Given my experiences over the last couple of years, I should now be aware that getting involved with the press is a perilous business (Halesowen News and a couple of other honourable media persons excluded). Generally, the local press are either too craven or too lazy to investigate "Sadwell" but The Skidder has been attracting some national interest of late.
The Skidder was recently approached by education mag FE Week about the problems with Sandwell College answering Freedom of Information (FoI) requests and I talked to them and sent them various documents. Today I feature (as, for inexplicable reasons, does my wife - twice) in that august Journal but there is an unfortunate insinuation at one point that I am "claiming" something - raising the spectre that the claim may be untrue - which is actually in the public domain for all to see. Further, FE Week have allowed an anonymous "College spokesperson" to make a ridiculous statement which appears not to have challenged in any way and to gratuitously put the boot in on me. But then I understand that FE Week get advertising revenue from Sandwell College whereas I don't pay them anything......
Here is the link to the article:
Dealing with this article first, before we have a look at The Skidder's FoI history with the College, my identity is well-well known and I can only imagine the reference by FE Week to my wife is an insinuation that these posts are in some way inaccurate and not objective because she (and a great team) ran The Public.
I have given FE Week all the documentation they have requested but yet they say, at one point, "One of Mr Saunders's FoI requests made on June 6 last year, got no response HE CLAIMED", before going on to say that there was eventually a reply on August 8. In fact, the final response (and a very important one at that) was not forthcoming until 3rd September, 2014 and anyone in the whole wide world can check out that my "claim" is absolutely true by simply looking at this publicly-available link:
FE Week are paid by the piper which MAY explain how someone who wished to remain anonymous was reported, unchallenged, with this garbage:
"These requests are from the same individual, the husband of the former managing director of The Public, which the college has transformed from a loss-making arts facility into Central Sixth, a highly successful sixth form centre in partnership with Sandwell Council".
Clearly there is another nasty smear about me and my wife again but the rest is also ridiculous. The Public was - by order of Sandwell Council - a (mostly) free to visit arts centre reliant on public subsidy. To say that it was "loss-making" is to say that the British Museum, Birmingham Orchestra or 99.9% of the arts organisations, museums etc in the land who rely on subsidy are also in that category. The Public was, quite simply, managed within the budget that had been set for it. But, of course, with this ludicrous reasoning there is another body in "Sadwell" which takes 99.9% of its massive income by way of public subsidy - yes, you've got it - step forward "loss-making" Sandwell College!
The claim that Central Sixth is "highly successful" is also patently false. Thanks to two of The Skidder's, er, FoI requests it now transpires that actual numbers in the second of the College's £70m buildings are very poor - as set out in full in my recent post, "College - Truth at Last":
But then we have also seen that the grasping Governors are desperate to get bums on seats and have resorted to this type of propaganda to deceive the thicker kids of the area into taking up places so that they can rake in more dosh. This has been linked to a deliberately deceitful advertising campaign. Again see my post, "Sandwell College - You Cynical B*stards!":
Let me just say, before moving on, that the College are STILL conniving with Sandwell Council in the lie that they are actually paying rent on the old Public whereas, in fact, they are receiving a massive hidden subsidy from the Borough. I will be blogging on this again shortly but just hold this formula in your mind until then, if you will. This is the proof that the College are paying no rent and comes from the actual lease between the two secretive taxpayer-funded bodies:
AR = (TC) x (25)
25 Y
AR = Annual "rent" TC = Total Cost (of works) Y = period between rent repayment date and end of the contractual term.
And on the subject of the Lease, here is how the College told a massive porkie to another community activist, Mr Magher, who put in a FoI request about the bent Public deal. They refused to disclose the actual lease on the basis that it would soon be "publicly available" at HM Land Registry but this was a lie. They were so desperate to keep this "great news for Sandwell" from public scrutiny they went ahead and deliberately and specifically registered the lease with the Registry as a "protected document" so that, to this day, it is NOT, in fact, open to public consultation!
All this sort of thing seems to be condoned by the Governors who include the person who purports to be Sandwell Council's "Chief Executive", Jan Britton, and top local WMP cop, Basit Javid, who just happens to be the brother of the current Cabinet "high-flyer" and arch-Thatcherite Business Secretary, Sajid Javid (although, as we shall see, Basit does not always toe the Tory party line!)
You might expect a little humility on the subject of FoI's from an organisation that has been written to twice IN THE LAST SEVEN DAYS by the Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) but, as we have seen from the FE Week article, all we get is self-pitying whining and personal abuse (sound familiar Cooper - watchers?). So let's take a look at The Skidder's FoI requests:
1. There is a batch of six which are inter-related. As above, the College is almost 100% funded by us taxpayers but has been remarkably reticent in publishing the minutes of its meetings. I have pointed out to the ICO that we live in a world of almost instant communications. What, therefore, is a reasonable time post-meetings for the publication of the minutes? I have suggested 28 days which, in my submission to the ICO, gives ample time for the minutes to be prepared and forwarded to the various Governors for approval. The College SEEMS to be arguing that it cannot publish the minutes until after the following Board meeting since the minutes need to be formally approved. Even if that is true they are not complying with this. And so in the last two years I have had to do FOUR FoI's to get the minutes which the College SHOULD HAVE PUBLISHED ANYWAY. They only have themselves to blame if the information has to be dragged out of them. The last of my four requests in this regard was dated 23rd July, 2015 which the College ignored and so I had to make an application for an internal review. They had just had a meeting on 13th July and, eventually, said they could not disclose the minutes for that meeting (which remain outstanding) but as at 23rd July no less than THREE other sets of minutes were still being deliberately kept secret dating back to 8th December, 2014 - seven and a half MONTHS before. This is just pisspoor governance of a public body whichever way you look at it.
The corollary to this is that when the minutes are eventually released they are often heavily redacted ie bits are missing. Now sometimes the Freedom of Information Act does permit this but the College has been trying to get away with blanket redactions of information IT would prefer the taxpayers and people of Sandwell not to see. And so there have been two further FoI's in to them about this and, hot off the press, this very morning the ICO has formally written to them asking them to supply the redacted information or to give SPECIFIC reasons for their claims to be able to lawfully withhold information pursuant to the Act. Watch this space....
2 An FoI about the Public Cafe elicited that the College were giving the contract to Catering Academy Limited without external tender until July, 2015 when they claimed it WOULD then go out to public competition. But this was another porkie and when I chased this up recently the College said the contract with Catering Academy had been extended for a further two years!!! Just like that!
3 At a time when the College could not afford new computer equipment for students and staff the College did NOT accept the lowest bid on computer equipment for Central Sixth according to an FoI reply but they will not say how much more the successful bid was for nor who got the contract!
4 When the sleazy College shafted the people over the Public it proposed that the taxpayer also fork out for a "celebratory dinner" with the Council chiefs to toast the bent deal. A FoI request showed that the person behind this obscene suggestion had been one of the principal architects of the project, one Sheryl Dowen. Fortunately this idea was dropped and Dowen has since been jettisoned.
5 An FoI showed that the College has left a provision in the accounts of no less than £330,000 in respect of costs associated with the lease of The Public! As both taxpayer-funded parties were trying to dress the whole bent deal up as a "concordat", the College alone spent £80,498.37 exc VAT on legal fees in an attempt to fool us all as to the true nature of the transaction.
6 At a time when the College was being handed a second £70m taxpayer funded building the new Principal, Pennington, was holding himself out as still also being "Deputy CEO" at Salford City College but, following a FOI request, it was confirmed that this was some sort of "mistake" and that Pennington was now engaged full-time with "Sadwell";
7 Despite all the propaganda on The Public bent deal there was a clause giving the College the right to use the building for mysterious "other things" (which rather defeats the object of the whole charade in the first place). In an FOI the College confirmed that such an option was available "if agreed with SMBC". So that's alright then.....
8 A really important one. As part of the bent Public deal and despite the fact that West Bromwich is awash with cheap office space the College was forced to rent office space from, er, Labour Party Properties Limited! The initial contract - before this was exposed - was for six months at a stonking £39,265 exc VAT. Before the outcry following the details becoming publicly known via an FoI request the College had paid £4.300 PLUS vat to Labour for new carpets even though they were allegedly only planning to use the offices for six months!!!! Strangely, Basit Javid was in on this wheeze as he is recorded as being present at the meeting. Quite what his brother makes of a publicly-funded body being screwed-over to give money to Labour is not recorded - yet! (Britton was only at part of this meeting and it is not clear from the minutes if he too was in on the deal to help his political masters).
9 FE Week let the College's shy spokesperson get away with saying that their gross delays in responding to requests were because the requests were often complicated and complex. What is complicated about any of the above? As we have seen, two FOI's were also put in about the number of Central Sixth students who sat A Levels last academic year and the number of students there now. These were reasonable requests noting the lies that were being peddled about it being a great success and the College would have this information available in seconds as they rely on income from these "bodies". You don't think they might just have been trying to conceal the bad news do you readers?
10 The College recently resorted an old trick to keep the public in the dark - holding a "special meeting" and then failing to disclose the minutes. My FoI has now forced disclosure and this will be the subject of another post. Suffice to say here, the College did not get a tranche of Education Funding Agency dosh it had been planning on getting and so it is going back with the begging bowl with, wait for it, a new venture in partnership with, er, scandal-ridden Sandwell Council! You couldn't make it up and I hope other local colleges are taking notice of all this and not losing out because of it eg the genuinely "outstanding" Walsall College.
11 In addition to writing to them today, the ICO also wrote to the College last week giving them 10 days to reply to a long outstanding FoI concerning the alleged arts provision now at The Public. Hot off the press again again, a reply has come in as I have been writing this, but that too will be detailed in a separate post. Once again, they have been having our public money for this and so the information should have been readily available but it has taken the intervention of the ICO to flush the facts out following their refusal to comply with the law of the land.
And finally, many of you may not know that at its original £70m+ taxpayer-funded building - the hideous "ski-slope" - we all stumped up again via our taxes to waste OUR money on a glorious "waterfall" feature down the whole height of the building replete with coloured lights. Following an FoI request, it seems the cash-strapped College can't afford to switch it on. These jokers are adept at pissing our money up the wall but not, apparently, so clever at pissing it down it!
THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!
email thesandwellskidder@gmail.com facebook Julian Saunders
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