UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS. POST 3.

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS. POST 3.

POSTED BY KENNETH LYONS.

WHY WE BELIEVE THE 10^TH OCTOBER COUNCIL MEETING TO HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL

We had taken note of when the Council posted its Notice and Agenda for upcoming Council meetings for some months, just to be sure we were in fact correct that the Council was failing to give the required 3 days minimum notice and to confirm it wasn’t simply a ‘one off’.

Photographs were taken of the Parish Notice Board in Preston North during the evening of Friday 5^th October  (Notice had to be posted before midnight on friday 5th October) and again shortly after midnight on Saturday 6^th October, those photographs are date and time stamped. We know that time and date stamps can be manipulated so in order to avoid an accusation of dishonesty, we waited until the first editions of the newspapers were available later on the Saturday morning.

We purchased a Saturday edition of the Daily Mirror at approx 6:15am on Saturday 6^th October. When we returned to the Preston Parish Notice Board there was still no agenda and notice of the Council meeting posted. We took photographs of the Parish Notice Board with the Saturday newspaper clearly visible showing that at that time the Notice of Meeting had not yet been posted. The photographs shown were taken at 06:30am, 07:56 and 08:44am further photographs were taken showing the Notice had not been posted up to that point. We returned to the Notice Board at approx. 10:05am the same morning to find the Notice had by then been posted.

My understanding is that the National Newspapers are finalised and printed overnight and the Saturday Edition is certainly not available for purchase the day before its printed. So we can be certain the Notice of Meeting was not posted before midnight on Friday, it was posted between 08:44am and 10:05 am on Saturday 06^th October 2012. The day the notice is posted cannot be counted as part of the minimum 3 days notice giving only 2 clear days Notice of the meeting, Monday and Tuesday.

This isn’t missing the deadline by just a few minutes because of traffic it represents a blatant disregard to the legal processes and procedures the Parish Council is required to abide by.

Saturday morning edition of the Daily Mirror used in photographs, dated Saturday 06^th October 2012. The paper was purchased at 06:15am from the Newsagents in Hedon.

At the time the Photographs were taken, in the early hours of 6^th October 2012 the Notice Board contained the following posters.

Right hand side.

1.  Preston Community Hall.

2.  List of Councillors for North and South Preston.

3.  Vacancy for a councillor.

4.  Notice of Audit and Annual Return.

Left hand side.

1.  Neighbourhood team of Police Officers.

2.  Family information and fun days.

3. Preston Walkers.

When the Notice of Meeting was eventually posted it was posted in the lower right hand side, replacing or covering the notice of a vacancy for a Parish Councillor, next to the Audit and Annual Return Notice and below the list of Parish Councillors.

The newspaper mounted on top of the Parish Notice Board showing the Notice of Agenda and Meeting had not yet been posted. Taken at 06:28:40am on Saturday 6^th October 2012. 

Photo taken at 07:56:41am Saturday 6^th October 2012. Still no ‘Notice’.

Photograph taken at 08:44:26. Still no Notice of Council Meeting.

 Parish Notice Board with Notice of Meeting posted in the right lower corner of the Notice Board, taken on Saturday 6^th October 2012 at 10:04:39. The Notice has either replaced or is covering the notice of ‘Vacancy for a Councillor’.

This process was followed for some months prior to October 2012, after we realised what was in fact taking place. Without some degree of prove the Council would simply have lied and denied it and started to post the Notices in time and no one would have been any the wiser.

Its abundantly clear to us that the 10^th October 2012 Council Meeting was indeed illegal, the council therefore had no legal authority to conduct any Council business let alone co-opt a new Councillor. This was not the first or only time co-options have taken place during unlawfully convened Council Meetings.

It is not acceptable for the Council to constantly react to residents and correct the faults in procedure only when residents find them out.  This situation was brought to the Councils attention in October 2012 and the Council now post the Notice of Council meeting giving the required notice. If it hadn’t been brought to the Council’s attention the practice would still be continuing to day and with another co-option in the making we could easily have 3 or 4 members of the public sitting as Parish Councillors.

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS. POST2.

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS POST 2.

POSTED  BY KENNETH LYONS.

THE POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES TO THE PARISH AND RESIDENTS.

Some might say ”so what its no big deal”, it has the potential to become a big deal if that meeting faces a legal challenge at any point, for the following reasons,

1.   The council convened an illegal Council Meeting and therefore had no legal authority to conduct any council business.

2.  During that illegal meeting the Council co-opted a new member and because that member was co-opted during a Council meeting that had no legal authority to conduct Council business, that member is not a lawfully co-opted Parish Councillor and is therefore still simply a member of the public.

3.  For approximately 17 months and probably as many Council meetings the council have had a member of the public sitting on the Council taking part in Council deliberations and taking part in voting to approve or reject items of Council business.

4.  By definition every council meeting that member of the public has attended and taken part in is also illegal because under legislation and the Council’s Standing Orders, a member of the public is not permitted to take part in Council business and deliberations because ‘standing orders are in force’ and is certainly not allowed to vote on Council business. Members of the public have a vote at Parish Meetings not Council Meetings

5.  Every month an item of council business is the approval of Minutes relating to the previous meeting, which in my opinion, potentially generates it’s own legal problems because the previous meeting with a member of the public sitting on the Council was in itself unlawful. That will continue to be the case until the fault is corrected.

6. When Council minutes are approved and entered into the ‘Minutes Book’ those minutes, in law are sacrosanct, they cannot be rescinded or amended. Every Councillor has approved those minutes as an accurate and honest account of the previous meeting. The problem with that is, the minutes are not an honest or accurate account of the previous meeting because they do not identify that a member of the public took part in the meeting contrary to legal provisions.

My understanding is those minutes cannot be altered or rescinded without the formal approval of the High Court, the potential financial risk to the public purse of Preston must be huge. This would make the cost of an audit by the Audit Commission pall into insignificance.

There are many other potential consequences of convening illegal Council meetings, which we do not intend to cover here, suffice it to say they are many and during such meetings individual Councillors are legally responsible for their actions and decisions during those meetings, they are not recognised as acting in their capacity as Parish Councillors because the meeting was not legally convened and they are therefore simply members of the public, who do not have any legal authority to commit to binding Council decisions!

Councillors may cry that they didn’t know, but they are required to know, that’s why they are there, to manage the affairs of the Parish. The fact that they haven’t bothered to find out what should happen isn’t a defence.

I wrote to the Parish Council following the October 2012 Council Meeting and in time for the November Council Meeting, informing the Council of the error. At that point the Council was in a position to correct the error without it ever being entered into the Minutes Book. The council could have listed the co-option process for November and co-opted the new councillor legally. There has never been any acknowledgement or response to that letter and as far as I am aware the error has never been corrected.

It is possible the Council may get away without the meeting without being challenged, if that turns out to be the case they will have been very fortunate. On the other hand if the Council continue to disregard its legal obligations it will at some point have to answer for its actions and that puts the public purse of Preston at unnecessary risk.

Its time for the Council to carry out a full ‘Internal Procedural Audit’, identify the points of failure and correct them, when they have been corrected the Council should install a monitoring system to ensure continued future compliance with its legal duties and procedural obligations. It is after all the Council that has responsibility to ensure the legislation is observed and therefore any failing is down to the Parish Council and individual Councillors. For far too many years we have had a Council that ignores the laws it is supposed to observe and in doing so has managed to waste more than £20,000 of public funds belonging to the residents of Preston.

Any ‘Corporate Body’ is required to operate with the requirements of the laws, which are appropriate to it, and, it’s their responsibility to ensure the organisation complies with the requirements placed upon it. In this respect a Parish Council is no different to any other ‘Corporate Body’.

It’s worth noting that since the issue was brought to the Council’s attention in October 2012, it has since that date posted all ‘Notice of Meetings’ in accordance to the provisions of the LGA 1972. This shows the Council are aware of its past flaws and have acted in this instance to correct it, if only in part, the consequences of the flaw have not been addressed and are therefore continuing to mount. If the council had been faultless in giving 2 clear days notice and it was legal for them to do so, in my opinion it would still be giving just 2 clear days notice, if only to prove a point.

There is an error in the above paragraph, the Council does not actually comply with the requirements of the LGA 1972 when posting the ‘Notice of Council Meeting’. We will be covering those other failings in a future post but for now we are only dealing with the requirement for 3 clear days notice to be given. Though it must be said the omissions that are currently occurring make the current Council Meetings just as unlawful.

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.

3rd. RESPONSE TO KEITH G, HULL.

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.

3RD REPLY TO KIETH G, HULL.

I’m getting the impression you’re a professional commenter Keith and I must say your comments are very welcome, though I need to be just a little careful how I respond to this comment. We are all very pleased and thank you for the kind words on your previous comment.

I learned a long time ago not to trust Preston Parish Council and if you wanted to challenge them you have to have proof of what transpired. I think your correct a voice or video recording would clinch it, I also agree the council would never give its permission for any recording.

I can say that with confidence because the Parish Council recently banned a councillor from making notes on an ipad, they were concerned the meeting was being recorded. Whether or not that councillor still uses an ipad or not, I don’t know.

When you say “it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway” I can only assume you are talking about any recording that was done ‘covertly’.

If so, can I respectfully suggest you are incorrect on that particular point. To record a Parish Council meeting covertly is not illegal, it is after all a public meeting, though such a body as a District Council may not entertain a recording gathered by such means, that does not apply to a Court of Law.

Such a recording would be admissible as evidence in a Court of Law, in fact if a Judge was made aware that such a recording existed and it was pertinent to the case being heard the Judge could and would almost certainly compel you to make that evidence available to the Court, you would have no choice but to comply.

I’ll stop there Keith and hope this answers your comment but if you would like further information regarding the recording of Parish Council meetings, please e-mail me.

Thanks for your good wishes.

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETING ON 10TH OCTOBER 2012.

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.

POSTED BY KENNETH LYONS.

This post has been split into 3 parts,

1.  Legal requirements on Parish Councils and Legal references.

2.  The potential consequences to the Parish and Residents.

3.  Why we believe the 10^th October 2012 Council meeting to have been unlawful.

Post 1.  LEGAL REQUIREMENTS ON A PARISH COUNCIL AND LEGAL REFERENCES

By law, a Parish Council is required to abide by certain legal requirements. Regulations governing how Parish Councils operate and the procedures they must observe and follow are contained in many Acts of Parliament and delegated legislation.

The main items for convening a legal Parish Council meeting are contained in The Local Government Act 1972 (LGA 1972). We will outline those requirements as listed in the regulation so anyone who wishes to confirm or challenge our opinion is able to.

An official Council meeting cannot be legally convened if the Council has failed to observe the provisions of the LGA 1972. If any Council fails to observe the legal requirements, any Council meeting it may hold is not a Council meeting and consequently that meeting would have no legal authority to conduct any Council business, any business such a meeting did consider would be null-and-void. 

LEGAL REFERENCES

Lawfully convened Parish Council Meetings.

The legal provisions under The Local Government Act 1972 and other legislation are very specific.

In order for a Parish Council Meeting to be lawful and legally authorised to conduct Council business and commit to binding decisions and resolutions following Council discussions, the council must adhere to certain legally prescribed prerequisite actions, these include:

1.  (LGA 1972, Sch 12, paras 10(2)(a) and 26(2)(a). At least three clear days notice, not including the day of issue, Sunday or the day of the meeting, before a meeting of the council a notice of the time and place of the meeting must be affixed in some conspicuous place in the locality, (in the Case of Preston, this would be the village notice board)

2.  (Case Law, Longfield Parish Council v Wright). A council must Specify on such notice all items of business proposed to be transacted at the meeting, a council cannot lawfully decide any matter which is not specified in the summons (Agenda).

3.  (LGA 1972, Sch 12, paras 10(2)(b) and 26(2)(b). A summons to attend the meeting, must specify all the business proposed to be transacted at the meeting and signed by the proper officer of the council, shall be delivered by hand or sent by post to the usual place of residence of every member of the council.

4.  (LGA 1972 Part 2s10(2)). Legal definition of 3 clear days. The day on which the notice was issued or posted, the day of the meeting, a Sunday, a day of the Christmas break or a bank holiday or a day appointed for public thanks giving or mourning shall not count towards the 3 clear days.

Why does the law require Parish Council’s to give 3 clear days notice to the public? It is to enable the public to be aware of the business that is to be transacted during that Council meeting and, it allows members of the public to research any item on the agenda they might have an interest in before the meeting is convened. In order that members of the public have sufficient time to research any item the law requires all Parish Councils to give at least 3 clear days notice.

Until recently and at the time of the Parish Council meeting in question, the Parish Council held its Council Meeting on the second Wednesday of each month except August.

Bearing in mind the day the Notice is posted, any Sunday and the day of the meeting cannot be counted as part of the 3 clear days notice. If over the weekend a Parish Council decided to have a Council Meeting on the coming Wednesday it would presumably post a Notice on the Monday. As Monday (the day the notice was posted) and Wednesday (the day of the meeting) cannot be counted, that leaves 1 clear days notice (Tuesday). Therefore the Council could not legally hold a meeting on that Wednesday, it would have to cancel that meeting and rearrange it following 3 clear days notice. If the Council posted the Notice on Monday the earliest a Council Meeting could be legally convened would be Friday of the same week because the Council would have given the required 3 clear days notice, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

There are times when human fallibility plays its part and for whatever reason be it forgetfulness or family crisis, if 3 clear days notice is not given, the Council meeting must be cancelled, whatever the inconvenience and rearranged following the required 3 clear days notice.

In the case of Preston Parish Council, failing to give 3 clear days notice was not the result of an oversight, it was normal practice. This had been done many, many times over the foregoing months and years.

A Parish Council meeting was held on 10^th October 2012, at this Council meeting a new councillor was co-opted onto the Council, we have no intention of naming the co-opted Councillor because that councillor is an innocent victim of the Parish Council’s sloppy procedural control.

The 10^th October was as normal the second Wednesday in the month and for a legally convened Council meeting to be held on that day the Council was required to give 3 clear days notice. This meant the notice had to be posted before midnight on Friday 5^th October, which would have given 3 clear days notice, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

As we will show later the Council actually posted the notice of that meeting on Saturday 6^th October 2012, it wasn’t simply a traffic delay, which meant the deadline was missed by a few minutes or so, it was posted almost half way through the day.

Under those circumstances the Council meeting of 10^th October was required to be cancelled, and rearranged for Thursday 11^th October at the earliest.

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.

2ND RESPONSE TO KEITH G, HULL.

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.

HELLO AGAIN KEITH AND THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN FOR YOUR COMMENT.

Posted by Kenneth Lyons.

For me to do what I’m doing is really very easy because I’m telling the truth and that’s never a difficult thing to do and, it’s probably why there has been no challenge to what I say, the whole Council of May 2011, know it to be the truth. I would dearly love the Council or any Councillor to write and challenge what I say and enter into a debate.

If what I say is untrue and unfounded, don’t you think there would have been absolute fury from the council? It would have been covered everywhere possible, there would probably have been notices over the whole village, in the Council Notice Board, in the local press, announcements on HU12 Online and the local Facebook groups, it would have been everywhere!

Some Councillors have already implied that I lied to the Monitoring Officer and then they ran and hid behind the barricades of the Parish Council in their Flak Jackets for protection. Smugly citing they are Councillors and therefore unable to comment on such matters….total bloody hogwash!,

None of the Councillors I refer to have ever uttered a single word in public, it has always been behind the protection of the closed doors of the Council. If their statements are honest and truthful let them say so in public and say my statement was untruthful! By doing so it will allow me to defend myself and it will also unlock the full statements held by the Standards Committee at East Riding Council.

I can tell you, the council did discuss the matter ‘In-camera’ on 14^th November 2012 and, from the minutes of that meeting, I quote…

“………The Council was also made aware that letters from three Councillors had been sent to the Monitoring Officer at East Riding Council regarding SCAC/181/Bell/Preston. The Chairman advised that although a very serious matter it was not for this council to discuss as it was something that could only be dealt with by the Monitoring Officer”.

I would like to note that the Chairman didn’t say “serious allegation’ she said “serious matter”, the underlying implication in my opinion is that she is aware of the truth relating to the incident bearing in mind her witness statement to the Standards Committee.

Minutes confirm my assertion that 3 Councillors wrote to the Monitoring officer following the Standards Committee deliberation to protest at the flawed outcome. It is also my opinion that the statement is incomplete. It is my understanding that if the monitoring officer was to refer this matter to the Standards Committee and the deliberation went against the Councillors in question it would warrant a very serious sanction indeed. Maybe to the extent that those Councillors, if found guilty, may be found to be unfit to hold public office, if that were the case it is my understanding the matter would have to be referred to the High Court for a final ruling on their possible disqualification from holding public office and an election would then need to be called to fill the resulting vacancies. That would take it out of the hands of the Monitoring Officer.

For a Council to hold a meeting ‘In-camera’ it’s a privately held meeting that excludes any members of the public or press, it is there to be legitimately used to enable the Council to discuss issues in private. There are 3 categories that would justify such a meeting under the Public Bodies (Admission to meetings) Act 1960.

Holding a private meeting to enable the Council to have secret discussions away from the press and public and on matters that are in the public interest so as to allow Councillors to express their points of view secretly and probably to intimidate those Councillors who disagree with them to avoid public criticism or legal challenge is not one of them.

In my opinion the Parish Council has grossly abused the legal provisions, which enable ‘In-camera’ meetings, for the sole purpose of protecting a small number of Councillors.

Just so we understand and there is no confusion, something that affects the Parish Council and the residents who it represents, the Council have no legal right to discuss? Doesn’t make a great deal of sense does it?

Could it possibly be that the Parish Council doesn’t want to discuss the issue in public because that would not be in the interests of certain members of the Council.

According to the published Minutes, the Council were given “various options” by their external advisors ERNLLCA, the Council collectively chose to take the option that meant the Council didn’t have to comment and could therefore keep quiet about the whole incident and blame it on the Monitoring Officer, not entirely democratic!

If as the Council insists, only the Monitoring Officer is in a position to deal with the matter, the Council as a Corporate Body should contact the Monitoring Officer and demand that the issue is thoroughly investigated and resolved in order to prevent further damage to the Councils reputation. If the Monitoring Officer still refuses to investigate the matter the Council is able to appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman that should get a result.

My understanding is that the council has a legal right to discuss the issue in a public forum with participation from members of the public. What I can tell you is that there is certainly no legal provision that prevents the council form discussing this subject in public. In fact I will go so far as to say there is a legal provision that encourages a Local Authority to discuss this very subject in public and with public participation described as ‘Council Debate’ and ‘Public Utterances’ as a defence and rebuttal to allegations a Local Authority considers libellous. This defence is listed in an earlier Defamation Act, which the 2013 Act has not repealed.

A local Authority has no other means of defending itself against libel, for the Parish Council to suggest that has somehow been taken away from them is misleading. If they have received external advice as they claim surely one of the ‘various options’ was a listed defence against Defamation, the only one available to the Council?

I suspect the Parish Council is fully aware of that because it recently attempted to take some form of action against this Blog in order to prevent further posts, they found they are powerless, the only way the Parish Council can close this Blog is by resolving this issue. 

In my opinion it would appear the council is prepared to go to great lengths to keep this issue under wraps while at the same time making every effort to ensure that I do not have the opportunity to defend myself.

Just as a matter of fact, it seems the council gets most if not all of its external advice from ERNLLCA and according to the ERNLLCA Administrations Officer, Cllr. Clappison (who had been Chairman of the Parish Council up to the point of the incident) was elected Chairman of the Holderness District of ERNLLCA on 29^th June 2010. I am certainly not suggesting that would necessarily influence any advice given by ERNLLCA but it does raise an eyebrow or two.

Surely Cllr. Clappison should list that as an interest that should be declared in certain matters, this issue in my opinion being one of them. See how the names just keep on popping up in key places? It would appear we just can’t escape coming across one of those 4 names whichever avenue we take.

In your last point you mention the damage to the council and the need for it to be resolved, I am in total agreement with you. I contacted the Council Chairman privately quite some time ago seeking to find a resolution, I was at that time prepared to accept from the Council an assurance that such behaviour will never be repeated and neither I nor any other resident would be subjected to such behaviour. There has never been any acknowledgement or response to that letter. I remain willing to discuss the matter with the Council Chairman at any time. My willingness to meet the Council Chairman to try and resolve the issue has not changed for almost 3 years.

I do hope this answers you comment Keith, my apologies if in parts I sound passionate.

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 KEITH G, HULL.

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 KEITH G, HULL.

Thank you for your comment Keith and thank you for reading.

We believe Keith’s comment is related to Mr. Lyons recent posts and we have therefore ask Mr. Lyons to respond as he is familiar with the actual events of the meeting in question.

Mr. Lyons writes,

Councillor Clappison was present and Chairing the meeting at the time of the incident in question. Although I can tell you the events that led up to Councillor Bell’s outburst, I am unfortunately unable to explain the reason for his outburst.

 If you would care to look on Preston Parish Council’s Website you will see that the first item of business was ‘Public Participation’.

Councillor Mendham (who was still a member of the public at that point) asked a question of the Chair with regard to the cost of the recent investigation carried out by the Audit Commission following a complaint by a member of the public.

The Chairman quite rightly answered her query and informed the Council and public gallery the Audit had cost the Parish purse approximately £8,750. The Chairman then went on to explain that the Audit Commission had given the Parish Council a clean bill of health in respect of the supply of information to members of the public under the provisions of the FoIA.

It was at this point that I felt compelled to respond because the latter part of the Chairman’s answer was, in my opinion, at best misleading. I was pointing out that the Financial Regulations are quite separate from the Information Regulations and it would not have been appropriate for the Auditor to comment on the Councils performance with regard to the provision of information under FoIA, any more than it would be appropriate for the Information Commissioners Office to comment on the Council’s performance in relation to Financial matters. Therefore in my view no such conversation took place, on later reading the Auditors report it made no such references and therefore my view prevailed.

This is the point when Councillor Bell intervened.

The Chairman’s role during council meetings is to ensure that the proceedings run smoothly, all business wherever possible is concluded and the legal provisions are observed, along with the Code of Conduct relating to the behaviour of Council members.

So we have Cllr. Mendham kicking off the proceedings, Cllr. Bell intervening very aggressively, Cllr. Clappison failing to bring the meeting to order and allowing the incident to run it’s course while Cllr. Fortnum eventually had to take control of Cllr. Bell in order to calm him down. Those 4 names should be sounding familiar by now.

It is my personal and honest opinion the incident was engineered and the aggression was to be directed at the person who requested the costly audit to be carried out. That person was not present at the meeting but the plan, I believe, was in motion by then and had to run its course. When I criticised the comments of the Chairman I became the primary target.

It seems a little strange that the same names are unable to remember any of the events in which they played such a crucial and critical role. It’s the same people whose accounts are at odds with everyone else’s, in my opinion that appears to be more than a little coincidental.

In my opinion from the evidence that I have seen in the form of witness statements supplied to me by the Investigating Officer for the Standards Committee, Councillor Bell put forward 2 defences,

1.    His primary defence and the one covered in previous posts was that he played no such role as that indicated by the complainant and was passive throughout and therefore he had done nothing that needed defending.

2.    But just in case and as a back up to his first defence he listed a defence of putting his behaviour down to a reaction to a letter I had written to the Council in January 2011 in which I suggested the Council had lied.

In my honest opinion there is absolutely no necessity for a second fail safe defence if the first defence is accurate and truthful because there would not have been any adverse behaviour to defend!

To save any comment asking why I had suggested the Council had lied and was I right to do so, here are my reasons,

As members of the public and during 2010 a number of residents including myself had asked if the Council Meetings could be held at the Community Hall on Main Street, Preston for a variety of reasons not least of all to enable more elderly residents being in a position to attend should they wish to. We were emphatically told during a number of Council Meetings that it was not possible because there were regulations in place that prohibited such meetings in the Community Hall, especially Charity Regulations. Despite repeatedly requesting the Parish Council to identify the legislation they were referring to, they refused. As residents we could not locate any legislation that supported the Parish Councils opinion.

I am and was at the time in possession of a letter from the Charities Commission to Preston Parish Council dated 2007 that, clearly states that the Charities Commission has no objection to the Parish Council holding meetings in the Community Hall and having a Council Office at the Community Hall providing, the Community Hall Charity was in receipt of payment in cash or kind.

That letter made it very clear to me that the Council statements on the matter were misleading and untruthful, where do the Council hold their meetings today, the Community Hall, where is the Parish Council Office, behind the Community Hall. As appears to be normal, the Parish Council’s view has not been supported and we as residents were correct in our view once again.

If Cllr. Bell had actually reacted to my letter why did he conjure it up for this particular meeting when he had every opportunity to ‘react’ during the previous 4 months? I did after all attend all Council meetings at that time.

Leaving this incident aside, it would in my opinion be extremely poor judgment for anyone to defend himself or herself against an accusation of having been dishonest, by being dishonest.

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.

"IMPOSSIBLE"

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.

IMPOSSIBLE!

We have had an e-mail from a reader suggesting we are wrong to use the word impossible in a post dated 9^th February 2014, and that the incident could have happened the way Group B describes.

The person gave no reason as to why he thinks we’re wrong, he made no attempt to put forward an argument to support his view. If he has an argument to support his theory we do hope he will share it with us, maybe we could debate the issue, we would welcome that, so here’s our view.

This post is our honest opinion, it does not intend to portray any part as fact, that remains the domain of others. Our opinion is given here on an event we believe to be in the Public Interest.

We don’t accept the misuse of the word impossible, and these are our reasons for not accepting it;

1.     If a group of people describe the conditions they observed at a specific point in time and place as being a bright and sunny day with high temperatures ideal for sunbathing on the beach and therefore thoroughly enjoyable, we would under normal circumstances accept that as being accurate and truthful.

However, if we then have a group of people who emphatically state they were there at the same place and same point in time as the first group but they observed the conditions to be a dark night with freezing temperatures and horrendous thunderstorms and the only way to seek relief was to get under cover where it was dry and warm, this throws doubt on both statements.

In our opinion it’s impossible for them both to be correct because they are describing events that cannot have happened at the same point in time and at the same place. There is absolutely no connection or similarity between the 2 accounts, they are effectively 2 separate events, therefore they are mutually exclusive to each other and it’s therefore impossible for them both to have happened at the same point in time and at the same place.

A definition of Mutually Exclusive as taken from ‘Wikipedia’ is,

“Two events are mutually exclusive if they cannot occur at the same time. An example is tossing a coin once, which can result in either heads or tails, but not both”.

In our opinion, because of their ‘Mutually Exclusive’ nature they are also ‘Collectively Exhaustive’  because there is only 2 possible outcomes, they’re either true or they’re false. They can’t each be a little bit right at the same time as both being a little wrong because there are no similarities or connection between them, they are effectively two different events. The same applies to tossing a coin once, you either get ‘heads’ or you get ‘tails’, it isn’t possible to get a little bit of each!

It is therefore impossible for them both to have happened at the same time and in the same place.

2.   In our honest opinion, for Group B statements, to attract any misguided credibility, they were entirely dependent on none of their peers [Parish Councillors] submitting statements that contradicted them.

This would probably have resulted in a member of the public making a complaint about the behaviour of a Councillor and 4 Councillors submitting statements that directly contradicted the circumstances given by the complainant.

With 4 councillors who are deemed to be upstanding and honest members of our community, entrusted to making decisions on behalf of the Parish and who are united in their appraisal with no other dissenting opinion from their peers, they could have discredited the complainant.

Assuming the councillors were aware of the absolute need for no dissenting statements, what could have made them think there would be no dissenting statements? Was something tentatively agreed between the whole of the Parish Council in private? There were certainly a number of ‘In Camera’ [Private] meetings at that time, Council minutes show that to be the case. In our view it must have been discussed between the whole council in private because it would need agreement between the whole council to make the tactic viable.

Unfortunately [or fortunately as the case may be] it didn’t quite turn out as planned, 5 of their peers disagreed with the Councillors with vastly differing accounts of the event, which must inevitably cast a very serious doubt on the validity of the conflicting statements. That is why it must be resolved by a thorough and independent investigation.

3.   If by some psychotic aberration we accept the 4 statements to be an accurate and honest account of the incident, as the e-mailer suggests, we are still left with a big problem.

That problem is, we are then left with 5 statements from Councillors, which because of their exclusivity from the other group of 4 Councillors must by definition be untruthful.

That leaves us with an even greater problem and brings the whole of the Parish Council into question because that would raise the spectre of a conspiracy and vendetta against a member of the public by the Parish Council as well as collusion between councillors who gave statements and Councillors who refused to give statements. That’s a whole different ball game.

Whichever way you look at this it shows our Parish Council to be corrupt and it is essential that an Independent Investigation is carried out to resolve the issue and put some faith and confidence back into the collective public mind.

4.    For any sensible group who wished to mislead such an investigation it would have been, in our opinion, far better to acknowledge the correct details of the incident and put a differing magnitude and intensity on those details to lessen the impact as a tactic of mitigation. Such an approach we believe could be put down to differences in individual recollections and that would introduce a degree of doubt. It would in our opinion have introduced doubt not only to the Standards Committee but could well have put a sprinkling of doubt in the minds of other witnesses.

In our opinion, by inventing a whole new set of events it may well sway the official body to be ‘inconclusive’ but we believe it would also entrench the positions of other witnesses and particularly the complainant.

In short , and in our opinion, it implies the complainant has been dishonest along with 5 other Parish Councillors, brings the Parish Council into disrepute and Local Government is seen to be corrupt, there is no place for this kind of behaviour at any level of Local Government. 

We posted recently on a Council vacancy that has remained unfilled for about 3 months because of a lack of interest from residents. If this is the best level of behaviour the Parish Council is able to muster up, it shows the Parish Council and Local Government in general in an extremely bad light and we are not surprised in any lack of interest shown by residents.

Doing nothing is simply not an option!

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.