Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harris & Haley Deselected
Councillors Harris and Hayley have been deselected by the St Ann's Labour Party. This means they will not be standing for St Ann's in next year's local elections. Haringey still faces the possibility that one or both of them will be selected for other wards however.
Read more in the Journal......
Read more in the Journal......
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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For the vast majority of the country, we're far better off.
Maybe Brown and Cameron could also be deselected from the merged, blurry party of middle, now that would make me happy.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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The Council has a formal Member Enquiry procedure and any councillor can ask for information, or request action. These normally get a response within ten working days. This works reasonably well. Its main weakness tends to be dealing with the immediate problem, rather than tackling the causes.
By law - and set out in Haringey Council's Constution – elected local councillors are also entitled to information on a "need to know" basis "to fullfil their duties". From time to time I’ve used this privilege to insist on seeing documents, or getting information.
Very occasionally I’ve made requests under the Freedom of Information Act (F.o.I.) to uncover information when I believed I wasn’t getting the “whole story”.
One example was the unlawful yellow junction boxes outside Arriva Bus Garage in Philip Lane N15. People can read about it here on my Flickr pages.
Among my F.o.I. questions, I asked what Cllr Haley had known about the unlawful junction boxes.
It turned out that officers had simply not told him. Between May 2006 when he became “Cabinet” member responsible and February 2008 when Cllr Ray Dodds first raised it with him, Cllr Haley, like the rest of us, was kept entirely in the dark.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Alan, this is really helpful post, even as I fear that Hugh may shut down the thread he started!
I was absolutely flabbergasted to learn within the last 18 months, that a Trustee on the Alexandra Board, was refused information that they needed to know in order to fulfil their duties. There have been severe and chronic governance problems at this Charity. When the Trustee appealed to the Chief Executive (Ita O'Donovan), she suggested (in an effort to be helpful) to the Trustee that the Freedom of Information Act be used to obtain the document.
When information is concealed from our elected representatives, it speaks of a culture and system that has become deeply dysfunctional and to my mind, it strikes at the heart of democracy.
I have used FoI a few times and the statutory time limit (20 days) is observed as often as not in the Breach as in the observance. Sometimes there have been ridiculous excuses, prevarication and dissembling. The impression given is that sometimes officers are truly reluctant to share information – information they forget the public are paying for.
How often do officers refuse reasonable requests by Councillors for information?
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THE other odd thing, revealed by Alan's comments, is the relative status of a request of the council for info as a Member's Enquiry and a request made for info made under the Freedom of Information Act
(The FoI Act is wide in scope: according to the Act, any enquiry made for a document or information in any form, provided it identifies the requester, must be treated as an enquiry under the Act, even if the Act is not cited.)
According to Alan's experience and the AP Trustee's experience, not only do Council Members have no special privilege to information, their Member's Enquiry appears to entitle them to less than if the request were made by an ordinary member of the public. Surely elected representatives of the public should be entitled to at least as much information from council officers as is the public?
It seems bizarre.
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Clive, it's not bizarre. There are two separate pieces of law. As we all saw with MPs' expenses, the Freedom of Information Act can be a powerful tool - in many cases more effective than councillors' "need to know". And under the F.o.I. Act councillors are in the same position as ordinary members of the public.
Councillors do have special privileges to access information. So we can sometimes get more information. I've used the latter to uncover some dubious things. But this isn't a general privilege. We have to demonstrate a "need to know". Presumably that's what Dr O'Donovan was advising the councillor you mentioned.
Getting back to my colleague Cllr Haley and the yellow junction boxes, these particular F.o.I, requests were about what Haringey officers had been doing or not doing between December 2005 and May 2006. Specifically: issuing 3,746 fines (PCNs) on two unlawful yellow junction boxes. Cllr Haley was nominally the "cabinet" member responsible from May 2006.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on
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Funny he never says that the replacement for his old foe, Cllr. Hayley, is his wife!
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Am I alone in thinking it's bizarre that one Labour Member has to use the FoI Act to find out what a fellow Labour Member is doing? If what Stanton says is true, did he not raise the issue with the Leader and Chief Whip? If so, what happened? If not, why not?
Personalities aside, this is a very sorry situation to be in and highlights the need for political change. But I would say that, would I?
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Permalink Reply by frank demster on
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Yawn!
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