Spin, Dirty Tricks and Expenses
May 26, 2009 by Editor
One of the characteristics of an independent councillor is the ability to speak out without political reprisal. True or Untrue? I’ll let you be the judge. You have a right to know directly from me all about the issues that are affecting your local councillor who is trying to do a good job representing you, rather than someone else.
Residents in the wake of revelations about our MP’s are now turning to our local councillors. The Rochford Lib Dems published the “Councillors’ Allowance Claims April 2007 – March 2008″ on their web site at http://onlinefocus.org/?p=1277 if you want to read the detail. Rochford District Council will be publishing updated figures for 2009 very shortly.
Last year the very basic allowance for any councillor, taxable and subject to NI, was £4135. I cannot speak for the others but I was reimbursed against full invoices for travel expenses and child care for under sixteens for the additional sum of £531, making £4,666 overall. As residents of Hawkwell know, I do not drive, and because we have no evening bus I have to take a taxi to council meetings. Sometimes, I am offered a lift by one of the Conservative Councillors. And I gratefully accept to keep the bill down.
I have campaigned for our 8 bus service for 15 years now and I was so dissappointed when it became only an hourly service.
I was even more disappointed when my campaign came to a halt because I was reported to the Standards Committee for an offence under the Code of Conduct for an email I had sent to the parish council asking them to join in the campaign. Bizarely, the complaint was that being a non driver, and bus user, I had a prejudicial/pecuniary interest and should not be campaigning. The Council’s Standards Committee ordered an investigation even though, I understand, that the Council’s Solicitor advised against it. Needless to say this trumped up charge was eventually dismissed but for several months I could not campaign. I believe that this contributed to our loss of our half hourly bus.
On the bus issue I have agreed to meet with our existing County Councillor and the current Portfolio Holder in Hawkwell after the County Council elections. If they are not re-elected then I will engage with whoever is elected to represent us but the existing Conservative team did promise me that they had some good ideas based on the new legislation.
So far I have talked about Expenses and Spin. What about Dirty Tricks? Last summer a call was made to my home by the Evening Echo saying that they had been informed that I was being investigated by the Environment Agency for fly tipping. In October I finally learnt that Rochford District Council had been secretly investigating me over several months. Verbally, they said, that was the end of the allegation. But after liasing with the Environment Agency I have now requested that a full report is made to me by Rochford District Council about their secret investigation.
Stop Press, 25 June 2009: RDC has now responded to my FOI request. Here is an extract from a letter that I sent to All Members of RDC.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that it has taken some time to resolve the issue completely because I have now been supplied with an email exchanged within RDC which says “The EA think this is political and are wary of doing anything else.”
But the final line of Graham Woolhouse’s response to the FOI request is the one which closes the matter. “I am able to confirm that the site visits last summer did not reveal any statutory nuisance from fly tipping of green waste nor were you at any stage investigated.”
I don’t think that anyone thinks that it is easy being an independent in local politics. It certainly is not. The identity of the complainant has not been revealed to me because of The Data Protection Act but if The Environment Agency has said that they thought that this was political then I feel that the identity should be released .
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