PART ONE
When the Government were considering putting bent Labour Sandwell Council into special measures, local Community Activist Darryl Magher and I submitted a 100-page dossier to Michael Gove [the Secretary of State for Levelling-Up] urging him to do so. We also opined that there could be no progress within the corrupt Authority until Surjit Tour [Head of Legal and the statutory Monitoring Officer since late 2017] was sacked (without compensation). Gove did send in the Commissioners (at enormous cost to taxpayers) but, curiously, appointed Kim Bromley Derry [then the Interim Chief Executive] as one of the two Commissioners. Bromley Derry [KBD] already knew what Tour was like before becoming a Commissioner. He has the power to sack him, but he has not wielded the axe. I am preparing a dossier on Tour to submit to various parties (and info very welcome) but his contempt for the rule of law is such that it appears that only legal action can bring his malfeasance to light. I am consulting lawyers but expect KBD and his fellow Commissioner to take action in the interim.
Tour had a "reputation" before he was brought in to save the skin of former Labour Leader, Steve "Squealing" Eling. He was told to ignore his statutory duties of upholding the rule of law and maintaining legal standards and to act instead FOR Labour Councillors accused of wrongdoing. He duly set himself up as their "Defence lawyer". Leaving aside "small" matters like sitting back and allowing Jan Britton and David Stevens [two disgraced former Chief Executives] to run amok, he has - and this is a non-exclusive list - subverted the standards process, prevented crucial evidence from being used in investigations, involved himself with West Midlands Police in purely political matters, subverted the Subject Access process (even using external Solicitors to make false disclosures), set up an unlawful legal fund to destroy this blog and conspired with Lisa McNally and others to use over £100,000 of public money to support her absurd private litigation. He ran rings round the hapless former Labour Leader, Cllr "Red" Yvonne Davies, who ignored my direct advice to sack him. He has been instrumental in blocking the release of the Cox Review despite the wishes of some, admittedly very weak, Labour Councillors on the Audit Committee. Tour inexplicably kept fighting the hopeless Hackett case which has cost taxpayers well in excess of £100,000 already and hasn't finished yet! Under his watch the SEND contracts tender lapsed into chaos and allegations of an attempted multi-million pound fraud. The list just goes on and on.
In his bid to protect Labour Councillors his latest stunt is to advise, and then permit, them to withhold information from their public Register of Interest entries. This is already subject to a complaint to the Information Commissioner but if KBD and his Co-Commissioner don't take action immediately to stop this illegality then appropriate legal steps will be taken.
Sandwell Labour Councillors persistently carp on about homelessness and the awfulness of private landlords but many have at least two properties. Some at least have the decency to declare their interests so that their hypocrisy is visible to all. But in exceptional cases the Monitoring Officer can withhold details of pecuniary interests and mark the Register accordingly.
This is the precise wording of the clause that 10 Labour Councillors (16% of the cohort) and Tour are conspiring to use to hide information from Sandwell people and the press:
Section 32, Localism Act 2011
32.1.(b) :- the nature of the interest is such that a member ... AND the monitoring officer consider the disclosure of the details of the interest could lead to the member ... or a person connected with the member, being subject to violence or intimidation.
You will notice my emphasis on the word "and" since the decision to hide information from the public is a joint one involving BOTH the Councillor and Tour.
Since I have been writing this blog there has been no violence or intimidation to my knowledge against any Councillor. There was a suggestion (no more than that) some time ago that a mentally-ill person had made threats against Hackett but no information was ever placed in the public domain. Of course, the only known incident of violence at Oldbury Council House was the assault by Cllr Melia on me (which he pleaded guilty to at Dudley Mags). There is no empirical evidence of ANY likelihood of violence or intimidation against ANY Sandwell Counciilor, to my knowledge.
Here are the TEN Labour scum working with Tour to abuse the law and keep information from you:
Peter Allen and his partner Maria Crompton, Aqeela Choudhury and her spouse "hardman" Rizwan Jalil, Luke Giles, Peter "Zorro" Hughes, Kay Millar, Paul Moore, Pam Randhawa, and Kirat Singh.
I wrote about the pathetic Randhawa elsewhere:
https://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com/2021/12/labour-councillor-in-danger-more.html
Paul Moore is obsessed with secrecy and has been hiding his home address for years. Has he genuinely been under threat for so many years - if he ever was? He may be particularly odious but is he really in so much danger and, if so, why did HE place his address in the public domain recently?
Wealthy Councillors Allen and Crompton used to declare that they had land on the Rowley Hills where Crompton kept her horses but that info has been removed for some reason. A while ago, ex-Labour Councillor Dave Hosell and his social media troll network, tried to make trouble for Crompton about her mother's house. She herself commented on this at the time. Her mother - very late in life- exercised right to buy her SMBC property, and Crompton whacked in a planning application to build a large extension (which I am told is still under construction). Sadly, her mother died and Crompton took out Letters of Administration some time ago but has not vested the property into her own name yet (although, as we shall also see below, there appears to be a backlog at HM Land Registry). We know that Crompton conspired with Tour to unlawfully fund McNally and also that she is as thick as mince, but hilariously she has declared her address but attempted to keep her other property interests quiet! Just think about that - this dimwit is not at risk of violence and intimidation at home in Tivi, but "might be" when at her late mother's house or out riding! This is absolutely absurd from her and her pal Tour.
Quite what the others have to hide we shall work on finding out. But the Kirat Singh case is a classic. There have been very lurid allegations on Sikh websites (which may or may not be true) about this chap of a seriousness that might cause him to fear violence. But Tour has removed his entire Register Entry from public view:
This is also absolutely ridiculous and shows utter contempt for the public and press. The Register contains information other than his address and property interests etc but also information such as whether he is a union member. There is a difference between being exposed for wrongdoing and a genuine - grounded - fear of violence and intimidation which Tour is wilfully ignoring. This matter must be reviewed instantly and if, due to the sordid claims about him, he is in fear of violence then as much of the Register as possible should still be completed and publicised.
What on earth do the morons of Wednesbury South who voted for Singh make of this?
I shall deal with Zorro below but the Commissioners should (a) suspend Tour (for this nonsense alone), and (b) thoroughly investigate these cases. Randhawa has not been able to show any cause for hiding information and, with the possible exception of Singh, I don't believe any of the others have due cause to insist on s.32 protection. (If Tour is suspended an outside Monitoring Officer must be brought in since in no circumstances must Maria Price be allowed to temporarily fulfil that role - see Skidders Passim and legal notice below, plus note her recent role in the unlawful legal fund and the unlawful funding of McNally.)
Just before we leave Zorro for a minute or two I understand that he was upset when this blog commented on the fact that whilst many of his "socialist" comrades were amassing property interests he had gone from owning his own property to renting. The question, as we shall see below, is whether the rental was a stop-gap measure ...
PART TWO
Now the story takes a new twist with the introduction into the tale of Mr Satnam Sahota, a Birmingham property developer via various companies. Mr Sahota owns two large properties on a road in Wednesbury which "bookend" a row of terraced houses. The first large building was supposed to be an old people's home but then suddenly became multiple rented flats instead (unbelievably bent Labour even put up a street sign saying "Elderly Persons Home" opposite). The second large building was a religious structure which, again, was converted to multiple rented flats.
Behind the row of terraced houses cowering beside these multiple occupancy behemoths was a triangular piece of land which stretched up to the land at the rear of the former religious building. I believe that this triangular area was owned by Sandwell Council and formerly a site for garages. I am sorry to be slightly vague here since, as above, the Land Registry records are not up to date. The current Land Registry shows two titles for the same piece of land. One owner is Sandwell Council and the other is a Sahota Company which shows a transfer of the site to it on 3rd November, 2016 (seemingly for just £20,000).
Bent Sandwell Labour have deliberately made research difficult with the new computer system which is not complete in many ways. I am only able to see Land Disposal Committee records back to July, 2015 and cannot trace, as yet, who made the decision to sell the land. However, I have traced a record which indicates that bent Labour sold the plot on 3rd November, 2016 which exactly matches the Sahota title.
A well-known Sandwell political figure tells me that Sahota "is not a bad guy" and that this particular plot of land was prone to anti-social behaviour and drug use. A number of Labour Councillors bent over backwards s/he says to assist Mr Sahota although this person claims that at one point Zorro Hughes was bad-mouthing him and calling him a "slum landlord" in respect of the two large properties referred to above. This is a pure allegation and unproven. Unfortunately, Zorro will not communicate with me and so I cannot ask him about this. IF, and I repeat "if" the allegation is true then it looks like Hughes soon changed his tune!
Having acquired the plot Mr Sahota applied for planning permission in 2017 for 4 semi-detached bungalows and a detached one on the space. (The record is missing on the SMBC website (?), but there is reference to it being in some way invalid and so Sahota had to try again with a new application in 2018). During 2017 he had planning help from a "Principal" Sandwell planning officer, Christine Phillips. It should be noted that the access to the site is by a very narrow road clogged with parked cars (I have visited the site twice including this morning and heaven knows how you would get a fire engine down there ...)
As we shall see below, the locals were dead against further development. If the work proceeded they would be surrounded on three sides by Sahota properties. They nicknamed the immediate area "Sahotaville" and, here again, the story takes an extraordinary twist.
No Sandwell Labour story is complete without an appearance of the Bent Blues aka corrupt West Midlands Police. This blog has noted before that the Wednesbury cops are always up the derriere of local Labour and are effectively controlled by a civilian "Gold Commander", Cllr "Inane" Elaine Costigan. This was handy during the Wednesbury Celebrates debacle (Skidders passim) where a lead protagonist in that uninvestigated scandal was, er, Cllr "Inane" Elaine Costigan!
A local resident referred on social media to living in "Sahotaville" and that night received a phone call from a Wednesbury Police Sergeant ordering him to remove the post as it was "racist". This is complete b*llocks since if I had been the developer residents may have dubbed the area "Saundersville". It is simply a conflation of a name and a word for a settlement as in "Jonestown" of massacre infamy, and there is nothing remotely racist about it.
It is not clear who this Sergeant was purporting to act for when harassing the local resident who, quite rightly, saw the intervention of the Bent Blues as a total joke. But with the post still in situ next morning, two uniformed officers appeared at his front door and ordered him to take it down! Like many people faced with such appalling bullying, the unfortunate victim reluctantly complied.
What the hell was going on here? Let's hope the Bent Blues now investigate this!
PART THREE
What words can one use for the grotesque Cllr Peter "Zorro" Hughes, aka "Alberich"? Strutting buffoon? Moron? Vulgarian? Bore of the Century? (Answers on a postcard please).
This tedious nonentity appals and delights in equal measure. Most of the time he is tiresome, but his ludicrous self-regard and pomposity can be comedy gold! Yet it is truly astonishing that the current Labour "leader", Kerrie "Dim Kez" Carmichael has put this contemptible man in her Cabinet.
We also saw recently his disgraceful plan to destroy Goldicroft Park behind the backs of adjoining residents.
Even with his extreme egotism surely Alberich could not imagine that anyone would be interested enough to subject him to violence or intimidation (with the possible exception of those who have suffered his interminable monologues in the Council chamber lol!) Thus I immediately became suspicious when he and Tour hid his address on the Register of Interests. It stank and, accordingly, I started digging to see what he and Tour were up to. And this is what I found ...
If Zorro ever did badmouth Mr Sahota he soon became very interested in the bungalows planned for the triangular plot. As above, SMBC's officer assisted Sahota despite an invalid application. On 8th January, 2018 Mr Sahota made a new, valid, application and ON THE VERY SAME DAY Christine Phillips wrote to Sahota, copying-in Zorro (now see addendum below):
"I have fixed up a meeting for Thursday 18th January at xxxxxxxxxxxx apartments [in Sahotaville] at 2.15pm. I did send you a meeting invite via email yesterday. I am hoping this is convenient to you and your architect. Councillor Peter Hughes will also be in attendance."
So Zorro was directly involved right from the first day of the second application. He was not on the Planning Committee although he was - and is - a (useless) ward Councillor.
Addendum 04/07/22
When I wrote this post I missed something concerning the date of the email from Christine Phillips to the developer - copying in Alberich.
I referred to the “invalid” 2017 planning application. Another application was submitted but not until 8th January, 2018. On it, it was stated that Sahota had received pre-application advice from “Principal Planning Officer” Phillips in “August 2017”.
But the point I missed is that Phillips email to Sahota was dated 5th January, 2021 (and not the 8th as originally stated) and also referred to contact on the previous day. In other words, and this was not mentioned on the application, Phillips and Zorro Hughes were in cahoots with Sahota at least four days before he even made the revised application!
Building started after a while and locals were further dismayed to find that, contrary to the planning permission, Sahota was adding windows in the rear roofs which overlooked the gardens of the existing properties. Thus on 15th February, 2021 Mr Sahota was obliged to make a retrospective application to try to right his wrong and, again, despite five local objections, this also raced through and was granted on 7th April, 2021.
Early last year a persistent rumour was circulating that Zorro and his Mrs were looking for "a bungalow". At the 7th April, 2021 Planning Committee Cllr Pam Hughes was present and approved the application. Again there was no declaration of interest from her. (Pam Hughes is no longer a Councillor).
I am sure you will have guessed by now where this is going. Sahota built the five bungalows, Zorro left his address but kept his new address secret with Tour's connivance. Local residents then confirmed numerous sightings of Alberich in, er, Sahotaville.
Yesterday I checked at HM Land Registry but none of the five new properties have yet been registered and so I visited there myself early this morning. Zorro's car was outside the address he and Tour are trying to conceal. Alas because of the Land Registry position I cannot say whether he has purchased the property or is renting.
At the May Council meeting I asked Zorro about his relationship with Mr Sahota but he declined to respond. You can see the encounter on this video (he hoves into a view a few seconds into the footage):
Let's hope KBD will arrange for a full investigation into all this and oblige Zorro to finally complete the Register properly. And what do you think readers - do you think Zorro is hiding because he's scared or because he and Tour didn't want you to know the above?
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