https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2019/10/24/sandwell-council-apologises-after-six-cabinet-secretaries-wrongly-suspended/
I can't say much about it at the moment since I am the Appellant in an Information Rights Tribunal hearing next Wednesday relating to the steps taken by the Eling/Britton regime to conceal what went on here. Unfortunately the concealment partially continues and so the hearing seems likely to go ahead.
If you want to come along and watch the hearing it is at the Priory Court Centre, Bull Street in Birmingham City Centre. We are due to start at 10.00am. If you are coming I shall have my phone on until 9.30am and you might want to check that we are definitely going ahead. Call 07470 624207.
There is airport-style security at the building and so it does take a few minutes to get in.
There are a couple of matters I can vouchsafe to you at this time. We have known for some time that Sandwell's most dangerous man, Surjit Tour, and S151 officer and serious rimmer, Darren Carter, were heavily involved in this scandal but even though the hearing is just down the road the new regime is shielding them from giving evidence. This pair were major players but we will not hear from them! Why?
Regulares will also know that there have been no less than six ongoing Information Rights cases going on. In three cases the new regime have managed to find further documentation which the Eling/Britton regime mysteriously could not. Those cases have settled.
In two other cases regarding Lion Farm and "Councillor X" the new regime have also managed to find hitherto hidden documents. Original hearings were adjourned because of this but the further disclosure has also been inadequate and so these matters are re-listed for hearing. (Once again Councillor X is costing the hard-pressed Borough huge sums of money as he squirms to avoid the truth coming out. I hope his allegedly "socialist" comrades are happy with that given the pressure on local authority finances!)
As above, Sandwell Council somehow managed to find another 39 pages of documents in this matter yesterday but they have been served in heavily redacted form. Also as above, I cannot share some of the gruesome details with you until after next Wednesday but here are a couple of interesting points to be going on with:
1 The story oscillates between 6 and 7 secretaries suspended but 7 were suspended;
2 We have always been led to believe that the suspensions were in respect of the false allegation that the secretaries blabbed about Surjit Tour's secret pow-wow with Geoff Lewis and Co on the Standards sub-Committee (and this was repeated by David Stevens in his Apologia last week for the horrendous treatment of these women.) It now transpires that Stevens himself knows this was incorrect since he himself was the recipient of an email from Jan Britton at 09.24 25th January, 2018 stating:
"I am writing to let you know that yesterday we took action to suspend employees in the Cabinet secretariat, pending investigation of a number of recent data and information breaches."
No doubt by Wednesday he will be in a position to tell the Tribunal about these other investigations.
3 There are a whole host of other players in this matter and I hope to be able to tell you more after the hearing but it does indeed look likely that Jan Britton and other top managers did not have the balls themselves to do the deed but got lowly grunt Stuart Taylor to do their dirty work instead. There is evidence of that spanner Britton summoning Taylor to the headmaster's office by email at 09.26 on 24th January, 2018.
4 Mystery still surrounds why the women were not immediately reinstated when it was quite clear that they were not guilty of bursting Tour's balloon. Maybe, as in point 2 above, Sandwell used this event as an excuse to trawl through the networks to see if there was other dirt they could fling at them. The fact is that probably a dozen staff became involved in this utter shambles but such was the incompetence of the Britton regime the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. Steps were immediately taken to replace the women with agency workers but on 27th January, 2018 the hapless Carter stated that the women were to be reinstated. Except no-one told my new friend Richard Luckman as this email of 29th January, 2018 shows:
What an absoulute shower!
5 The documentation appears incomplete in that SMBC told the Information Commissioner that the investigation may have led to CRIMINAL charges against these women but there is no evidence so far that they were ever advised of this incredibly serious developmemnt nor advised to take immediate legal advice etc.
6 Unite the Union, Brian Rickers and Matt Law are to be congratulated for their work in resolving this shaming episode.
7 As things stand Carter has offered himself up as the fall-guy and he was only too happy to say that no elected member at the time was involved in all this. If this is not true (as suggested by Cllr Yvonne Davies) then his instant dismissal must be imminent and if it is then we await to hear from SMBC as to what disciplinary action they are taking against him in respect of his (seemingly) appalling lack of judgment.
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