Sandwell Council - Utter Contempt for Freedom of Information Law

Remember the £39,000 of taxpayers' money Sandwell Council (SMBC) spent on the, as it turned out, useless reports from Jones Lang LaSalle? These were prepared by early summer 2012 but SMBC refused to make them public. On 31st October, 2013 Mr J Maher put in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request for disclosure which was refused, mostly on the ground of alleged commercial confidentiality.

Using his twitter account @sandwellleader - unbelievably, actually the "leader" of SMBC - Cooper - said the reports would be released but then back-tracked on this and they remained secret. But on 3rd January 2014 (with the FoI request still unanswered) the reports suddenly found their way to the Express and Star newspaper in Wolverhampton who were only too happy to print an article complete with a quote from Cooper. I used Twitter at the time to point out that this was totally unsatisfactory. Even then, the reports were not finally disclosed (with redactions) for some considerable time.

Fast forward to the pathetically-named "Concordat" ie the dodgy contracts relating to the destruction of The Public. This time, local people are indebted to Mr Darryl Magher for his FOI requests to both SMBC and to Sandwell College. Both public bodies were unable to comply with the legal time limit for disclosure but eventually they both disclosed page after page of documents with ALL the material information redacted. I am not concerned with the College here but only with SMBC.

One of the major reasons for redacting the information was that information was protected from FoI by confidentiality clauses between the parties - including some that had actually been inserted into the contracts by the Solicitors acting for SMBC, Ashfords! It was argued that to disclose the information would actually be a breach of contract.

Fortunately, on this occasion, Mr Magher appealed this nonsense by requesting an "internal review" - this step being a prerequisite to a referral to the Information Commissioner. That review is still in progress.

But step forward Cooper again. Yesterday (or the day before) he gave some of the redacted information to the Express and Star - or at least someone did - but he was happy to provide a commentary on same. This is absolutely unacceptable noting SMBC's refusal to disclose pursuant to the law of the land, and particularly as the "internal review" is still in progress.

We must assume that Cooper/SMBC have received permission for disclosure from Sandwell College, Sandwell Futures Limited and Interserve Construction Limited otherwise there would appear to have been a material breach of the contractual terms the parties were at pains to draw-up to prevent access (all at considerable public expense). I say that the parties cannot pick and choose what they release and now that partial disclosure has been made, all further arguments of confidentiality are otiose and should be overruled.

I will be sending this blog to the Information Commissioner by way of formal complaint and, hopefully, Mr Magher himself will complain. Please feel free to use this blogpost yourselves to complain either to the Chief Executive of SMBC and/or to the Information Commissioner (e-mail to casework@ico.org.uk - include your phone number).

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