For a council perpetually under the cosh, Tower Hamlets doesn’t exactly help itself in the matter of public perception.
While I and many other journalists are used to being delayed by the Communications and Freedom of Information departments (actually, it sometimes seems they are one and the same), it’s probably not a good idea to deploy similar tactics with Government appointed inspectors.
Last week, I revealed that PwC had asked Eric Pickles’ Department for Communities and Local Government for another month to file their emergency report on transparency and governance.
Some on this blog speculated it was because the auditors had pre-booked holidays to honour. But it doesn’t work like that.
Today, Mr Pickles explained the delay to the House of Commons:
The investigators PwC have informed me the council has considerably delayed the investigation by delaying the provision of key information or simply not providing it at all. This is simply not acceptable and I am consequently extending the period for PwC to report. The cost will be met by the council. Whether the council likes it or not, this investigation will be thorough and comprehensive and I will update the House in due course.
Yes, there’s an element of politics in the language, but given it is PwC itself telling the Secretary of State the delays have been caused by the council, it’s serious stuff.
I have no idea what information the council is failing to provide. It could be a deliberate delaying tactic by the town hall’s lawyers (loose-tongued interim monitoring officer Meic Sullivan-Gould is in charge, so fear not taxpayers!); there’s some speculation they are considering an expensive Judicial Review on the audit.
That could also be the reason why the council is also refusing to supply me and other journalists a key spreadsheet. The day after the Panorama programme, Takki Sulaiman, the Head of Timely Communications, issued a statement to say the BBC had got its sums wrong. He said only £1.6m of the latest grants round had been awarded to organisations which had a Somali or Bengali CEO, chair or applicant. Panorama had accused Mayor Lutfur Rahman of increasing funding to Bengali and Somali groups by £2.1million to £3.6million.
We asked the council for a detailed breakdown of its numbers.
Last week, they refused the FoI request by relying on a Section 22 exemption, namely that the “information is being re-evealuated and it is intended to publish the information through the appropriate channels”. When I called for an explanation, an officer told me they were waiting for the PwC audit to finish because this information was being examined by them.
So I asked Will Kenyon, the PwC partner in charge of the audit, whether he had been consulted about the FoI request/refusal and whether he had asked for the answer to be delayed.
He replied:
As far as I am aware, your FOI request to the council has not been raised with us at any stage, nor has there been any discussion concerning the publication of the information you refer to.
So while the council was exceptionally quick to fire off its “rebuttal” statement in the wake of Panorama, it has been characteristically slow in providing the proof.
And still they complain when people ask “What have they got to hide?”
Do you stand by your earlier statement about not believing that there will be any evidence of outright fraud? Or has this development suggested otherwise to you?
Also, why would the council want a judicial review of the audit? That’s a nonsense, surely even by LBTH standards?
I notice that we, the council tax payers, are paying for the delay. Wouldn’t it be lovely if that extra expense came out of the councillors personal allowances, eh? (All together now – “Wouldn’t it be lov-er-ley!” – with apologies to Eliza Dolittle.)
Tim.
How predictable! They really don’t help themselves do they?
How about we all write to Eric Pickles and ask him to bring back the surcharge for all Mayors and Councillors who act ‘ultra vires’ and spend money without proper authority and proper process? It’s about time politicians had a major incentive to do their jobs properly.
I don’t believe – although I may be wrong – that the reason given for refusing to supply the information asked for is allowable under the legislation.
This is what it says on the ICO website – and I read that as meaning the Mayor and Council are now in breach of the FOI Act and the case now needs to move to the Internal Review stage. If they refuse to do this then you can start the process of escalating it to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
[QUOTE]Q: Can a public authority refuse a request?
Yes. The Act contains reasons why a public authority may withhold some kinds of information, such as if its release would prejudice national security or commercial interests…..
Q: The public authority has refused my request. What can I do next?
Firstly, you’ll need to exhaust the public authority’s internal complaints procedure, known as the internal review. When doing so, it my be helpful if you respond to any specific reasons given by the public authority for refusing your request. If the public authority continues to withhold information you’ve asked for, we may be able to help.[UNQUOTE]
You might also want to try asking for the information in a different way. Try asking for the spreadsheet in the form that existed AS AT THE DATE of the Mayor’s decision to spend money in the way he chose to.
That means the fact that they might be representing the information in a different way in future is irrelevant to the request – since you are making your request time specific.
Another course of action is of course that those Councillors who are not supporters of the Mayor can also ask why the information has not been supplied and can seek to discuss this at Scrutiny and Full Council.
Over to the Councillors – let’s see what they can do……..
Next Overview & Scrutiny meeting is 22nd July. Ironically the Audit meeting is going on now, it started at 5.30pm today!
One more thought
Try asking for the list of information the Mayor has been asked to provide for the Audit and the list of information the Mayor has not provided according to the timeline laid down!
That’s a question which can be addressed to both PWC and the Mayor and Full Council.
My FOI request was heavily redacted; https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/communications_regarding_tv_prog
From: Trial by Jeory Reply-To: Trial by Jeory Date: Monday, 30 June 2014 17:29 To: Glen McCarty Subject: [New post] PwC complains to Pickles about council delays in providing information: Welcome to our world
WordPress.com trialbyjeory posted: “For a council perpetually under the cosh, Tower Hamlets doesn’t exactly help itself in the matter of public perception. While I and many other journalists are used to being delayed by the Communications and Freedom of Information departments (actually,”
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/communications_regarding_tv_prog
I think Pickle’s is playing pathetic politics by using parliamentary privileges. I have heard that PWC inspectors spent a month looking using their initial remit but found nothing so they went back to Pickle’s who then instructed them to find something to save him from embarrasment. So PWC widened the remit to which the Council challenged them and refused to comply as their scope was clearly political and not keeping to the original remit of the inspection.
I hear this has annoyed Pickle’s to no end particularly by the likelihood of the Council seeking a Judicial Review which would leave poor Pickle’s in a real ‘pickle’.
Really? Where did you hear this from? Do you think Pickles has misled Parliament?
Ajay – What total rubbish.
The way I see things is that tower hamlets is local government and it must be accountable to central government – LBTH / THF / communications department is not a state within England that can do what it wants
…and the Mayor claims he doesn’t understand why LBTH comes in for so much criticism. Perhaps he should also read the Electoral Commission’s damning report about the shambles in the recent elections.
Here’s a link to the letter sent to Stephen Halsey at Tower Hamlets from the senior civil servant in charge of the issue (Paul Rowsell, Deputy Director of Democracy at DCLG).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letter-from-paul-rowsell-to-tower-hamlets
Here is the actual pdf of the letter (not sure if it will open):
Click to access 140630_-_Paul_Rowsell_to_SH_-_final.pdf
In reading the letter it is clear that TH council is planning a judicial review and have notified DCLG of their intention.
So the poor Tower Hamlets council tax payer pays the cost of the over run AND the judicial review. Just fantastic
Yes, that’s about the size of it James.
Only it’s not all LBTH Council Tax payers who will be stumping up the bill. Those on benefits have been protected from cuts thus far, and we can all see (well, guess, because we aren’t allowed to be told) where the TH grants are going.
Amazing that our non-racist mayor is both ramping up his costs and increasing his spending. I wonder who will be making up the shortfall …. sky pixies?
Tim.
This whole Tower Hamlets situation is strange and is getting stranger. Just let the truth out LBTH it’s the best thing on something like this. Looks like you are doing everything you can from being held accountable. And our tax money is paying for this.
Tower Hamlets Council Statement – 1 July 2014
Judicial Review launched over Pickles failure to provide reasons for intervention
Tower Hamlets Council today filed papers at the High Court seeking permission for a judicial review over the Secretary of State’s failure to provide reasonable grounds for PwC’s best value inspection announced in April 2014.
Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman said,
“The Council has cooperated with the inspection team from the outset and this will continue whilst we attempt to secure reasonable clarification centred on the justification of the audit. In addition the Department for Communities and Local Government has failed to provide the council with any cost estimates for the audit apart from the vague statement that costs are likely to be ‘within £1million’. This cost is to be borne by local taxpayers and this lack of transparency – over what is being audited and under what grounds -is not in line with the principles of public sector transparency that the Secretary of State has himself championed.”
The high costs of the audit are in part due to the team of 24 auditors used by PwC which dwarfs anything the Audit Commission would have deployed for such an exercise. It is estimated that a full root and branch inspection would have cost the Audit Commission approximately £100,000 – significantly less than the £1miilion estimated for the smaller best value inspection.
We estimate that in the region of 10 million separate data and information items have been requested to date indicating a significant widening of the initial direction and focus stated in the Secretary of State’s letter dated 4th April 2014.
Further matters will be expanded upon in due course.
Ends
An interesting upping of the ante.
Either Rahman genuinely has nothing to hide or he is desperately trying to call Pickles’ bluff. It’ll be very interesting to see what Pickles does.
(One wonders who will be paying for the judicial review that is being requested by Rahman. Oh, hang on …. )
Tim.
“10 million separate data and information items”?? I’d love to see how they calculated that? Pie in the sky, back of the envelope figures.
Unless they’re counting individual rows of Excel spreadsheets, it would take the auditors years to go through that many separate items. Not to mention that I can’t believe that there actually are 10 million separate pieces of data and information associated with the subject of the enquiry.
As a qualified acceptant who has been audited many times by PWC, I agree the 10 million separate data items is complete rubbish. There might be one request to provide all invoices paid by the council over the last year which might generate one spreadsheet with millions of cells but downloading it from any normal system only takes maybe a few hours or maybe an overnight batch run.
http://towerhamletsitsyourmoney.co.uk
This website shows some of the problems facing PwC. PDFs of documents instead of a proper database which can be interrogated every which way. If this had been in place at LBTH then all queries could be efficiently answered.
Further, https://m.facebook.com/towerhamletsitsyourmoney?refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FEZwSm73Juq&_rdr
highlights some of the queries.
The histograms of distribution by postcode is very interesting too. E1 has the highest spend over £300k. My E1 postcode has zero. I wonder why?
Should’ve said my E1 sub postcode has none.
I guess those who were planning to open their champaign bottles to celebrate their ‘arrest’, conviction and jailing of Lutfur (resulting from the Auditor report) will just have to wait a bit longer.
Don’t worry guys, keep the faith as he is sure to go down in this world if not he will surely roast in hell for daring to take on the British establishment and defending his communities from central government bullying.
How dare he behaves like this in England? Bloody immigrants thinking they own this country !! I say send them all back with the ships they sailed in!!
I agree strongly with your final sentence
One of the effects of this situation is the debasement of the word ‘community”. What does Lutfur”s communities mean? Whatever it means it doesn”t appear to include anyone who is not Bangladeshi. See my previous post re E1.
I said from the outset PwC would not find anything significant and it looks like they clearly haven’t. To save their and Pickles’ fat arse, it appears PwC have found a new angle to attack the Council.
This is getting bloody ridiculous and I am getting pissed off with this constant finger pointing and endless barrage of attack on the mayor and the Council. Someone better find something substantive quickly or shut the f**k up.
I am glad the Council has asked for judicial review of the decision to audit because I want to know why Pickles felt necessary to send in the inspectors. Someone independent has to review and decided if it was justifiable.
Someone is going to pay for all this and it ain’t going to be just the taxpayers. Pickles better hope his boys find something because if Rahman escapes, he’ll be on the firing line for sure.
Eric was expecting this move by Lutfur. He is at least two steps ahead.
GM, I’d very much like to believe you are right. Do you have information to this effect, or are you being optimistic?
Tim.
=> Imran
Scared of the possible verdict? Seems a flimsy reason for a JR. Why should LBTH be exempt from audits, even unexpected audits ? LBTH is probably the WORSE local authority in the south-east of England.
I inevitably think Snow White and his 7 dwarfs and numerous hangers-on may not be ultra spotless – just my personal opinion.
Curious Cat
[…] « PwC complains to Pickles about council delays in providing information: Welcome to our world […]
Imran – Your post is full of a lot of anger and it would appear that you firmly believe our council can do no wrong. I would be the first to say they have done some very good things. But are you seriously saying that public bodies, wherever they are, should not be subject to financial scrutiny? You say that Pickles should hurry up, but his announcement in Parliament was clear. So if TH wants this matter closed quickly I suggest they supply asap the requested documents. Surely Imran you can see that “if” TH are withholding required documents it looks more suspicious?
Oh Dear.
What can the matter be ?
One problem is LBTH’s staff, yes the over-paid top staff, have wasted public funds by failing to provide proper computer systems to manage the accounts and other records of their local authority.
Obviously proper local government does not exist in TH. The blame should go the LBTH staff and to cerntral government’s civil servants for allowing the TH mess to occur.
In whose interests could sub-standard, confused and jumbled record-keeping be ? It is not the way to run any business, so why have staff, councillors and central government ignored the problem ? Insufficient brain cells or just incompetence ?
Why did it take LBTH 2 months to supply financial data to PWC?
Curious Cat
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