Taking Out The Trash

Councils keep lists of 'undesirables'

It's taken me a little while to post this up; but a story I did with my colleague Richard Cookson on the databases local authorities hold on people who complain or pose a threat to staff made the Daily Mail.

So-called cautionary contact databases are used to keep tabs on people councils feel pose a threat to staff. However their scope, the number of people who can access them and the type of information held has been questioned.

The Daily Mail story starts:

Thousands of people involved in disagreements with council staff have had their personal details stored on secret blacklists.

Bureaucrats have listed the details of members of the public who have been involved in rows with teachers or dustmen over seemingly trivial matters.

Scores of councils hold databases of ‘undesirables’ – individuals who could potentially pose a threat to their staff.

They hold the details of almost 9,000 people, but most have never been charged with or convicted of a crime.

Personal information such as car registration numbers, telephone numbers, household pets, nicknames and distinguishing features are listed on the databases.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015332/Thousands-secret-council-blacklists-Personal-details-kept-residents-dare-complain.html#ixzz1gSWo4RZh

If you want to see the spreadsheet listing all the responses from local authorities we canvassed then click here.

How local democracy works

Truely I have achieved a certain something when one of my postings can be included in an Iain Dale Daily Dozen.

It was on the Total Politics blog so the enormous volume of traffic suddenly heading towards it failed to upset this host.

But below is the post (you'll have to go to the original to find a couple of helpful comments left by readers). I can offer this extra tidbit though. The Lady in question is Lady King, wife of former Tory MP Tom King.

So you’re on the parish council and you are bombarded by complaints from residents because a combination of crap SatNav, poor signage and a company which doesn’t care means HGVs are churning up your village.

You complain to the company (they refuse to take your calls).
You complain to your district councillor (he doesn’t respond and hasn’t been seen in months)
You complain to the district council planners (they take months to respond and then decide there is nothing they can do)
You complain to the highways authority (they can help but it’s going to take time and it’s a bit complicated)
You complain to your county councillor (she’s sympathetic, nothing is done)
You complain to the police (oh, sorry are you still on hold?)

Alternative scenario.

You are a Lady and your husband is a Lord and you live on a route which these HGVs use and you are not at all happy about these dirty great vehicles crashing round the roads at all hours.
You complain directly to the leader of the county council who you know and a meeting involving the police, highways officials and the company responsible for these HGVs is arranged at a week’s notice.

From this evidence do I understand that the feudal system in rural areas is still with us or merely that all the people who should take responsibility only jump when the biggest foot connects with their 'no though route'?

Perhaps recruiting some landed gentry on to the parish council is the answer; but it seems a touch regressive.

 

They also serve

Chris of the Green Bristol Blog rightly reminds me that my summary of some of the key Bristol bloggers holding the city council to account would not be complete without the The Bristol Blogger.

The latest post on how the sale of council land contravened the authorities own green spaces policy is a good example of TBB's quality output.

Chris also highlights the work of Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Bridgwater Tory MP.

I've been following Ian's complaints about Somerset County Council's deal with IBM for a while. He has used his website to set out in full (and in pretty ripe language for an MP) his concerns.

It's not a blog as traditionally thought and I personally find the design off-putting. But it's effective and I am surprised the concerns he has raised haven't surfaced at a wider level.

Frozen assets

I posted the following on the Total Politics local government blog and have updated it slightly for here.

There is an excellent analysis from Ben Duckworth which draws lessons from the issue of local councils and the Icelandic banking crisis.

He's right. It certainly appears that some councils did let their subscription to Investors Chronicle lapse (or not actually pay any attention at all).

As a former journalist on Hedge Fund Manager Week, Ben is certainly better qualified than me to understand the kind of risks councils were running. However I still think commentators reacted without knowing the facts and I think readers and listeners followed that lead eagerly. The debate was 'framed' and from then it was only a question of the degree of kicking which councils would receive.

This local authority kicking is apolitical. No-one is getting any real joy out of trying to pin it on a Conservative or Lib Dem-controlled administration. The mood is "a plague on all those incompetents".

For instance check out this post and the comments on Iain Dale's blog.

Iain's posted a follow-up and he concludes by saying:

"Whatever the rights and wrongs here, it is clear that councils of all political colours have made bad investments in Icelandic banks. Of course we need to know on what basis these decisions were made, but for any one political party to kick dirt at the others reeks of hypocrisy. Let's just accept that everyone has some explaining to do."

Ben then says: "If we have banks being nationalised then, the unfortunate result (leaving aside whether this is unfair or not) will be that local government simply can't be trusted with more control over money."

But I'm just not sure how much power they have at the moment. So much money is ring fenced, partitioned, directed or otherwise coralled.

To turn Ben's warning on its head, why not use the situation as a spur to localism and free councils from the requirement to chase Whitehall funds all the time?

Meanwhile there's a little-reported sideline to this issue which is the impact on local government workers. Union Futures has a piece on this. Over at Jon's union blog there is a report from a meeting of the Left Economic Alternative Panel on Monday night which partly addresses this aspect.

We may yet see local government workers take action if the crisis impacts on their wages and they may well gain general public support. The mood is for the banks to pay and not everyone else.

Just as Gordon shores up his position another dam bursts.

Update: The Stirrer has an interesting piece on the effects on local government finance in West Midlands.

Update (2): The BBC reporting councils to meet the government over this. Contrary to Iain's plea for avoiding the partisan blame game, the Tories Karl Rove clone, Eric Pickles, can't help himself.

Fishy business

Rather marvellous expose by Ben Goldacre on Durham County Council's idiotic plan to feed some children fish oil pills and see if they get brainer.
It's not so much the plan but the completely crap way they behaved when people raised sensible criticisms of it.
OK - the using children to test nonsense is pretty poor behaviour too.
Must be something about institutions as they're doing the same in prisons and it seems similarly pointless.

Jargon alert

Ben Duckworth's post on the Total Politics local government blog pointed me in the direction of the Leadership Centre for Local Government.
Funded by the government it trains senior councillors and officers to be better equipped to do their job - very admirable.
It describes its work on lead councillors as:

Today’s leaders truly represent their localities. Thanks to the emphasis on place shaping and a convening role for all local public services, a council leader really does represent their place rather than just the public services that their authority might have previously delivered to the locality. What’s more there’s an increased emphasis on the community leadership role of frontline councillors. The Leadership Centre is spearheading leadership development work with politicians.

Perhaps training people to speak in plain English would be a help as well.

Still, churning out local politicians who talk such gobbledegook means there will always be work for people like me who get paid to translate it.