to the extent of seeking their sacking for not jumping to his every request, budgeted for or not.

Councillor Richard Dodd who has operated as the Business Chair of the Council and has an assistant Councillor Barry Flux are accused of ignoring dates for consultation on Government White Papers, particularly in the arena of planning where the Government has put forward changes that will affect Northumberland more than most Council areas locally and has not brought forward any suggestion of meeting as a full Council to discuss matters and has also denied the public the opportunity to lobby their Councillors regarding these changes. The whole process of the first white paper is closed down by Government on !st October 2020 and Northumberland haven’t even had a report to its own secret cabinet yet alone allowed Parish Councils to contribute particularly those who have or are in the process of formulating neighbourhood plans. In a fully Parished Council area this process was surely a must. What will he ignore when he holds the full powers of a Unitary Council Deputy Leader?

Councillor Oliver, what more can we say that hasn’t been said of this person who owes the Council £31,000 in business rates for a company he and his wife were fully involved in. He is writhing around like a landed fish telling people that he is appealing his need to pay the sum to the Council, well its normal that to lodge an appeal against the payment of taxes to a Council you must pay those taxes first, as an appeal is against the payment and not the non-payment surely? To add another matter to this persons reputation an FOI on ‘what do they know’ points out that Councillor Oliver pushed a report through the secretive one party cabinet in July 2020 that changed the Councils rules on Council Tax and Business Rates, we’d like to see the opinion of the Police and the external auditor on those changes!

Councillor and land dealer John Riddle, we will not examine the allegations further for fear of misleading any Police investigation but will guide readers to his dealings with former planning officers and his witness statements in the Czerepok v NCC tribunal (a matter of public record) for a few hints regarding his character.

We could go on but I’m sure you have the gist that some people who are not nice are getting away with Hans Christian Anderson level of story telling to cover their actions or as one wag this week commented when describing the mess surrounding false promises for the development of Pipers Place in Bedlington “you do mean those jackanory Tories from Morpeth, don’t you?”




  

A Reminder from Monica

We already know about Cllr Sanderson’s attempts to put party before the residents o Northumberland regarding council decisions.

It now appears more is coming to light. All of which can be evidenced when this state of affairs makes it to court.

In January 2020, Cllr Sanderson was advised of serious breaches of health and safety issues (including risk to staff life and limb), in a number of local services workplaces. Cllr Sanderson chose to collude with a local services manager, to the extent that the Council’s executive team made the decision to parachute in external capable staff to oversee and rectify the identified health and safety breaches. These breaches were so significant that either it could have resulted in the death of a staff member, or the council could have been sued for a significant amount of money if the Health and Safety Executive had conducted a visit and found the conditions as they were.

During the lockdown period Cllr Sanderson again, on numerous occasions, failed to act in the best interest of Council staff. He tried to force the Council’s management team and council staff to reopen local and environmental services, prior to the completion of health and safety risk assessments. Had his pressured requests been allowed, the health and safety of hundreds of frontline council staff would have been put at significant risk. The constant pressuring of council staff is unacceptable.
In a meeting of the informal cabinet in June 2020, Cllr Sanderson made a racial slur against Chinese people. The slur was made in front of numerous Council staff including members of the executive team, more junior staff and numerous cabinet members.

Cllr Sanderson, along with other current and previous cabinet members, has sought to influence the purchase price of a site in Hexham commonly known as the “Bunker” site for a car park, which falls within his Local Services portfolio. The Chief Executive and Council property staff were put under significant pressure to direct Council resources to this car park site, due to the biased relationship between the previous Leader and Cllr Cath Homer. 

The property staff were pressured to “find a way to” inflate the price, as per the developer’s request. Cllr John Riddle then sought to pressure planning staff to speed up the planning process. Cllr John Riddle was reminded that all planning must follow due process. Cllr Sanderson raised the purchase of the site numerous times and the removal of the Chief Executive was partly due to the cabinet members wanting to purchase the site under delegation to Rick O’Farrell who they felt would be more agreeable. There needs to be a clear investigation into this matter.

 

 

 

Farmers are quite famous for forgetting things and farming Councillor Peter Jackson is no exception!

Farming Councillor Peter Jackson is following in the tradition of his craft, by being extremely well known for being very forgetful.

His forgetfulness has got him into all sorts of bother over recent years with his fame stretching almost as far as his ego, landing him in the mire on several occasions ensuring his name becomes ever greyer as he manipulates climb-down after climb-down.

Were sure his friends will be able to point the finger at many more than we can but we think we should start with the now infamous and probably most staggering memory loss that of the planning application for a money spinning windmill on his land. His climb-down exposed one of the North’s busiest land agents, George F White to ridicule as the ego’s answer was that he forgot George had made the application

And it was the same agent who was mixed up in another forgetful moment when Councillor Jackson forgot that a giant shed also on his land was being built to house an industrial process in the countryside embroiling the pair in further controversy.

More recently the main stream press seemed to point towards him forgetting he is married, we would imagine the cold tongue dinners at home will remind the ego not forget that point again.

But his latest venture into addledness is beyond the pale even for the ego himself.

His widely reported dreadful spat with his half time Chief Executive at Northumberland County Council that led to his demise from office as Council Leader brought forward a demonic response from our farmer. He must be aware due to his own secondary career John Steinbeck wrote books about grain farming, the ego’s main income source and we can only presume that during his study of the Nobel Prize winners work he found Steinbeck’s most repeated quote: “I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.” 

His revenge was spewed out into the local and regional press where his bleaching comments regarding the activities of his suspended CEX included the following International projects costing the Council £1.4M. “I have concerns about some of the expenditure on this project including high salaries, first class flight costs of £4,866 each, high hotel bills and an unexplained invoice relating to the Jumeirah Beach Resort in Dubai of £47,020.”.

We find it strange from information openly available in the public domain, after signing off the Councils 2018/2019 accounts and 2019/20 accounts where he has a full page personal statement on Page 3 about how well he is doing on yours, the publics behalf, he forgot to read the rest of the annuls that register how he has spent the Councils cash, in particular page 60 of the 2018/19 accounts where it clearly states that the CEX was paid an International travel allowance of £53,738 in 2018/19 one can only presume that’s to cover the expenses she incurred.

He also states that he thought that the ‘International Project would be cost free to the taxpayer’. Well our research shows that this medical based project incurred officer time cost during 2016/17 financial year as the Council was effectively the agent who linked with the Department of Trade and Industry on a contract basis with Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, but that Councillor Jackson reviewed the terms and conditions of the Project during 18/19 in order to get access to a share of the £1Bn contract signed with a Chinese medical company at that point he seems to have forgotten that the costs were to be shared in the manner it shows in the 2019/20 Draft accounts, they are now split 50/50 with the trust so the costs are picked up by both parties and do not show as incurred expenses in the 2019/20 draft accounts.

The forgotten man.

Who was he again?

 

 

 

Murky wonders if Councillor Oliver will pay back £30.000 plus to Northumberland County Council out of his allowances

 Dear Enquirer,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

I refer to your Freedom of Information request in which you asked:
 
It is in the public domain that Northumberland County Councils Portfolio
holder for Corporate Services is in debt to the Council for £30,000plus
following his and his wife's Company Katie Kerr going into administration
during April 2020.

On 7th July 2020 a report was presented to Cabinet in the name of
Councillor Oliver it contained a new policy on managing debt including
NNDR.

Q.1 Has Councillor Oliver informed the Leader of Council of his current
standing with regard to his debt to the Council?.

Q.2 Has Councillor Oliver informed officers of the Council of his current
standing with regard to his debt to the Council?

Q.3 Was Councillor Oliver advised to change his declarations of interest
with regard to his debt standing with the Council if so when?

Q.4 Is the Council in the process of following the policy put through in
Councilor Oliver's name with him and his wife over this issue?.

Right of Access

Section 1(1) of the Act provides any person making a request for
information to a public authority is entitled.

(a) to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds
information of the description specified in the request (which Section
1(6) of the Act designates as the "duty to confirm or deny"), and

(b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to him.

The right is to obtain access to the information itself and not to the
document or record which contains it.

The Act creates a general right of access to information held by public
authorities subject to various exemptions.

Duty to confirm or deny

Northumberland County Council neither confirms nor denies that it holds
the information relevant to your request as the duty in Section 1(1)(a) of
the Act does not apply by virtue of Section 40 of the Act.

A disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act is a release of
information to the world at large and not an individual requestor.
Therefore, simply confirming or not that such information, if any, were
held would disclose personal information about an individual.
 
Disclosure is refused under Section 40 of the FOI Act 2000 (personal data
other than that of the applicant). Any council tax or business rate
indebtedness by an Elected Member (or a company they are an officer of, or
to which their spouse has a connection) is Personal Data under the GDPR
and disclosing it would breach the principles of fair and lawful
processing set out in the General Data Protection Regulations and Data

Protection Act 2018.

Also, all matters pertaining to Councillor’s interests are published on
the NCC website:
http://committee.northumberland.gov.uk/D...

This should not be taken as an inference that the information you have
requested, does or does not exist.

Exemptions

The Freedom of Information Act sets out various exemptions to the right of
access.

In the present case the County Council takes the view that some
information is exempt under section 40, on the basis that it is personal
information. In this case the Authority relies on sections 40(5).

Section 40 - Personal information .

(1) Any information to which a request for information relates is exempt
information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the
data subject.

(2) Any information to which a request for information relates is also

exempt information if- (a) it constitutes personal data which do not fall
within subsection (1), and (b) either the first or the second condition
below is satisfied.

(3) The first condition is- (a) in a case where the information falls
within any of paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition of "data" in section
1(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998, that the disclosure of the
information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act would
contravene- (i) any of the data protection principles, or (ii) section 10
of that Act (right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or
distress), and (b) in any other case, that the disclosure of the
information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act would
contravene any of the data protection principles if the exemptions in

section 33A(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (which relate to manual
data held by public authorities) were disregarded.

(4) The second condition is that by virtue of any provision of Part IV of
the Data Protection Act 1998 the information is exempt from section
7(1)(c) of that Act (data subject's right of access to personal data).

Public Interest Test Considerations

Section 40(5) is a qualified exemption which means that the Council is
required to apply a public interest test to determine whether or not it is
in the public interest to confirm or deny that information is held.

Public Interest Test Factors - Favouring Confirmation or Denial that the

Information is Held

Confirmation or Denial of the existence of the requested information would
enable the public to have a better knowledge of what information is
recorded by Northumberland County Council and therefore a better
understanding of the decision making process when it comes to the
disclosure of personal details.

Factors against confirmation or denial that the information is held

To confirm or deny whether personal information is held in response to a
request could publicly reveal information about an individual or
individuals, thereby breaching the right to privacy afforded to persons

under the Data Protection Act 2018.

Decision

The points above highlight the merits of confirming or denying that any
other information pertinent to this request exists.

Whilst the public interest principles of transparency and accountability
weigh heavily in favour of disclosure of information held by
Northumberland County Council, there is also a strong public interest in
maintaining confidence in the County Council with regard to its handling
of individual’s personal data.

Northumberland County Council cannot not process personal data in breach

of the Data Protection Act in order to satisfy a request for information
under freedom of information and the exemption under Section 40(5)(a) of
the Freedom of Information Act exists for this purpose. The decision in
this case therefore must favour the maintenance of the Neither confirm nor
Deny stance by the County Council.

However, this decision should not be taken as conclusive evidence that the
information you requested exists or does not exist.

Advice and Assistance

The County Council recognises its statutory duty to provide advice and

assistance under Section 16 of the Act.

Subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, the Council
is seeking to be transparent and open in its response.

Notice of Refusal

With the exception of the information disclosed, please treat this letter
as a Notice of Refusal as regards the information covered by the Section

40(5) Exemption.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with the way your request for information has been
handled, you can request an internal review by writing within 2 months
from the date of this response to the Information Governance Office:

Information Governance Office
Northumberland County Council
County Hall
Morpeth
NE61 2EF