Me, Vexatious? (17/03/15)

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Well after a nail-biting wait of 28 days North Lanarkshire Council's response to my FOI Review Request has been underwhelming to say the least.

Not that anything surprises me these days as far as NLC is concerned, except perhaps the lack of pride within the Council which seems terribly reluctant to investigate properly the deliberate removal of key information from a report to the Council's Corporate Management Team dating back to August 2005.

In essence NLC's response to my FOI Review Request has been to say that they don't hold any information about the now notorious CMT report beyond the incomplete details that the Council has already provided.

Not only that the Council goes on to say that they consider my latest requests to be 'vexatious' which is a dangerous road to go down because the last Council to lock horns with me in this way (neighbouring South Lanarkshire) ended up with egg all over its face after a mauling in the UK Supreme Court.

So I shall weigh up my options for a few day and ponder what to do next because North Lanarkshire has a big day coming up on Thursday (19 March) when the Council is due to ratify the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on equal pay - at long last.

For the moment at least Thursday's meeting is the most important item on my agenda, but once that's out the way I will be devoting my energies to other things, vexatious or otherwise.



NLC Update (16/02/15)


Here's my latest email exchange with North Lanarkshire Council over the previously secret report to the Corporate Management Team (CMT) dated 11 August 2005.

In my view the Council is still withholding crucial information from this document which relate to the Social Work Department and the steps taken by senior managers to cut the costs of implementing new pay arrangements.

As regular readers know, ultimately these new pay arrangements were introduced in such a way as to favour traditional male jobs over their female colleagues and that's what I am seeking to get to the bottom of in this latest FOI exchange.



Dear June


Corporate Management Team Report - 11 August 2005

I refer to the letter from North Lanarkshire Council's Freedom of Information Coordinator dated 13 February 2015.



I would like to submit the following FOI Review Request in light of the Council's failure to respond to the following specific points in my previous letter dated 4 February 2015.


In the penultimate paragraph of my letter to Neil McKay I requested a copy of the original CMT report submitted by North Lanarkshire Council to the Employment Tribunals and I asked for my letter of 4 February to be considered as a formal FOI request, in this respect. 

The reason this information is potentially very important is that the Council has created the most terrible 'guddle' over what information is actually contained in the various CMT Appendices and I wish to confirm whether or not the Council has been consistent in disclosing information to me, the Employment Tribunal and the Scottish Information Commissioner. 

As you probably know, the Council claimed during a formal investigation by SIC that Appendix 5 of the CMT report was missing but then, all of a sudden, the document was found although, by this time, the Council had decided that Appendix 5 was really Appendix 4, and that Appendix 4 was really Appendix 5. 

In any event I believe that having sight of the information as provided by the Council to the Employment Tribunals will help clear up this confusion which is why I submitted a new FOI request on 4 February 2015.

For example, Appendix 5 (or 4) is supposed to be an analysis of the movement off the 'green circles', i.e. the reductions in the projected cost of the green circles, but this information is missing from the Appendix. Whether the Appendix is numbered  5 or 4 is really beside the point because the more far important issue is that the contents of the Appendix are not being properly disclosed and, in my view, the Council has a duty under FOISA to explain itself. 

In my letter to Neil McKay I also made reference to Appendix 5 and Appendix 7 of the CMT report because important financial information has clearly been redacted or selectively removed. For obvious reasons, this vital data must have been included in the report when the document was originally considered by the CMT on 11 August 2005. 

In his letter dated 13 February 2015 Neil McKay says that "the Council does not hold any further information relative to the CMT report other than that which has already been provided to you", but this cannot possibly be true because the original financial information must have come from the Council's Finance Department which would hold and retain this data independently. 

So, I simply do not believe that the information I have requested cannot be retrieved from the Council's data systems and in light of the mess the Council created previously over the 'missing' Appendix 5 (or 4) I would ask that you look at this matter again very carefully.

In my view I have no need to submit a further FOI request in respect of Appendix 5 and Appendix 7 because the Council is already the subject of a disclosure order from SIC in relation to the CMT report and I would expect the Council to be as helpful as possible in providing the missing information, as required by the disclosure order and in light of the Council's wider obligations under FOISA. 

If the missing data in respect of Appendix 7 and Appendix 7 cannot now be provided, I would expect a full and proper explanation as to why this information is no longer held by the Council's Finance Department.

As to the reasons why certain information is missing from the CMT report, I do indeed believe that the Council should be investigating how this happened and who is responsible for removing information from an official and hugely significant Council document.

I fully accept that such an investigation is beyond the scope of FOISA, but that does not make it any less necessary or desirable from the standpoint of good governance and as this information certainly seems to have been removed deliberately, the question arises as to whether there has been 'misconduct in public office' which is why I asked in a previous communication whether the Council had involved Police Scotland. 

I have dealt with many Scottish councils in my time and if I were a chief official in North Lanarkshire (or an equal pay claimant) I would certainly wish to know why specific parts of the CMT report are missing, especially as the information involved relates to the Social Work Department where the largest single group of equal pay claimants is based.  
If North Lanarkshire does not now vigorously investigate these matters and fails to hold those responsible to account, I suspect it will further damage the Council's credibility in the eyes of the public, but this of course does not amount to a valid reason for refusing the release the information which I have requested under FOISA.

I look forward to you reply and would be grateful if you could respond to me by email at: markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards





Mark  

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