2ND REPLY TO JAN HUNTER.

We would like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

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.

WE"RE BACK AGAIN!

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

Well, we’re obviously back again, we wish all our readers a Happy New Year.

We are almost into the 12 month run-up to the next council elections and we look forward to posting during that period.

Thank you for your comments, unfortunately given the sensitive nature of the most recent posts, we are unable to post your comments for reasons we hope you will understand, it’s due to us not being in a position to confirm your identity.

Thank you to those who have sent e-mails. There has been a number asking if the Parish Council has responded to the posts in September of last year, We can tell you there hasn’t been a peep from them. That is not unexpected because the council apparently don’t respond to ‘anonymous’ comments, but then, they don’t respond when it has a name attached to it so there’s no material difference really.

It has been suggested that the council is portraying this blog as telling ‘untruths’, we can assure all readers, anything that appears here we can either prove because we have it in writing or we have very good reason and supporting information that leads us to firmly believe what we say is the truth.  If the Council believes we are posting information that is untruthful, they always have the option of responding and correcting any errors, they will not do that because they know what we post is the truth.

One of the items the council has suggested we’re being dishonest about is our claim that the council have conducted unlawful council meetings and it has a member of the public masquerading as a councillor [absolutely no fault of the councillor we might add, the situation is entirely down to the sloppy manner in which the Parish Council chooses to operate]. The council apparently also claims our posts on financial discrepancies are untrue along with our assertion that the council have wasted many thousands of pounds of our money, we are responding to those claims by publishing posts that prove the council have in fact conducted unlawful meetings and we shall also be posting to show discrepancies in council figures that have been sent to residents by the council in writing.

The council currently has plans to hold the March Council Meeting at the Co-op Café as part of its strategy to supposedly ‘engage’ with residents we shall also be posting articles that in our view contradict the council’s public aims and show it is not being entirely honest in that respect. Far from trying to engage with residents they appear to go to great lengths to conceal information from residents.

We will not be posting anything that is simply down to our opinion, we will be posting based on ‘facts’ supplied by the Parish Council.

 Hopefully those posts will begin to appear in the next week or so.

There is one positive that the council is now doing, its now posting the Public Notice of Council Meetings with at least 3 to 4 clear days notice, did it have a choice?

It’s a pity it had to act once again under pressure from this Blog instead of it being the Councils normal working practice!

A councillor resigned last November and as reported on HU12 Online, after about 3 months there has been no interest shown by any of our approx 1,900 registered electors of the parish in joining the council to fill that vacancy, does that tell us anything? It certainly appears to show how low the council is held in residents esteem and given that, for all the reasons on this Blog and elsewhere, the Council should take decisive action to redress that position. Holding a Council Meeting in the Co-op Café is a poor excuse for an answer!!

It’s very clear to us that prospective Councillors may be tarnished by the same brush as those less worthy Councillors and we’re sure that will have an understandable influence on residents reluctance to join such an organisation.

We have requested a member of our team to submit a note of interest to join the Council and if nothing else we think it would gee-up the Council to generate a few more notes of interest in the position in order to keep him at bay and that at least might get the vacancy filled.

Does the Council need our help once again?

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.

Response to; A registered elector and taxpayer of Preston 1.

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

Response to; A registered elector and taxpayer of Preston.

Your comment was far reaching and we have assumed you wish to take steps leading to a Parish Poll on the subject of the Preston Play Park to make the council more open and accountable for it's actions. This outline is lengthy so we have broken it down into 3 Parts, those are,

1.     Response to a Registered elector and taxpayer of Preston.

2.     Example of steps needed to successfully demand a Parish Poll.

3.     Some Suggested Documents for your campaign.

A Parish Poll is a relatively simple thing to arrange but you do need to be organised and approach your goal in a step by step fashion, with contingency planning in place along the way to ensure you achieve your objective, that we assume is a Parish Poll with a positive outcome from your point of view.

This post is entirely written to assist the commenter and is not meant to express our views on the Pay Park. The post is written as guidance to a resident with the caveat that we are not experts in Local Government Administration so all care should be taken to ensure the correctness and accuracy of this post, we have listed much of the legislation relating to Parish Polls so the requestor is able to check the legislation for themselves if they wish.

Having considered this route ourselves we have already prepared documents in line with the requirements of the legislation, we have made them available here with adjustments to fit your purpose.

You must bear in mind that the cost of any poll is the responsibility of the Parish in which the Poll is held and as such will represent a financial liability to Preston as a whole. Preston is made up of 2 Wards, Preston North and Preston South so that cost will be borne by residents in South Preston as well as North Preston. There may be a need for 2 polling booths increasing the overall cost which would be set as a liability against the precept. You must also remember that neither East Riding or the Parish Council are legally bound to act on the end result.

Because the project is put forward as a benefit to “the whole of Preston” it presumably means that residents in Preston South have been canvassed and their support recorded and documented, if not there may be much support for your poll from that quarter.

The proposer requesting the poll will need to make a speech outlining the proposal and its aims, we have included a possible text of that speech and have taken a certain license in doing so. We accept that may not be what you intend to say and leave you to adjust or discard as you see fit, it is meant only as a guide to assist you. Please remember the proposer must also be a Registered Elector of the Parish.

Parish Polls– The Legislation.

There are a number of pieces of legislation that covers Parish Polls including Representation of the Peoples act 1983, The Parish and Community Meetings (Polls) (Amendment) Rules 1987 and the Legislation listed below.

The Local Government Act, 1972 (LGA), Schedule 12, part 3 makes provision for parishioners to call a parish meeting in order to vote on a ‘question’ or 'issue' relevant to the parish which must then be the subject of a parish poll. In brief the legislation is as follows.

Under section 15(1) of the above LGA ‘A parish meeting may be convened by any six local government electors (parishioners on the electoral roll) for the parish’.

Section 15(2) stipulates that the meeting shall take place within “not less than seven clear days” of any Notice being posted, we would advise you aim for at least 8 to 10 clear days notice. Under 15(4) ‘public notice’ of a parish meeting shall be given by posting a notice of the meeting in some conspicuous place or places in the parish and in such a manner as appears to the person or persons convening the meeting to be desirable for giving publicity to the meeting’.

Section 18(4) states ‘A poll may be demanded before the conclusion of a parish meeting on any question arising at the meeting, but no poll shall be taken unless either the person presiding at the meeting consents or the poll is demanded by not less than ten, or one-third of the local government electors present at the meeting, whichever is the less’.

Subject to all the above being complied with East Riding County Council would then be obliged to organise and run a poll within 14 to 25 days. The costs for the poll are borne by the parish council in which the poll is held.

A number of important points are worth emphasizing.

All the persons involved in a poll must be ‘local government electors’, in other words parishioners from Preston Parish currently listed on the electoral roll. This is especially important when complying with Section 15(1) and when voting takes place under Section 18(4).

Note that the Act states that a poll may be demanded on “any question” arising at the meeting. The Act does not define ‘any question’.

In each parish where a poll is planned, one person needs to be the ‘organiser’. In most cases it will be someone like you.

The suggested documents contained in this post (3^rd section) had been prepared for our own consideration, we now make them available to make your task as simple as possible, should you decide to continue.

Preparation.

Someone has to be the organiser of the poll and it will probably be the person requesting this information.

Whoever that person is, he/she must be a local government elector in the parish. It is also vitally important that, before starting, you have at least ten other like minded individuals who are parishioners in the parish. Remember, you require six parishioners to sign the ‘Notice of Meeting’ and ten (which can include the original six) parishioners to vote for the motion at the parish meeting.

In addition, as you will see, you need at least one other person to work on the door of the Parish Meeting checking and keeping a permanent log of those entering the meeting.You may also need someone as Chairman and another as Secretary. Be aware of exactly the number of personnel you need.

Make contact with other like minded groups or interested individuals in the parish and seek their assistance. There should be no secrecy about your intentions and the more support it receives from other sources the better.

If the parish council chairman and the parish clerk do not wish to be involved you will require two individuals to act as chairman and secretary at the subsequent parish meeting, those persons may be ‘elected’ as ‘Chairman’ and ‘Secretary’ as the first item of business on the agenda, these are responsible positions. The chairman needs to be able to control a meeting and the secretary should be able to take legible minutes. A poor chairman can ruin your meeting.

You are now ready to start.

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.

Response to "my name my business"

Response to "my name, my business"

Sorry! I gave a short answer to a short comment I should maybe have answered more fully, I just felt it was plain rude and didn’t really deserve my time but, others may have the question in mind and be interested in a response.

I suppose it’s a difficult one to answer even though I have considered it a few times since starting this blog, even if the answer was “yes, I’d walk away”, I don’t really see what they can do about it so the question has a kind of non-entity air about it and I guess I have never really felt the need to answer it. I accept my main personal issue is the honesty one because that suggested that I was being dishonest and if that wasn’t there I would probably not be doing this blog, the obvious question to me would have been “could I be wrong and the councillors innocent?”

The other questions about how the council operate and use our money are questions that affect all residents and if everybody else is happy for the council to act and operate the way it does, who am I to argue? I would say “ok there’s no point in my taking issue with things so let them get on with it”. By taking that stance I wouldn’t have the inconvenience of feeling the need to have taken this step, there are plenty of other things I can be doing!

I have looked at this honesty issue and approached it from the point that I’m mistaken and it didn’t happen the way I remember and the 3 currently sitting councillors have done nothing wrong at all. I have then broken the incident down into it’s individual elements and tried to make them fit into the ‘presumption of innocence’, everything falls apart from the moment I try to make those elements fit that assumption.

If I had made a mistake and not recalled the incident correctly 7 other councillors who were sat around the table must have also made the same mistakes as me when recalling the incident independently of me and of each other for the innocence theory to have any credibility. I have done a correlation analysis, and the only strong correlation is that the two sets of statements point to two different incidents, that’s obviously not the case. The only conclusion must be that one set of statements are correct and the other set of statements are wrong, it isn’t possible for them both to be right, the final question is which statements are which.

It’s no co-incidence that the 2 sets of statements are also divided into two distinct sets of councillors, old and new. The old councillors who put in false statements must have gathered round to protect a long standing colleague who they had worked with for many years and because they very clearly had an axe to grind with me. The rights and wrongs of their actions were very clearly not of any concern to them. New councillors on the other hand have put forward statements as they actually remember the incident and clearly cover the incident as described in my complaint, new councillors didn’t at the time have any axe to grind with me or have a long standing colleague to protect.

The false statements were so precisely similar in wording and event recollection, the only way they could have been any closer would have been to compile one letter, make a few copies and then sign one each.

The statements that I know to be wrong have me as the aggressor who abused a councillor sat immediately in front of me (I was stood up commenting on a statement by the Chairman of the Council) my behaviour was allegedly threatening, abusive and aggressive. The councillor on the other hand sat impassively calm and answered my abuse in a calm soft voice without turning to face me and paying no heed to the threat I apparently posed to the back of his head. That scenario is simply not worthy of comment as it’s far too implausible and fanciful!!

What actually happened was, while I was responding to the chairman a councillor spun around in his chair immediately in front of me and attacked me verbally in an extremely loud and aggressive manner. He was greatly agitated and there was a threat that it may well turn into a physical assault on my person, the councillors face was reddened puffed up with his jugular veins being extended by anger and threateningly pointing his finger and leaning towards me.

I immediately responded to the threat by challenging the councillor’s version of events and being as aggressive as he was in order to defend myself.

A councillor who made a statement that he showed no aggression at all either verbally or in his body language and that she was able to categorically state that the councillor did not turn to face me. This is the same councillor who had to take the aggressive councillor by the arm (she was sat next to him and paid very close attention to the whole incident) and turn him back towards the table telling him it wasn’t worth it in order to calm him down. This councillor was absolutely dishonest (as were all three of them) and she is looking after the financial affairs of the Parish and making decisions on our behalf, and we wonder why the parish finances are in such a mess!!

These three councillors have never extended any “generosity of spirit” towards me and therefore have no moral right to expect any in return.

My opinion is that the people who gave false statements do not care about the reputation of the council and have no regard for the views of any residents and have no respect for Preston so long as they remain in a position to influence the affairs of Preston, for what reason I really don’t know.

Response to Jan, Hull.

Response to Jan, Hull.

Comment from Jan, Hull,

Wheres your list of problems with council can you make a list?

The list is long and I would be repeating a lot of what I have already posted in this blog. Can I respectfully suggest that you read the postings and you will hopefully have some detail to the main headings I have listed below but this is by no means exhaustive.

1.  Illegal use of public funds.
     Thousands of pounds of resident’s money has been illegally spent without council authorization.

2.  Wasting of public funds.

     To date the council has wasted more than £20,000 of public funds by starting ill thought out                   projects, spending thousands of pounds of public money to get them started and then promptly               abandoning them.

3.   Unlawful Council Activities.

      The council simply fails to observe the legal requirements placed upon them by the legislation that          governs how councils can and can’t operate. The list is long and the potential consequences can be        enormous.

4.   Dishonesty in Public Office.

      There are a few councillors who gave false statements to an Official Investigation by the Standards         Committee. This in my view brings Preston Parish Council into disrepute and highlights all that is           bad about the council. I would probably list this as my major problem because they made me out to       be untruthful.

You might ask “why do you bother”, I bother because I care and I happen to think Preston deserves better than this and could be so much better off financially if the mistakes of the past are recognised and Council Policies developed to ensure they can’t happen in the future.

Residents would be far better off if the council included them in the governing process and worked with residents on how Preston can be improved rather than have the pompous attitude of “leave it to us we know best”. Prior to 2011 residents were simply dismissed out of hand as unimportant and a great irritant to the process of how the council wished to govern our village. It isn’t quite that bad now but the council under the influence of surviving councillors from the previous administration still don’t include residents to the extent they are actually required to. That may be a contributing factor to the election that never was, scheduled for 18^th July 2013. I believe very few residents know what they are or are not able to do because the leadership from the council is so poor and there is virtually no information released by the council, it simply isn’t in their interest to release information, the less you residents know the less you can pull them up on!!!.........it just happens to be a fact and still appears to be councils unwritten policy!

To-day Preston is a small village of approx. 3,200 (Preston North I believe is about 1900) residents and although I disagree with how the Play Park project that has been progressed so far I am convinced that if the council were more inclusive and connected to residents there would be a Play Park in place today and the village I’m sure would be rejoicing.

As a resident 3 years ago who hadn’t been to a council meeting in his life, I was blissfully unaware of how our Parish Council operated. I started to attend council meetings in 2010 when we as a group of residents were opposing a development.

The more meetings I went to the more appalled I was to find just how the council operated and treated residents as opposed to how it should operate (I didn’t know then how it should operate it was just so obviously wrong and the council was so arrogant and dismissive) and how as a consequence residents missed out on so much. I was also disgusted at how the council treated me as an individual at that time, I responded in kind so I can’t claim any moral high ground!

Some people say the finer details of Local Government Administration are of no interest to them because they have more important things they wish to do in the village. I was guilty of that mistake too, it’s when you find out just what those details are you also realise how bad thing are and how much better they could be if they were tackled and put right. If you take the trouble to get to know those finer points you will get to where you want to be much quicker. Residents can be all powerful and have huge influence on a council but to achieve that they have to get to know the rules (that way you won't be fooled) and organise themselves.

Faced with such strength of opinion the council would have little choice but to release information and your understanding would from this point bound ahead, there should be no stopping you as residents.

In any event if we leave those fine details to others we will never know whether or not they’re doing their best for us within constraints or just taking us for a ride. In my opinion Preston is being taken for one big ride by the Parish Council and, it’s costing you a bundle of cash to boot!! If you knew how it should be the chances are you would agree. I shouldn’t really bother because I don’t have the power to change things but I’m shouting about what I see as an injustice to me personally, I’m not trying to change the council. I’m certainly not making friends doing this, so if it means I take some stick along the way, that’s fine at least I had the gumption to oppose them and speak out.

Update on the Play Park.

As you may recall a few days ago I received some flak for mentioning the Play Group, although I suspected who they were from (2 of them anyway) those comments were answered in a civil manner and I gave my reasons for the comments.

I showed them every respect and I do not believe I belittled them in any way, I asked ‘Me’ and ‘Anonymous’ if they would be good enough to send details of their consultation which they said they had carried out and also the numbers of people who voted for the project. I assured them I would be very pleased to listen and if possible support them and their efforts.

 To date nothing has been received but I note there are postings on a Facebook group referring to me as ‘Mr. Negative’ and ‘Mr. Anonymous’, ‘Mr. & Mrs. what’s the name’, ‘single and in my opinion a negative person’, the posting also asks ‘Mr. Negative might want to put some positive efforts in’ you might note their contact with this blog was ‘Me’ and ‘Anonymous’, are there two sets of rules or is it just me who is not allowed to use such titles? Simply because they disagree with my view?

The person making these remarks obviously does not know me, has never spoken to me and is either not aware of the things I have done in the village or is choosing to ignore them in order to boost his own standing.

The council’s influence is quite obviously spreading to their associates who like them have no desire to discuss any issue, or at least not with the person they should be discussing it with.

It would appear to be much easier to go off to another internet site and call me silly names including ‘disgusting’ (by another poster), clearly not very nice to be referring to someone you don’t know as ‘disgusting’ on a site that appears to support the Play Group. It appears that I seem to be the only one who is willing to have a civil conversation with my detractors.

I find it sad that a Facebook page such as ‘Preston the village’ who state they do not want any name calling but positive comments only should allow such name calling and belittling of some one they are not prepared to discuss any issues with. The page seems to be largely populated with parents who chatter amongst themselves about their kids, traffic and all sorts of other issues such as what are the next events coming up.

I wish their group well and hope they continue to grow and prosper with many like minded members joining them but the behaviour I mention here is really not very becoming of them, could I ask you to moderate your opinions or at least talk to the person you intend to belittle and listen to their view, if you do not I’m afraid that amounts to hypocrisy.

In my case I made many attempts to reach agreement with those I had differences of opinion with, only after failing in those repeated attempts for 3 years did I take the step I’m taking now. It seems to be my only recourse to put my view and I clearly feel that I have every right to that redress, those who oppose my view know exactly who I am and are aware of this blog.

If they wish to contact me and discuss our differences to seek a mutually satisfactory outcome for all parties, I’m here and I have been willing to discuss our differences for the last 3 years.

I have not after 3 minutes scurried off and secretly posted my unfounded opinions using someone else’s site as a mouthpiece without first attempting to resolve any issues

Could I ask when you requested me to discuss anything you disagree with me on, I don’t recall you ever have. So please, until you do would your site and your members please cease in your disparaging comments that are clearly without cause or substance. May I also ask that you remove such remarks against my person or this blog at your earliest opportunity, and confirm same, I thank you in anticipation.