Six months ago the Government’s local government inspector, Max Caller produced a report looking into the wrongs and wrongs, yes wrongs and wrongs, you read it correctly, being delivered in the name of Northumberland County Council.
His report gave a
bleak glance to the public of how Councillors had bullied staff, how the
Council spent £millions on paying off anyone they didn’t like the look of. How
staff reacted and he exposed the facts that a number of Councillors were facing
serious conduct charges and industrial tribunals had been lodged.
Other elements in his
report criticised the Councils handling of freedom of information requests, the
lack of openness and therefore scrutiny, in the Councils dealings not only with
the public but between political groups and how fractured politics was and
still is within the ruling team and its extended secrecy at a level which puts
democracy in doubt.
An improvement team
was sought and eventually put in place to try to rectify matters and they will
report in the future but things have drifted from bad to worse in the interim
period and we wish to provide a few examples which have used public funds to
colour the scene between reports.
The buy out of
industrial tribunals and council standards board cases, as part of the deal
between the Leader of Council and the beleaguered former Chief Executive, we’re
led to believe from press reports that the Leader of Council personally
negotiated away the tribunals and standards board cases against his own group
and its well rumoured that his first offer of £25K as compensation to the CEX
was upped towards a quarter of a million pounds of public cash to achieve his
main aim that of any pouring of light on the dark side of the actions of
himself and his colleagues.
As a lead protagonist
in all things wrong, the shouty Leader appears to have left one of his own out
to dry to possibly take the blame and Murky will name this person as soon as
more information drips out from the rotting carcass that sits in power at
County Hall in Morpeth.
On the shouty subject
and bullying at last Wednesday’s full Council which was televised, the public
were able to see and hear the Business Chair of Council shouting at unnamed
opposition members following his inability to respond in a reasonable manner to
a member of the public at question time. His lack of skill illustrated why and
how the Council’s bullying reputation hasn’t gone away. The business chair
called the Police to have the person asking questions removed instead of
attempting to aid the person's need to know in a civilised manner.
Moving on with the
need to know and the abject failure of scrutiny at Northumberland County
Council.
When running the
Council with a Leader and Cabinet method as opposed to a Committee system,
Councils must be scrutinised by members of opposition parties. That scrutiny of
the business of Council and its public face covers all things undertaken in the
Councils name except planning matters. According to reports from the LGA,
Councils organising body, that scrutiny of the Administration must include
accurate performance figures as well as up to date reports from officers of the
Council. Those figures are produced through set targets known as ‘Key Performance
Indicators’ they are harvested by Councils an a regular basis from figures
collated on the ground by the councils employees feeding into ‘Local
Performance Indicators’, In the papers and reports from Council its obvious
that opposition scrutiny members do not receive information from Key
Performance Indicators (KPI’s) or the Local performance Indicators (LPI’s)
which are used as targets leaving them unable to pinpoint problems across such
a huge geographical area or question the target setting and service delivery
process.
Its noticeable that a
recent Freedom of Information request issued via the Government website ‘What
do they know’ seeking Key and Local performance data to see what's gone wrong
with service delivery across the County of Northumberland has been refused.
We hope that
opposition Councillors who may read this blog begin to realise that scrutiny is
a major failure and that they themselves must demand the figures and data which
allows them to hold the Council to account and begin to break down the secrecy
and open up the activities the public pay dear to have delivered on their
behalf to shine a light on what's really going on, particularly when the Leader
of Council states he is going to save £1M per annum on top staff wages when he
has to offer his new Chief Executive over £100,000 a year more than he was
paying his outgoing CEX as half of her wages were paid by the NHS.
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