College Shafts Sandwell Arts - Official!

I hate to say I told you so but.....

When Cooper (Dec'd), Hussain and the top management of  Labour Sandwell Council hatched the bent deal to close The Public there was a bit of a problem. Various so-called stakeholders had put public money into the building including the European Union, the predecessors of what became Advantage West Midlands [sic] and the pusillanimous Arts Council. Thus they had to be "squared" before the anti-arts Cooper and Co and the College could steal the building from the taxpayers who had paid for it. As this blog has shown, a lawyer from Ashfords Solicitors sat in on and participated in a meeting that sealed the building's fate and her firm were promptly given a contract to devise a "concordat" to drive the bent deal through and were paid over £40,000 EXCLUDING VAT for their "trouble".

Cooper, Jan Britton and the College fought long and hard to keep this "great deal for Sandwell" secret  (!) whilst pumping out misinformation about it which was duly reported as fact by the Wolverhampton c*ck-suckers - aka "The Express and Star". Once the true facts were known, it vindicated what campaigners had always said - that the "CON-cordat" was a fig-leaf covering up the horrors of the deal which included the fact that the College were paying no rent on a huge public building which they had been gifted just one year after moving into their own £70 million new facility at Spon Lane and that, even though they had signed a long lease (but with break clauses), there was an incredibly rare provision for us, via the Labour Council, to continue paying for the maintenance of the expensive building for up to 25 years!

The Arts Council were filling their pants about the flack they were getting about the building and so did the decent thing and ran away and hid. They, and the other stakeholders, bought the bollocks from the former women-bullying thug who ran the Council that there would continue to be a substantial arts "offering" at "Central Sixth" and waved the bent deal through. [Lest we forget the multi-million pound conversion contract for what was ultimately the destruction of the building was also NOT put out to tender].

I have repeatedly pointed out - officially - to the government departments involved in this debacle that this deal was bent and also constituted a gigantic hidden subsidy to Sandwell College not enjoyed by rival colleges such as the local, "outstanding", Walsall College. I tried to argue - so far to no avail - that it was also unfair for the taxpayer to be funding the College in the normal way whilst it was additionally receiving the secret subsidy from Labour SMBC. It just so happens that my constituency MP is the, nowBusiness Secretary, Sajid Javid, who attempted to fob me off whilst failing to disclose to me that his own top copper brother was in on the whole thing as a Governor of the sleazy College!

Of course, the sleaze and corruption within Sandwell is now being laid bare and, following the Wragge Report and other disasters on his watch, the position of the joke "Chief Executive" of SMBC, Jan Britton, is untenable. New Leader Steve Eling has yet to suspend and/or sack him but that day must surely come as night follows day. Yet as part of the bent deal the p*ss-taking Cooper put him on the Board of Governors of the dismal College too!

But to sweeten the bent "deal" the ludicrous Cooper trumpeted that Sandwell people would pay the College £200,000 per year for 5 years and smaller payments thereafter for them to provide an arts offering to the lumpen proletariat of that blasted Borough. Here, as with most things Cooper and Hussain were involved with, the position became muddied since Mr Garry Morris, an employee of SMBC, became involved in the "arts cafe". This was a strange choice as Morris had been employed, inter alia, to get The Public up and running in the first place and singularly failed in that regard. He was also one of the Haden Hill Plotters [see posts passim] who did their masters' bidding and duly shafted the place! Of course, he is the son of Labour "aristocracy", Lord Morris, and Sandwell Labour do love a bit of Party cronyism [though Morris has now moved on for family reasons]!

Quite what money has been going into the ghastly "arts cafe" and from whom is still a bit of a mystery but Morris was the SMBC tender contact for three pop-up banners at a guide price of a mere £3,000!!!!

Let me just take you on a little wander, if I may. The funders of the arts, particularly the Arts Council, are obsessed with data relating to projects. Applicants usually have to fill in lengthy forms backed with evidence to get dosh in the first place and then have to provide detailed appraisals of the events including head counts, formal feedback etc. And yet, as this blog has shown. Cooper and Labour managed to scam the Arts Council and others to divert funds intended for the ridiculous "Sandwell Arts Festival" to promote Sunny Jim Cadman's private statue project - seemingly without any comeback whatsoever!

Back to the chase. £200k a year is quite a lot of money if spent wisely but anyone who has regularly watched the goings on (or rather lack of them) at the former Public will be well aware that there has, effectively, been f*ck all happening. Thus on 28th August, 2015 I put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the College asking what events there had actually been, how many attended them etc and, more importantly, what the money had been spent on as this was very far from being obvious.

Another short digression - Sandwell College have repeatedly failed through appalling governance to disclose their minutes and other documents and have then failed to answer FOI requests so that I have had to make a whole string of appeals to the Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) to drag what should be freely obtainable information out of them. This one was no exception (and the reply today has come over NINE MONTHS after my original request!

As usual, given the hopeless administration at the College, they failed to respond and so yet another application was made to the ICO. Eventually the College disclosed the so-called programme of events - remember we are paying £200,000 per annum for this. I am setting out the full document just so that you can see with your own eyes how utterly pathetic the response - signed by the "Principal" no less, actually is:

This confirmed everything the Skidder team had picked up simply by noting the inactivity within the building. The College has had £400,000 for this crap? (And it should be noted that SMBC were also trying to tap the Arts Council and others for elements of this like the "festival").

I was not satisfied with this and kept on with my appeal to the ICO. I pointed out that there were no accounts for how the money was spent and no statistics as to attendances etc. Following intervention by the ICO the College admitted that it had not kept any records or obtained feedback of any sort in respect of the events. Quite simply it HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA AS TO THE OUTCOMES from this substantial receipt of £400,000 of taxpayers' money. Accordingly, that was the end of that as far as the ICO was concerned because, due to the College's mismanagement, there was nothing else to disclose! I pressed on with regard to the accounts, however, as there was no way £400k had been spent on this sh*t and it seemed obvious that the College was simply nicking the funds for use elsewhere and didn't give a f*ck about even pretending to provide an arts offering. And lo, this is exactly what has happened and I can do no better than to show you the actual content of a letter received from the ICO today:

Dear Mr Saunders

I have been in further correspondence with Sandwell College about its response to your requests of 28 August 2015, specifically the second part of that request for details of how much money it had received at the time of the request from Sandwell MBC in respect of ongoing arts provision and precisely how it had spent the monies received.

The College has confirmed that it received two payments of £200,000 from Sandwell MBC to support its delivery of the Partnership Outputs, which includes Business Development Opportunities and Arts Offerings.

The College has gone on to explain that the payments received from Sandwell MBC have been used as a contribution towards the College’s running costs including hosting arts related events, as part of its wider support of the partnership outputs, and that the College does not and is not required to account for these payments separately from its normal income and expenditure. As a consequence, it has stated that it cannot therefore provide the details you requested about precisely how this money was spent.

The College has confirmed to me that it cannot provide this information to you because this money has been combined with money from other sources to pay the College’s running costs, which includes arts provision. Consequently, it is not possible for it to identify how much of the money provided by Sandwell MBC has been spent on supporting art provision as compared with how much has been spent on other costs associated with running the College as the money provided by Sandwell MBC is not differentiated from money provided from other sources when it comes to the College’s expenditure. 

In light of the explanation provided by the College, I am not sure that I can take this any further forward and would propose on closing the case. However, if there are any comments you wish to make, please do not hesitate to let me know.

So there we are - the College has used the cash as yet another subsidy to its own general funds. I will be writing to all appropriate bodies about this appalling breach of trust and, once again, heads must roll and the taxpayer must be protected.

Just before critics start complaining about cuts and austerity please compare and contrast Labour's destruction of arts provision in the Borough with the obscene and colossal multi-million pound splurge of sport during the corrupt Cooper era. The fact is that this £200,000 - a tiny fraction of the sports bonanza - is a matter of LEGAL CONTRACT under the very same bent CON-cordat! On the face of it, the College is in breach of contract and the new regime need to tackle this and stop any further payments of our money until these issues are resolved. Clearly if the College is to receive any further cash SMBC will need full outcome results and accounts for the expenditure. Alternatively, the Council should write to stakeholders and tell them they are taking the expenditure of the £200,000 back "in-house" but we will again need adequate and open disclosure from Cllr Eling's regime as to the actual expenditure, given the corruption of recent times.

I will finish with a picture of the hopeless Britton as he won't be around Sandwell much longer but just remember that he was either fully aware of this fiddle both as "head" of SMBC AND a Governor of the College (which adds to calls for his immediate suspension and ultimate dismissal) or, if he was not aware, he was asleep at the wheel yet again and should be suspended and face disciplinary action for negligence and incompetence. I am not joking here but this buffoon has even been appointed as a "member" of the the College's AUDIT COMMITTEE who are supposed to know about the money side of things! You couldn't make it up. Why not do the decent thing Lardy and just resign? (Answer - because he is holding out for a huge and secret pay-off?)

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

PROUD TO HAVE BEEN TROLLED BY COOPER DECEASED AND HIS "GURU", ANDREW HIPKISS!

Confidential phone no:  07599 983737                 Facebook:  Julian Saunders

Email:  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com