Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
MI5: their current operations & the Finsbury Park Stakeholder Group
IT WILL come as no surprise to anyone, that details of the current operations of M15 are not publicly available.
"Not publicly available" ...
was the official and remarkable description of the status of Minutes of the Finsbury Park Stakeholder group, a body that early in the year, was claimed would ensure that residents have a voice on the future of events in our park [q.v.]
I made a further Member's enquiry on 31 July; Councillor enquiries are supposed to provide a quicker response than a regular FoI request. Following a delay of one month – that included discussion with the Chief Executive of Haringey Council – I managed to extract copies of the formerly top-secret Minutes (attached).
I hope that in future we can avoid the nonsense of restricting public access to this group, that may yet benefit from more scrutiny and transparency.
Clive Carter
Haringey Councillor
Liberal Democrat Party
Tags for Forum Posts: finsbury park, finsbury park stakeholder group
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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You still do not answer the three questions.
Here's another one - what is the " issue" you refer to ? It's not clear.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Emina
I think some further clarity is needed here so that you and residents can be clear of the facts.
I didn't received any minutes from the February meeting so I couldn't have passed them to Cllr Carter. In hindsight this seemed strange, and as I no longer have access to my council emails, I checked with Simon Farrow and he confirmed that no minutes had been sent to ward councillors.
I have explained the reasons why we didn't attend the meeting but since you regard our absence as a neglect of duty let me clarify further. When the strategy group was established it was decided that it should have representation from one Stroud Green councillor and one Harringay councillor and that both political parties should be represented, to satisfy that criteria only Cllr Adamou from Harringay ward was eligible to attend, which I understand she did.
So, as you will see we didn't simply delegate responsibility for Finsbury Park to cllrs of another ward, it was how council officers wanted the strategy group set up and since we worked so closely liasing with our ward colleagues in Stroud Green it seemed a sensible approach.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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You seem to suffer from the delusion that our local Cllrs possess the power to fix the important things they don't like, even though this forum and you yourself are constantly complaining about the things that are not and cannot be fixed - HMO problems for instance.
So, if you admit that the HMO problem cannot be fixed, I'm sure you'll grant that every Cllr wants it fixed, so how can you claim that the Cabinet have power? If Officers wanted, they could fix it on their own (by fierce inspection) but Cllrs? Ineffective. Could Cllrs maybe insist that Officers impose a fierce inspection regime? They would if they could, but they can't.
Why can't they fix the many problems we have if they have so much power?
You might say, because they are fixing the wrong things but what things are able to be fixed by Cllrs? Can you point to anything major that shows that the four or five senior Cllrs have more power than the 3800 Officers you seem to think they have precise control over?
Does nothing get done that the Cabinet have not ordained then?
What happens is that politicians set policy in certain areas (not many) and officers combine local and national policies (in many areas) in deciding what to carry out. They 'report' to Cllrs but Cllrs have no expertise, so are not qualified on any but the most general issues. In a job you might consider a person like that to be a 'token' boss - maybe you need to smile at them and tell them what they want to hear, but they're part of the problem, not the solution.
Officers carrying out policy have a huge amount of discretion as to what they can do. They make local policy all the time - they are the ones with the appropriate skills after all, and many have a lot more experience and objective local knowledge than Cllrs.
You were a Cllr yet you don't seem able to come up with any examples showing that senior Cllrs, undiluted by Officers, have real power to change things. I don't suppose you can even come up with any examples where Cllrs righted any serious wrongs that Officers have implemented. There might be one or two examples in the last fifty years, but hardly any.
Let's take planning - as you'll agree, something that has a huge effect on all of us for most of our lives. Cllrs do not generally make any difference at all in the huge developments - they follow 'expert' recommendations as to what can and what cannot be done - bet they are even advised that such and such a government grant is available to build a new estate etc, so they don't even come up with a 'vision' - they have the vision imposed by the available resources.
Yes, they might be allowed to choose some of the colours for the schemes, but, say, the amount of affordable housing? Not on your nelly. The right-wing made it possible for a developer to say 'we can't afford it' so that's another power Cllrs do not have - they do what the market insists they do, because Officers tell them that's what they have to do and it cannot be changed.
Promoting the delusion that Cllrs run our lives is not helping us change things for the better. Get real!
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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You're argument amounts to saying that if councillors collectively can't do everything then they can do nothing.
What I say, Chris, is that our councillors are elected on the basis that they will collectively exercise power to make changes in "important things". And actually they can make a difference. Just look around London and see what other boroughs are doing. Talk to Catherine West and ask her whether she thinks councillors are as powerless as you insist. Most important ask her if Council Leaders are as powerless as you keep telling me.
But let's go back to Secrecy: the point of this discussion thread. The "Leader", the "cabinet" and the Majority Group should say to senior officers that documents - including minutes of meetings - should be published in full unless there are very clear and narrow legal reasons why not.
Openness and Transparency should be the default position. Then the Leader, cabinet and Majority Group should tell the Chief Executive (CE) that he or she will make that happen. And if it doesn't happen then tell the CE to get the senior officers to stop blocking that policy.
And if it's the Chief Executive him/herself who is the blockage, then the leader and her cabinet should ask her/him to take a day's "gardening leave" and "consider their position". (Two useful euphemisms.)
If - as you seem to believe - the Tsarista Koberovna has no real power but is totally in thrall to Nikolai Walksputin then of course she should abdicate immediately.
Or are you suggesting that elected politicians are unable to change anything because they are in thrall to experts? Perhaps like the experts who told us there was nothing which could be done with the Endymion Road zebra crossing when they hadn't gone to look at it? Or that the oil slick on Hewitt Road was nothing to do with the traffic hump - at least until Gordon T went there with his camera and fruit-picking pole.
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I'm saying that you and many others think that Cllrs can do things they can't actually do. We're looking in the wrong place.
Of course they can make a difference- that's the challenge they face, but people think that they are responsible for a whole range of things they have no control over.
It is the Chief Exec who is to blame. The Cllrs have the responsibility, but they can't control the Chief Exec. If the Chief Exec decided to release all the documents held in secret, he would start be releasing a simple list of everything held in secret. Do Cllrs even know the extent of the secrecy? In other words, what is on that list? No, they don't.
As an example, to get these minutes released, the Cllr had to ask the Chief Exec. It's the Chief Exec and his cronies that are keeping info secret by default. It's the Chief Exec who can defeat the Cllrs by blinding them with IT 'limitations' and declarations that 'we do not have the budget'. That's why we don't have anything but the bare minimum of 'Open Data' - some councils make hundreds of datasets available to residents - not our Council, even though it has been claimed to benefit local economies.
Which Cllrs have the power to change that? None of them do.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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the Cllr had to ask the Chief Exec.
Chris, again I encourage you not make any assumptions about the involvement of the CEO in the release of this particular piece of information as you are liable to get it wrong.
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It was of course absurd that the Minutes of a "stakeholder" group for our park were ever described as "not publicly available" and there is responsibility for that somewhere. It was to treat the public as idiots, as outsiders, and the affairs of our local park as being equivalent to an MI5 operation.
The stakeholder group, lest we forget, was established to ensure that residents have a voice on the future of events in our park.
My second FoI on the private affairs of the FPSG, included a reading of the Riot Act, that:
- declined any offer of disclosure on the basis of no distribution and
- warned that any refusal would go to the Information Commissioner
I suspect that my reference to the FoI Act (and its Section 16 that requires helpfulness on the part of local authorities) may have been used, perversely, to delay the release.
It may have occurred to some officers that the Council could appear silly if they were forced to release this supposedly-secret data by the Information Commissioner.
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The Minutes aren't sensitive. The sensitivity over the Minutes arises because the group was set up in an attempt to compensate for the Cabinet's Events policies, next year's concerts intensification and the effect on our local park.
IMO, this group should either be wound down as a sop and sham or, it should be put on a proper, formal footing with published Agendas, Minutes, openness and transparency.
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Permalink Reply by Cllr Emina Ibrahim on
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Untill June this was a Lib Dem majority meeting. Did the 5 Cllrs make any representations requesting that minutes be made publically available?
Answer the question I have been asking you for the last 3 months or more. I am happy to request that the minutes be made publically available
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I note that you intend to keep what passed between you and the Chief Exec secret - how ironic, Clive!
As others have said, Clive, here are the people who were at the meeting:
Cllr Ed Butcher, Representing Stroud Green Ward
Cllr Gina Adamou, Representing Harringay Ward
Alistair Smith, representing Friends of Finsbury Park (AS)
Kit Greveson, representing Stroud Green Residents Association (KG)
Simon Farrow, Head of Client Services, Haringey (SF)They also bear responsibility for keeping the minutes secret. I'm sure they're all fine people, but it looks like you're playing politics to me. Guess there's not much else you can do, is there?
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it looks like you're playing politics to me. Guess there's not much else you can do, is there?
Chris, is there any chance you're missing the bigger picture?
In my opinion, that bigger picture is:
- The Council began the FPSG (for reasons discussed at length, here)
- The Council controls the FPSG (see here)
- The Council (Cabinet Member for Environment) decides who may be on the FPSG (ditto)
- The Council conducts FPSG meetings behind closed doors (ditto)
- The Council's official position – in response to a Member's Enquiry – was that the Minutes (are) not publicly available (ditto)
I did not seek the Minutes in order to pass them between individuals or Councillors, as some seem to suggest should have happened.
I sought an official release of the Minutes on behalf of the public, in order formally to place them in the public domain: something that, in face of Council secrecy, one might expect of an Opposition Member.
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Chris, when you write: "It is the Chief Exec who is to blame." I hope it isn't me who has misled you into thinking that is the real state of affairs.
To be completely clear: I made up the names Nikolai Walksputin and Tsarista Claire Koberovna. It was intended to be satire. And perhaps a bit ironic. And possibly even a little amusing.
It's nothing to do with datasets or all the other stuff I'm sure you know all about.
So let's keep it simple and straightforward. Does the elected Leader of a local council - and her close allies - set a tone of openness and transparency through practising and modelling it themselves? And instructing senior officers to do the same?
I realise you're desperate to hold on to the last shreds of your belief that the "leading" red-rosetted Tories are not really to blame for failing even to try opposing Tory Policies. But I have to tell you that they really do have to accept responsibility for their actions and inactions.
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We're all satirists on HoL aren't we? The lowest form of wit.
>>set a tone of openness and transparency
So the crime committed is that the Council leadership do not 'set a tone'?
You seem to wish to be wish to be the judge of the Council, presumably wishing to pass sentence once the jury (also you) agrees.
To continue to rely on unquantifiable notions as evidence means you can never be gainsaid, Alan. Who else but you can be definitive as to whether the leadership has or has not failed to 'set a tone'?
It's ridiculous Alan - beyond satire :)
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