While some people vent their spleen about obnoxious events like a repeat story or poor grammar in the 75p Newbury Weekly News, I was staggered by a story in the paper about a man that was being pursued for a disputed £35.00 tax bill. A call was even made to the hospital he was in, while in a coma! The council had been previously contacted by a representatives of the dying man explaining his condition, but the council would have none of it. This from a council who knowingly fine people for trivial parking 'offences' even when they they have no legal basis for doing so.

Do you think West Berkshire Council's spokes man, Public Relations Manager Mr Keith 'in the interests of confidentiality, we will not discuss individual cases' Ulyatt, was in anyway contrite about the issue? Of course not.

Put it this way, I don't want a council to act in such an abominable way on my behalf!


Story on page 7, column 1. Thursday, 19 September 2013.

If this is true as reported, what an ACTUAL ****.
There is just no
Common sense
DECENCY
or RESPECT left in this country

Keith Ulyatt, you should be ashamed to even be associated with such people.

I agree, I find the story so disturbing I'd like to think that we are not being told the whole story, but that doesn't forgive not showing any sense of contrition.

There are two sides to every story, it's a shame we only have one, which may have been 'sensationalised' for the press.

Do not belive all that you read in the NWN - as Claude says, there are 2 sides to every story and one side is not fronted by a freelance reporter selling a sensationalist story. I doubt that what really happened is as reported

But that doesn't excuse an apparent lack of contrition, unless you are saying that the NWN censored that too?

Well the minor details may be missed but I think calling up the hospital where someone is admitted to chasing for money is pretty low.

Do you seriously believe that the Council would phone a hospital to chase a patient for money -- I don't think so ! . We only have one side of the story and ,yes, the Council refuse to comment but as far as I can recall, they never seem to comment on individual cases and rightly so - we all value our privacy and do not want personal information put out for all and sundry to see . The other side of the story may be far far different from what you read in Mr Radford's tale - i wonder how much he got paid to sensationalise it ?

As I said, the minor details - But yes, if the Government are like any other organization chasing money, yes they would.

But the 'victim' went to the press, they didn't seem bothered telling Newbury about a disputed debt! I also often see organisations, when compromised, hide behind the 'confidentiality' excuse.


It doesn't stop WBC's spokes man at least making a statement along the lines of: "we apologise for an distress we might have caused", or some such line, either that, or deny making the call in the way portrayed.

If you are right; however, then the NWN might have some apologising to do themselves.

The Council's behaviour sounds to have been high-handed and arrogant.

As someone who was at Mr Smith's bedside at least every other day during his 16 day stay in hospital, the person who holds all the e-mails that have been quoted, the person who spoke to the nurse who took the call and who spoke to the mother immediately after her son died - I can assure you that everything reported is completely accurate and I think G&G should be very careful about making suggestions that this is false - I only thank heavens that the family are not on the internet to see this - you really ought to remove your comments - they are hurtful and frankly libellous!

You might also like to know that these same story went into the Mail on Sunday and that every fact of that story and this was checked by a senior reporter at the Mail who spoke directly to the family himself - so is G&G really saying the Mail reporter (who was not freelance) is a sensational money grabbing liar also?

In regard to the story there is another side to it, (other than the one the Council don't want to give, perhaps because it is too damning for them) and that is that the Council refused to provide Mr Smith with any information on
a) the money they claimed that he owed them,
the reasons they would not grant him the same protection as any person claiming sickness benefits – particularly considering he was critically ill, nor
c) the reasons that they had made direct deductions from his financial support of something over a thousand pounds, some £20 of which they had accidentally admitted having taken in error before they noticed the other £1000.
I am about as highly qualified in personal financial matters as it is possible to be and have on more than one occasion provided expert evidence to courts on such matters and from what I could see the Council’s only reason for not giving Mr Smith this information was because he did not really owe them money, they should have protected him and they probably did owed him money and lots more than he had ever owed them. The fact is that if the Council had financially disadvantaged Mr Smith in this way then, to quote a local Councillor, ‘how many other residents have also had money wrongly taken from them?’

My guess is that there is a much bigger controversy underlying the treatment of Mr Smith. A controversy that explains why the Council would not give him his own information, will not give it to his estate nor to his duly authorised representative and would instead try to chase a man in a coma whom they had been warned was extremely fragile?

By the way – this was the second time that the Council insisted upon chasing Mr Smith directly over this matter, against his specific instructions and against my warnings about the impact on his health. The first time was only a matter of days before they took him to court over the money they claimed he owed them (a case they withdrew at the court doors when faced with having to explain themselves under my cross examination) and a matter of a few weeks before he went into hospital never to return alive.

I find this all quite shocking and wonder why this wasn't front page news!

A very fair point and one I have asked myself. Supposedly the NWN could not afford to run two stories side by side in the previous weeks edition both criticising the council and they gave the parking issues a higher profile (in my view it is nothing like the same level let alone higher). They then claimed that this story was two weeks old and hence did not deserve higher ranking than page seven this week.

Also note the fact that they have not picked up on the bigger issue which is apparent misappropriation of Mr Smith's money without justification and the fact that the Council waited for him to die - as some sort of excuse for trying to bury that issue with him.

Mr Smith was a truly lovely man who was in my view collateral damage in an issue involving his landlord and the Council. The landlord have been just as unhelpful as the Council. Mr Smith died of a respiratory condition which caused heart failure and the Landlord have admitted that the ceiling in his home which had been crumbling and according to Mr Smith 'the dust had been causing him breathing problems', contained (you guessed it) asbestos. The landlord had moved him out of the flat months after the problem occurred only because the Health and Safety executive deemed it unfit for human habitation, less than two months before he died. This said the landlord knew there was asbestos in the flats from 2009 and had failed to take appropriate safety measures. The landlord promised him a compensation package, which they never paid and now he has died, the landlord claim that he is not entitled to it any longer. The result is that his 84 year old, disabled mother has had to foot the bill for his funeral. As I have pretty much all of this in writing you might have thought the NWN would want to include that in their story but I guess it is not as important as a parking issue, even though the same block of flats still has over 30 other people still living in it. At least the landlord has decided to pull the flats down but that is little compensation to Mr Smith or his family.

some of it made up do you think

Why hasn't this made BBC News?

It is all quite depressing in this day and age that this can happen. We know people make mistakes, but to carry on as they allegedly have is inexcusable. Perhaps things like this are the 'true' cost of austerity Britain under the Conservatives (not that any other local party would be any different). I have heard allegations of the Liberal Democrat controlled town council being less then candid too.

Presumably WBCs Environmental Health people will be heavily involved as the asbestos issue must affect more than just one flat? As ihowgate says the landlord was well aware of the problem he's laid himself open to prosecution? He still has to pay the estate any compensation and given ihowgate's expertise, I'm sure he'll help them with that.

As the matter had been going on for a fair while and was a serious dispute, can we take it that the ward councillor was involved? They are supposed to be 'our' representatives! In fact, Mr U should be redundant, the Councillors should be the sole source of news should they not?


Rather a lot to this story.

To be honest on this point, the Lib Dems did take some action to try to help in the beginning but fell short of actually managing to do anything genuinely helpful and have tended to be too concerned about their special relationship with the Conservatives in central government - 'coalition is a matter of compromise'. This said I do believe that Lib Dem Councillors are being blocked on information disclosure by their own Council so how I could have hoped that they would manage to get the information for Mr Smith was rather naive of me in hind sight.

The Labour party have no power in this town and whilst I kept them informed you only have to look at how the NWN have buried Mr Garvie's investigation into deaths and misconduct (in particular drug dealing) at Two Saints Hostel - that only made page 7 also and should have been front page – and was cut of all the potent material (subsequent updates including threats by the CEO against Mr Garvie have also been shelved as has the fact that the Greenham murder derived from the Two Saints Hostel and that they were warned in advance about the danger posed by this resident) to realise where the real power lies in town.

The fact is that any good democratic system should have a second line of representation so that where the Council fails to live up to requirements the public can obtain justice via another route without needing the money to go to court. Without this the poor never get justice, particularly now legal aid has all but gone. The alternative route to justice ought to be our MP but sadly Richard Benyon repeatedly fails to represent his public in claims against this council. Mr Smith is a classic example but I have so many that I could go on all night.

Sadly corruption is a side effect of party politics and in today’s world of austerity (as you say) where ironically we can spend millions on a public funeral and £170,000 a year on the CEO of the Council’s salary in the same year that the council cut £100,000 of support for disabled children and all crisis loans for the poorest in society at their most vulnerable moments, it takes someone with millions behind them to be as cold hearted as to do nothing for the poor and needy like Mr Smith.

NB Richard Benyon was given access to the full portfolio on the Mr Smith affair on 22nd August with a request for urgent attention and so far we have heard nothing helpful at all out of his office.
Conversely when we put a homeless soldier in front of him - Mr Smith died homeless and had even had his possessions confiscated from him by his landlord and held for supposed non-payment of rent – Mr Benyon managed to instantly muster up a nice new home for the soldier from a social housing landlord sidestepping teh official housing register and thereby jumping the queue that over 4000 other residents were waiting patiently on. Not surprisingly it feels to me like one rule for the poor and another for Mr Benyon's old army mates!

Why hasn't this made BBC news you ask - well with this many important people wanting the story covered up is it really a bigger surprise it actually made page 7 of the NWN.

Against the facts presented, Mr Smith's case seems to be one of maladministration. This is the province of the Local Government Ombudsman, are you referring this case to him?

From what you are implying, that all political opposition has been neutered in Newbury. That has to suggest other forces are at work. For instance, this hasn't made 'rotten boroughs' in Private Eye. So what or who are you suggesting?

I have to say I am thrilled that you all are taking such a genuine interest in this - I am afraid that I am so used to the level of corruption we are talking about here that I have become rather immune to it all.

Somehow the Environment Health (which are after all a part of the council) have gone extremely quiet.

The landlord is a very large organisation – almost certainly the same organisation who housed Mr Benyon’s soldier friend and they have now refused to speak with me any further having stated firmly that Mr Smith nor his estate is due any compensation. I witnessed the agreement to pay compensation and that ought to be enough to ensure the estate gets its due but without the money to pay for a funeral there is never going to be money to pay for a legal case against a massive organisation who even Mr Smith’s MP will not challenge.

From what I can see the Council and the landlord have broken about 50% of Mr Smith’s human rights but ironically whilst he was alive he would have qualified for legal aid to get justice but now he is dead it is a much more difficult process and the landlord and the Council know this and are using it as best they can.

I also have to point out that Mr U was not the person who gave the order to fire. The email I have is from a Mr Lowe who was Scrutiny and Partnerships Manager, the other person at the council who had the information and did not abide by M Smith’s wishes was Bill Blackett Revenues and Benefits Manager. It now appears that the department who refused to explain why they had taken some thousand pounds away from Mr Smith is headed by a Mr Wheldon, though to be fair on him his staff always told me that they were under instructions from Mr Lowe and that was why Mr Smith wasn’t allowed the information. Mr U’s comment to the press is pretty much the same one that Mr Lowe’s department gave me when they declined my Freedom of Information Act request and Data Protection Act request for Mr Smith’s details for the aid of his estate – my guess is that this is therefore where the comment came from, though my guess is it is not the place where the person who will take the fall for this will come from.

Local Government Ombudsman is a good suggestion – however they are only able to deal with matter of a personal nature – meaning that the person who makes the application to them needs to be the person who has suffered or would benefit from any rectification that they put in place. Of course neatly in this instance the complainant is dead and hence cannot make a complaint for his own benefit. Even if I could make the application for him – you can only go to the LGO after going through the council’s corrupt complaints process – which takes a minimum of three months and which is governed by the same Mr Lowe mentioned above.

Thanks for explaining, the penny has dropped and I can now quite see why the sad demise of Mr Smith has frustrated justice. In practical terms, I suppose the best the family could hope for is that someone could find them a good public spirited pro bono solicitor; ideally outside the Newbury circuit. Equally, do any of us have a means to get this on a national agenda?

This is very similar to the way the NHS works: protectionist.

In the original post on this topic, it was said as a matter of fact that the Council rang the hospital about his debts. I'm not clear how anyone knows this was the reason for the phone call. In order to get more clarity on this - because if it was true that the Council would do what is alleged then that is clearly unacceptable - Lib Dem (Opposition) Leader Cllr Jeff Brooks asked a direct Question of the Council's Conservative Leader Cllr Gordon Lundie last Thursday, in a public meeting at which the NWN's reporter was present.
Let's wait and see what Cllr Lundie said. If you don't trust your weekly newspaper, the Q&As at Council meetings are recorded and published on the Council website in due course.
I'm not saying the Council comes up smelling of roses on this but we should at least hear "the other side of the story", within the bounds of confidentiality.
The "national agenda" in all this is the appalling shortage of affordable housing that the past Labour and Tory governments have allowed in this country: not enough new homes meant rocketing rents. It got to the stage that by 2010 about 60% of the Government's housing budget was being spent on subsidising landlords (through housing benefit) instead of bricks and mortar. Tragedies like Mr Smith's saga come from having to spend far too much of our earnings and our tax money on propping up a totally dysfunctional housing and planning system.

So it seems. Must admit thought your post about austerity was a bit OTT - then I though further. Sadly you are right.

Well this story broke at the beginning of the month with our Richard Benyon MP promising to investigate. Well that was over 20 days ago, so what did he find? I think it is also quite unacceptable of our local paper not to have made this story more prominent too! I get a sense of sweeping under the carpet !

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-24...ma-35-bill.html

Is it because NWN and Newbury Today, under instruction from the Council (of which they seem awfully chummy with) are "kindly requested" not to post anything of seriousness (because Parking Fines don't really matter ultimately) which would be defamatory towards the council and certain employees?

After all, there's only so much bandwidth for the important stories - Primary School plays, men stealing Shaving Cream, and minor traffic jams on the A4 - all of which certainly require a full, front-web facing story and huge, poorly written and often mis-spelt write ups in the paper, when this, which I think is probably the biggest shocker to come out of Newbury Council all year, goes unreported.

Honestly, reporters at Newbury Today.........

STOP COVERING THE CRAP THAT COMES OUT OF THIS PATHETIC COUNCIL AND THIS PATHETIC TOWN.
YOU HAVE THE NEWS
****ING REPORT IT.

You make a fair point about reason for the call. What I can say is that I have an email dated almost exactly teh same date as the call from David Lowe at the council responding to my request that due to Mr Smiths state in a coma that they now decist from chasing him directly for this money and accept the letter of authority and verbal authority that he had given them no less than three times - weeks before he went into hospital and which they had declined to accept - totally illegally I might add. In that e-mail David Lowe says that the Council is taking steps to deal with Mr Smith directly on this matter and that my involvement is not required. I go back to him immediately pointing out the lucirous nature of what he has said - I can supply the emails if you want to see them the Mail has already scrutinised them all however and they were content to publish - and cautioning him again against bothering Mr Smith. They then made a call teh same day - whether this was to collect money or not it is appauling considering that Mr Smith had made it abundantly clear that he did not want to have to talk to them himself and wanted and needed the support of someone like me - he was a disabled, critically ill man with learning difficulties and he had asked the council to let him speak through the only person whom he could afford - me.

I also spoke to the nurse who took the call and she said they were quite instistant that they needed a call back and could they please get teh next of kin to call them back - but only after they had discovered that Mr Smith was in a coma. Whatever teh reason for the call - this is unacceptible in anyone's book.

However the council were confronted with what they had done by email on more than one occasion immediately after Mr Smith's death and given morethan adequate time to come back with a simple denial or explanation for doing what they did and they have not done so. Under no law would it be a breach of confidentiality or data protection to say 'actually we didn't do that' 'it wasn't about his council tax'? But really what else could their reason be??? And if they had a legitimate reason which was not about the council tax they alleged he owed which actually I coudl fine no reason why he should owe in teh first place then why did they not come back to me and tell me at the time - instead of taking action to disturb a critically ill man and his diabled 84 year old mother in a way that looks like them bullying vulnerable people to get money out of them without giving them a right to know why they are meant to owe it?

Personally I think they have had more than enough time to explain themselves and they are refusing - the council exec will only come back wth more fudge and word play.

Be that as it may; good manners cost nothing!

Just thought that you might want to know that on 21st August I wrote to Brian Bedwell - teh Conservative Chair of the Council's Oversight, Scrutiny and Monitoring Commission about Mr Smith - explaining about his being chased in Hospital and including the following comment:

'I was heartened to think that the Chairman of the Scrutiny committee would no doubt be on hand to pick up this matter and would know who best in the council should be there to correct the problems. I am correct that it is the role of the scrutiny committee to ensure that mistakes like these do not happen or at least do not happen more than once?

So I am bringing this matter to your attention and rest confident that in your public duty you will see that these horrific errors are corrected and never allowed to happen again. It is of course urgent that this information is released promptly to prevent any further hurt and distress and make sure that Mr Smith's good name is expunged as quickly as possible.'

He responded the next day with "As chairman of OSMC I do not have any additional powers than any other me,mber, I can ask the Commission to investigate issues but that has to be done during normal meetings."

As yet we have heard nothing back from Mr Bedwell nor his commission - so it is not only Mr Benyon who is proving less than prompt and useful in protecting his constituents in line with their elected duty.

Sorry if you've said already Ian, but who is Mr Smith's ward councillor, and what has been their involvement to date. Also, who is the councillor with responsibility for the department that collects the council tax, and what has been their involvement so far?

Interesting - did you realise that my involvement in this was called for because Sovereign Housing were seeking to evict Mr Smith from the very flat that the H&S directorate had deemed unfit for human habitation?

And the reason for eviction was the arrears that had built up against Mr Smith.

These arrears were due to deductions made by WBC before paying the Housing benefit Mr Smith was entitled to.

When we went to enquire why they had been making deductions – pointing to the latest one only two weeks earlier - the Council staff told us that they did not have a clue why the money had been deducted – that it was probably a ghost in the machine.

We then pointed out the enormous number of previous deductions and asked about these – they promised to investigate and come back to me by the end of the day but then Mr Lowe stepped in and the shutters came down and the ‘direct’ bullying started.

Perhaps you are right - this was a central government agenda designed to reduce the amount of spending on Housing Benefit? Maybe this is why the Council and Richard Benyon both seem intent upon not letting the information on these deductions see the light of day?

I had a similar experience with the Council and Richard Benyon over a miscalculation of the Local Housing Allowance – which would definitely fit with an intention to artificially bring rental rates down in the area by not giving people on HB enough money to pay their rents. NWN wouldn't print my letter or report on this issue even though it adversely affected landlords and benefit claimants and property prices across Newbury.

I really think you might be on to something here – I will go and look at what else I can tie up with this awesome observation of yours. ‘Well done - take a pound out of the till’ – as my old dad would have said.

It is this sort of thing that makes one feel that perhaps some people are 'members of the same club'. What we need to realise is that today it is Mr Smith, tomorrow it would be someone else.

I suspect at the bottom of this lies 'bean counters' and 'lawyers'. I'd be surprised if this was all the work of councillors.


ihowgate, have you looked to raise the profile of this on Facebook, etc?

Actually it appears that the next person has already been picked and it is me. The Council have made some allegations that I have done something wrong - which supposedly makes me unsafe to work with a man and his family - but having disclosed this to the police they refuse to tell me what I am supposed to have done. They have now decided that I am not allowed to be treated like other residents and am not allowed access to my own information and advice from council staff on my personal dealings with the council - other than through - you guessed it David Lowe. It is all starting to feel like we are living in a police state.

What is worse the council have also made up some allegations about the man - whose family I was trying to help. They claimed that he had been sent to prison for attempted murder - which is entirely untrue (today we received a document admitting that the police have confirmed that it is untrue). But this hasn't stopped our council pursuing a case against this man to try to hand his children to his alcoholic wife based solely on her testimony and this completely misrepresented incident which even they will claim occurred more than ten years ago and hence can hardly be relevant today.

Am I going crazy or is this all completely surreal?

I used to be a director of compliance from a FTSE100 financial institution, if someone in that firm behaved like David Lowe has behaved then the first thing that would happen is that he would be suspended and an investigation would take place to prove whether he was safe to carry on his role or not before someone else got hurt. But at WBC we have something completely different, the person who has their rights suspended is the person who was representing the injured man (seemingly because the Council can reek their revenge no further on that injured man – because he is dead) and the culprit of the misconduct is not only allowed to continue in his role but is allowed full rein to influence the potential investigators (if any are actually appointed) from his significant position of influence and power and as scrutiny manager has probably chosen no one less than himself to do the investigating. It all sounds completely Machiavellian to me – like something out of 1960s Russia or the Spanish inquisition.

It sounds as though the Council have invoked their Vexatious Complainant policy - all of your communicatins get channelled through one officer. Curiously enough, one of the triggers for declaring you to be a Vexatious Complainant is that you attempt to take up your complaint with your ward councillor - they may have changed their policy, but it looked like that last time I looked. Taking the issue to the press is almost certainly also a trigger.

Sounds like you have been there also Simon. If so are you still in that category and do you know how long it lasts?

I find the Council even having a vexatious complainant policy, where they take it on themselves to act as judge and jury, offensive in the extreme. This is wholly against our British constitution (and yes we do have one) and our common law. Have we really gone back to the worst excesses of the Court of Star Chamber? Does anyone at West Berkshire Council really understand what the Civil War was all about - quite popular round here at one time. Frankly, whoever came up with the idea of this policy isn't fit for a career in public service.

This is very dangerous indeed, we are sleepwalking into a totalitarian state.

We do? I've been misinformed, then. (Or are we talking about the 1215 one?)

(I agree with everything else you said.)

I doubt it is a policy, more vultures lawyers' advice.

There is a publicised vexatious complaints procedure. There're has even been a 'right to know' question about it. A procedure cannot exist without a policy.

Trouble is the administration have been taking over the executive function. That's because over the years our Councillors have abdicated their real responsibility so are little more than unpaid social workers these days. No use to man or beast.

Wether they like it or not, the Councillors are responsible for policy. Again, you can't have a procedure without a policy - if you try, as the saying goes, it doesn't compute.

On the Edge is correct - there is common law which states that no man should be called in judgement upon themselves. I have put this law to the Council and they just ignore it - I think David Lowe believes he is God - he certainly seemed to think he was in regard to Mr Smith and his family.

The other piece of useful law on this is the Human Rights Act 1998 which has many sections relating to a person's right to a fair trial, to be told what they are accused of, for there to be no punishment outside of the law and of course this is the law of the land not the law of the Lowe that the Act is talking about.

If we could show that this was a decision made by one solicitor or another – then a complaint could be taken about them to the Law Society or Solicitor’s Regulation Authority both of which would no doubt be keen to hear about their own member’s encouraging large corporations to breach the Human Rights Act. One would not actually need a name but simply knowledge that it was reasonable to expect that the council had referred matters to the legal department (as when confronted with a threat of legal action) before making some decision of this type and then a complaint could be put against the head of legal at the Council.

It is an interesting idea – I will look into it – this is not being vexatious I hope you all understand I am just looking to the only means of obtaining my rights and that of Mr Smith and others like him.

Rights mean nothing without the power or will to prosecute.

Do you know where it can be viewed?

[PDF] Persistent and Prolific Complaints Procedure - West Berkshire Council
www.westberks.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=28473&p=0‎

Web address as above, I simply Googled 'vexatious complainant west berkshire'. There are some interesting ones and this does seem to be far more common than I'd anticipated.

This is too true.

It's not so much the phoning the dying man in hospital that I find unacceptable (it would be heavy-handed, but I can just about imagine that the council might legitimately want to assure themselves that the man really was in hospital), what most gets my goat is that it would appear that the council wouldn't allow Ian Howgate to advocate for the man despite the man's explicit wish, and it seems to me that the council didn't want to deal with an empowered and articulate advocate and wanted instead to deal with someone who couldn't express himself well, didn't understand his rights, and was intimidated by authority. I would like to see what the Council have to say for themselves about this because as a public authority there shouldn't really be a need for rights-advocates like Ian Howgate because the public authority should already be taking the greatest of care that our rights and dignity are respected, and I can't see any legitimate reason why they wouldn't gladly work through an advocate. WBC need to give a good account of themselves, because at the moment it sounds quite appalling.

Immediately I see errors..

1. Purpose

1.1. To identify complainants who are unreasonable or unreasonably persistent and/or prolific in pursuit of their complaint and manage their complaints appropriately.

How can that be right. Surely it should say 'manage their complaints inappropriately'?

I note the following too. So it is worth being judicious with your correspondence.

4. Defining Unreasonable Complainant Behaviour

4.3 Similarly, the fact that a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of a complaint and seeks to challenge it once, or more than once,should not necessarily cause him or her to be labeled unreasonably persistent. Responding to reasonable expressions of dissatisfaction and requests for information should not cause staff particular problems.

The following I find unacceptable. Many of us are timid and are not familiar with dealing with authority figures. Some people could just being clumsy, so to label them as vexatious is discriminatory, in my view.

4.4.5 Making apparently groundless complaints again staff dealing with the complaint and/or asking that they be replaced, or escalating a complaint to a more senior officer after receipt of a response with which they disagree.


The biggest problem, however, is the word reasonable. Not really easy to define in the context of a complaints procedure.

Uh Oh, it's admin ... quick, scarper!

I understand that the council's policy on these matters details that this should happen.