2ND REPLY TO JAN HUNTER.

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2^ND RESPONSE TO JAN HUNTER

POSTED BY KENNETH LYONS.

Hi Jan, Thank you for your comment, I’m pleased to hear you have an open mind. I agree one voice will get nowhere and I assume you are aware of why I am here and doing what I’m doing.

Basically we have 4 Parish Councillors who in my opinion gave false statements to the Standards Committee while it was investigating one of their number. Since doing so none of those Councillors have uttered another word on the subject, anything that has been said, has been said in private and behind the protection of closed Council doors. This can only be intended to deny me the right to defend myself.

Apart from the 4 councillors we have 5 other Councillors who gave honest statements and 3 members of the public gave statements, all of those statements support my case in some detail. The two sets of statements cannot both be truthful.

I have requested the text of all statements from East Riding Council, who have refused that request along with refusing to look into the matter further. As you will be aware a Parish Council does not come under the jurisdiction of the Local Government Ombudsman, so I have no redress in that direction. I can write to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to ask his Department to look into the matter and that is presently under consideration, I am currently researching the possible outcomes of that approach.

You mention “hard evidence”, the only hard evidence I have are the statements from witnesses, and at the moment I am being denied access to that evidence. East Riding quote legislation as the reason for their refusal, I have challenged their interpretation to no avail. I have subsequently submitted a complaint against East Riding Council to the Information Commissioners Office to have those statements released, I am currently awaiting the outcome. Should this approach fail my only access is to have them released by legal process and the only way I can do that is for the Councillors involved to call me a liar in public, and hopefully in writing, I can then instruct my legal advisors to apply for the statements on legal grounds (a provision for this is made in The Local Government Act 1972) and enter into the “Pre-Action Protocol for Defamation”. At the moment the press are reluctant to air this in print because of their concerns relating to the Law of Defamation, quite understandably.  Should I be in a position to take legal action that will change the position with regards to the Press.

I am already seen as a persistent complainer and I am very well aware of that, it’s a small price to pay in order to reach the truth. I agree with you again that 16,000 hits on this Blog go nowhere towards resolving the issue, but that figure will eventually reach 25,000 or 50,000 possibly even more. I will continue to press the issue until I have what I originally asked the Parish Council for, that is, an apology and an assurance that no other resident will be subjected to this kind of abuse in the future. It is my opinion that these type of people rely on their victims to either submit to their intimidation or quietly go away leaving them free to repeat their abuse on the next victim in the secure knowledge that their colleagues in Local Government will cover for them.

It would be futile to knock on doors to ask people to sign a petition on my behalf, not only because I am a relatively newcomer to the Village but because I feel sure those people not having been there to witness the incident will be unsure of the veracity of my position and would most likely therefore choose to “not get involved”, I put that down to “Village Politics’.

What I can say is that in my opinion, this matter does bring the Parish Council into disrepute and will further compound that disrepute the longer it continues, I am also aware of the approaching Local Elections. I do not accept that what I am doing causes that disrepute, Councillors who chose to be dishonest occasioned the disrepute, my actions are merely a consequence of their dishonesty.

The sad thing in all of this is the innocent people who suffer because of those dishonest Councillors. We have I believe 6 new Councillors who were elected in 2011 and the incident in question unfortunately happened on their first Council Meeting, their stewardship of the Parish has I believe been greatly hampered by this matter and any achievements and improvements they possibly could have introduced have been severely curtailed by the actions of those Councillors who are dishonest.

We have a Chairman who has been in her position since directly following the incident, her leadership has many questions attached to it because of this ongoing sore. However much I might sympathise with that position I can only respond to the Chairman’s inactivity in dealing with the issue.

My natural instinct is to talk about the issue and resolve it in an amenable manner, this regrettably has not been possible, I am therefore left with the only avenues open to me, my training over many years compels me to fight with whatever ammunition I have available to me and as dirty as my opponent chooses to make it. This matter will be resolved and I will receive an apology, if not from this Council it will be from the next Council or the one after that.  That position in my opinion can only put shame on our current Council.

I’m sure you will agree, this is a sad state of affairs and a reflection on Local Government as a whole and if our Local Government bodies disregard the legal provision’s placed upon them and they operate in a sloppy procedural fashion it can only reflect on the standard and quality of the service that is eventually delivered to members of the public.  

Thank you for you advice to “keep at it” and I’m pleased you will keep reading the posts, should I at any time go off on a rant please feel free to correct me. You have just prompted me to read a post earmarked for publication either tomorrow or Friday, I’ll apologise in advance but am prepared to go with the accuracy of the post.

Again thank you for your comments Jan, its been a pleasure responding to you, and thank you for reading.

Should you wish to contact me privately I can be reached at prestonparishcouncilproblems@gmail.com

Kind regards

KL

If there are any residents with similar experience of the council do please contact us by comment or email. If you wish we will post on your experience without your identity being released, or not post anything if you simply want to share your experience it’s entirely up to you. We would love to hear your story, your not alone, there are a number of us, let us compare notes and grow as a group.