Story here.

"The council has been awarded a £5.07m grant from the Department for Transport on the basis that it agreed to fund the remaining 30 per cent – or £2.17m."

As I understand it our government, national and local, are supposed to respect this period of purdah and not publish this kind of news. If this really is WBC putting this news out there then it really is very poor form.

That's dirty Tories for you!

Have you still not realised that out two present local Authorities are laws unto themselves?

But, providing our local electorate remembers all the past few years gaffs etc., not for much longer!

I would guess a local paper reporting what happened at a meeting of a council’s executive is within the rules.

You've been banging on about openness and transparency for ages, as soon as you stand for political office it's a different story.

Are the press allowed in executive meetings?

You (wilfully) misunderstand purdah. There is no restriction on what a local paper can publish, the rules apply to the council, and I stand by my comment, it is poor form for the council to put this information out there in the week before polling.

Incredible and another demonstration of today's marketed politics. No ideas, just solutions to non existent problems.

Swapping out the existing street lighting units for led ones might look pretty but doesn't actually contribute over much to the energy consumption, so the costs and electricity use won't change much...but the voter will think it looks nice! Sadly, if the investment was properly focussed against a real business case, then we'd achieve some real and sustainable difference.

If you think about it, it's games like this that demonstrate the contempt that our mainstream politicians have for their electorate, who do they think we are?

Dear Mr Capp,

Don’t be naïve, it is election time, so anything that helps the Tories get votes must be justifiable. After all, other parties would do the same if they were in the same position. There is no love in a war of the ballot boxes.

Yours,
Petra

Yeah give them lies, lies and more lies.
That's just what one must expect from the true blues, must keep the plebs in their place or heavens know what will happen to our ordered way of life otherwise eh?

Not sure. I guess they'll allowed to read the agenda and minutes though.

I thought you just successfully fought to get a one council to publish a report, now you're complaining another shouldn't be publishing information about its meetings

You simply can't please some people. It's like they're just being contrary for the sake of it.

I disagree OTE.
Not going by what it says on the packets of domestic LED's anyway.
I can now buy an LED lamp that, for 3W consumption, gives out the same lumen as an incandescent of 60W.
Or have I got it wrong somewhere?

And you're being obtuse. You know the difference in principles here.

From what I can see, he's saying that a newspaper shouldn't publish something because he thinks it might affect a decision making process.

Wasn't this the reason the Town Council gave at one time for not publishing their hydrological report?

Generally the existing street lights aren't incandesant, rather discharge (like fluorescent) which also have a lowish running wattage. So it's a bit like swapping out your 'energy saving bulbs' for new LED ones. I think there is presently some move to provide both consumption wattage and light output in lumens numbers for bulbs which might help our comparisons in the future.

That's the Petra for you, the best thing to get both Labour & UKIP extra votes - a mad women bigging up the tories

OK, perhps you don't...


No that is not true. He is complaining about an apparent breach of protocol in the run-up to an election. A breach of protocol that might be seen as a party seeking to gain an unfair advantage in a democratic process.


It might have been, but the reason the council gave came after the complaint was made; however, Simon was complaining that the council was unreasonably withholding information and a tribunal agreed.

In both accounts, Simon was 'eager' to see due process.

No, like I said, newspapers can publish what they like, it's local and national government administrations that need to respect purdah as I understand it. I believe that the restriction is to prevent politicians using the apparatus of public administration for their own political advantage and gaining a credibility advantage by speaking as the administration rather themselves.

More about it here.

I stand by my criticism and I don't believe it was appropriate for WBC to announce the grant funding in purdah.

Another questionable press-release is this one from NTC in which JSH defends the Council's actions. Council publication should in any case be neutral and even-handed and this missive fails to represent the contempt which which the tribunal demolished the council's argument, calling it "bizarre and self-contradictory" at one point.

JSH says: "The Council had sought to keep the documents confidential to avoid jeopardising its hardfought legal case, but we are of course doing what is now required of us, and we are doing it without delay."

If it is true, as JSH says, that the Council sought to keep the documents confidential to avoid jeopardising its legal case (which it has conspicuously failed to start) then I suggest the Council rather profoundly lied all the time it was telling us that the "confidentiality agreement" was the reason it couldn't disclose the reports, and JSH might usefully have summarised the Tribunal's judgment where it ruled that, not only did the Council utterly fail to support their unfounded assertion that disclosure would jeopardise their case, but that the public interest was in any case so strong in favour of disclosure that, even were the reports subject to legal privilege, the Council should still have published them. It is utterly depressing that JSH's Liberal Democrat administration has so completely failed to grasp how wrong-minded they were ever to try and keep this vital piece of information from the tax-paying parishioners.

And in point of fact JSH's statement is not true. What was required of the council was that they publish both the hydrogeological reports, and their closed submission made to the Tribunal. The council has indeed disclosed the reports, but not only has it failed so far to disclose the closed submissions which it clearly expects to be embarrassed by, it has submitted further argument to question the sense of the Tribunal's order and clarification on the need to publish - JSH says nothing about that, and that in no way is "doing what is now required of us, and ... doing it without delay".

NTC 24 April: "We would seek to query whether this is correct and the Tribunal DOES require the council to disclose the Closed Annexe. We would be surprised if our client is required to disclose the Closed Annexe as well as the reports as this would appear to defeat the whole purpose of the Annexe being closed."

Tribunal 27 April: "It remains closed unless and until the Tribunal rules otherwise. It is normally closed because it contains material that is only disclosable if the disputed information is to be disclosed. Once the Tribunal rules that that information must be disclosed, there is normally no justification for withholding the contents of the closed annex. The appellant and the public generally are entitled to see what arguments NTC advanced under the cloak of confidentiality. Litigation is conducted openly unless there is a powerful justification for secrecy. For That is the position here. Indeed the case for disclosure is still clearer in this case since this annex contained material that should never have been submitted in a closed annex anyway.

If the content of such an annex remained confidential regardless of the result of the appeal, a public authority could include within it any argument, however unfounded, in the safe knowledge that the requester would never see it, whatever the outcome."

JSH is entitled to defend his and his administration's management of CrackGate, but I don't agree that he should be doing it in this pre-election period in an NTC press-release.

Of course I may be mistaken, but that is my understanding of the purdah convention.

Indeed. It's really this that the Council didn't like. They call it "trouble making", and I think of it as asserting rights - rights to information, rights to notice of rent increase - I don't believe it's healthy that the state should capriciously deny you your rights - that never ends well.

If there simply wasn't a convention of purdah it might not occur to me to complain about the political co-option of public administration - it wouldn't be right and fair, but if it was traditional for the incumbent to take advantage of their position to subvert the public administration for their own political ends I might find it hard to get any traction with a complaint of unfairness. But while we have the convention of purdah I think it's a good one.

Sorry Simon, I can't be bothered to read all that political waffle.

My advice would be, if a member of the public has exposed a uturn on your policy, come clean about it.

Exposing political chicanery is not a u-turn; you're argument is false if not stupid.

Can I legitimately assume that as a professed 'member of the public', you maintain that your posts are free from political bias or that you have no stakeholding on the matter?

Our councils web-master obviously has realised he has lost the argument and wishes to deflect as usual.

Lets hope the independents don't get in and get them to start serving the public rather than their own little club!

If you think highlighting a political u-turn is stupid then we best end this conversation.

Yes lets not bother with the crux of the argument.

Just keeping plugging to deflect eh? Typical Council doctrine to the fore?

This isn't about the sense of the grant, it's about the timing of the announcement. Purdah exists to prevent the incumbent party taking advantage of the apparatus of government to gain a political advantage. But you know that.

Do you think this shouldn't have been minuted at the meeting and the council should have avoided questions from the press?

"No change there then" some joker will say, but you can't be serious if you think this should have been covered up, especially after fighting to get another council to release a report.

I'm really not sure what you're getting upset about, this looks like it was released to the media in March.

Rather then me quote it, why not visit this link to understand more about how purdah operates.

No, I don't expect anything to be covered up, but I do expect our local councils to respect purdah, and in the present case they could simply have delayed the agenda item until after the election.

A useful extract from the good practice code here:


Contrast that with NTC's press release and I think you'll see how JSH's partisan and stilted defence of his party's administration in the guise of a council press release is problematic:

As I said, this was released in March so I don't know why you're getting so upset about it.

If the NWN want to report it again it at a later date, then that's up to them.

Interesting that. I wonder why the NWN would publish again a story that they have already covered.

On the JSH CrackGate press release the guidance would appear to be very clear.

They do this from time to time, presumably when they're a bit short of news.

Fair enough.

What about the NTC missive - banged to rights?

Frankly, I'd follow the example of some other Countries and have rather stricter rules about information. Arguably, all business should stop until after an election. The usual accounting statistics excepted. There should be no difficulty about this - particularly as this time the date was known five years ago. It's nothing new either, those of us with civil service knowledge know nothing moves until 'the vote' is approved.

In this case, as U23 points out, it isn't even news, simply confirming a project us in track - so yes, it's reasonable to ask why now? I also have to say I'm personally very uncomfortable that a new CEO at NTC has just been appointed. Similarly, that should have waited too. Arguably some new NTC candidates might even feel there is no real justification in replacing this role.

Are you saying all ongoing projects at a council should be suspended during a local election?

Arguably they should be planned to be at a project break point so they can be stopped. Thus us nowhere near as difficult as might be imagined and is (or certainly was) usual practice in national government. It also happens in business, for instance in cases of mergers and acquisitions, in those cases, quite major projects will be stopped its little notice. At least in the public sector, the democratic timetable is known.

Looking at the story identified in the OP I think it is totally within the rules of Purdah. No party political identification, no member quotes. The Councils do not cease to operate; things continue to happen and be dealt with. The securing of extra funding to reduce (significantly) a worthwhile project seems like something worth reporting. In fact, without all the party political waffle and posing the story is much more concise and informative.

Shutting down projects at some councils for one month most years doesn't seem very efficient.

What would staff working on those project do for that month?

Yes, I believe that is correct.

Perhaps they should replace the staff at every election too! Then we might get some real improvement!

I said: "Exposing political chicanery is not a u-turn; your argument is false if not stupid."

I therefore said it was your argument that was false, so I think no such thing.

Identifying break points, funding periods and managing risks in projects is actually standard practice in organisations with competent project managers. Of course as is widely acknowledged, public sector project delivery isn't good. Rather than explain in detail, how you do this, I'll simply direct you to the Council's excellent public library which has a good selection of books on project management.

Rather than being so patronising perhaps you'd answer question of what you'd expect staff to do for a whole month most years at some councils when all projects are suspended?

I would expect the professional management (both project and executive) of the Council to have factored this in at project inception. Frankly, it's not me bring patronising, more you doubting the professional skills and capabilities of the Council staff.

Come on OTE WBC can't do even simple maths well let alone what they would call complicated staff.

But you're talking about all projects, so factored in or not you haven't answered what you'd expect these staff to be doing for one month most years, given all work has been suspended.

Essentally you're proposing gardening leave for a month, for a large number of staff, which seems like a huge waste of money.

I'm not sure that's what OTE meant. I thought he meant that no voting should take place and no preparation work for new proposals should take place until after an imminent election.

All approved work should continue in my view and I'm sure there would be a lot of back-filling work to do, so I doubt they need to sit around twiddling their thumbs.

Then, given many projects projects have an externally set deadline, you'd lose a month at the start of each project and have to employ extra resource to make up for the lost time, most years.

Maybe, but only those that are set-up around election time, so legislation/projects could be planned to avoid such occurrences, outside of emergencies of course.

Quite so.

That also should include what are often seen as sub projects moving from their funded and agreed stages.

I have been intimately involved with at least two major projects for the civil service which, in planning terms at least, spanned changes in Government. We completed and delivered a development, which we fully expected to move to implementation. This latter phase was cancelled by the different incoming administration.

Election time is three out of four years at some councils.

Only having staff working on projects for 11 out of 12 months and then having to catch up in these years would be a huge waste of taxpayers' money.

It's OK though, he's basing his entire case on the sum total of two projects he's worked on, for a different tier of government, so by his own admission he doesn't really understand what he's suggesting.

I'm sure that none of us would want the council staff sitting on their hands just because an election is imminent. I do believe though that announcements good and bad which link to a council, councillor or political party should be avoided and the rules do quite clearly state that. So User, I see where you are coming from but perhaps you should accept that Simon is fighting as an independent and council press releases do tend to give an advantage especially published comments from the leader of the Town council. An uninformed voter might accept what was printed and believe that the current incumbents had done a good job.