When the BeFuddled Party took the majority on Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council one of the first things Deputy Dictator Cllr Eugenie Sherry tried to do was introduce her own idea of an ‘Open, Honest and Transparent’ Council.
During the first ever Full Town Council Meeting, held under the new regime at the Hayloft Road Palace Retirement Home for Bemused and Bewildered BeFuddled Party ex-Teachers (and Others), Cllr Sherry proposed that the public be banned from taking notes, or recording the meeting using either film or audio recording methods.
Unfortunately her plan failed at the first hurdle after the Smalltown Temporary Executive Administration Manager (STEAM), Con Slurs, told her that under the Local Government Act, and indeed, SaDTC’s own Standing Orders, the public have the right to make recordings if they so desire.
Undaunted, Dictator Sherry then made up her own rules for the Human Resources Sub-Committee when she took over the chairmanship from Squire Teflon.
Previously, the HRSC had always published an agenda in advance of meetings as well as minutes afterwards detailing the decisions made. Often basic and heavily redacted in terms of what was included, due to the nature of the business conducted sometimes containing personal information about the SaDTC employees, they did at least exist.
Under Cllr Sherry’s watch even acknowledgment of the existence of the
HRSC has disappeared, with the meetings not even being included on the list of committee meeting dates on the calendar.
Sub-Committees differ from normal Committees in that the decisions made
do not have to be ratified by the Full Council, but there is still a legal requirement for the decisions made to be recorded and available for the public to view. A Sub-committee can also include
non-Councillors, for example a Solicitor or, in the case of Human Resources matters, an HR Specialist.
Whilst members of the public can be excluded from attending the meetings, due to the confidential business which may be discussed, acknowledgment of the existence of the Sub-Committee and the matters up for discussion are not confidential and therefore there is no reason why agendas and minutes and even the date of the meetings should be kept Top Secret.
A sub committee MUST answer to a parent committee. This means it must produce and turn in reports (minutes in effect) – sub committees are not a law unto themselves. The SaDTC HRSC reports to the Finance and Misappropriation Committee, although you wouldn’t know it, because Deputy Dictator Sherry has never given a report on behalf of her HRSC.
The last reference to the HR Sub-Committee on the SaDTC website concerns the meeting chaired by Cllr Sherry in May 2022, which was her first meeting in charge. The agenda confirms that the matters to be discussed would including signing the minutes of the previous committee (held in March
2022, chaired by Squire Teflon and detailing the previous Smalltown Head Administration Guru, Tanya Winter’s resignation). Further matters for discussion were the employment of a temporary contractor to cover the sickness of the SaD gravedigger and to confirm the date of the next meeting. Not exactly Top Secret topics.
The minutes for the meeting of March 2022 were the last set ever published for the HRSC. Whilst the HRSC meetings have always been ‘private’ – i.e. not open to the public, Cllr Sherry took this to mean that the details of matters discussed did not need to be shared at all.
No sub committee is exempt from the Local Government Act. You can’t declare meetings in whole or in part as confidential without giving a reason why you think the matters to be discussed are exempt under the Local Government Act. This means that in effect, you might have to open the meeting, declare the meeting to be confidential and kick the public out – but you do have to be able to justify doing so. Simply saying ‘this is a private meeting’ is not enough to justify the exemption.
Nowhere on the last published agenda does it mention a discussion to stop producing agendas and minutes, so it would appear that Cllr Sherry did not seek nor obtain permission from the other committee members to withhold the information from the public, instead the decision was made by Cllr Sherry acting unilaterally and was approved by the Smalltown Admisitration Guru (SAG), Katie Global, who is obviously not as au fait with the Local Government Act as her predecessors were.
Using this cover the HRSC has been able to
- authorise a one-off payment of £500 each to the Council Administration Staff as a bonus for doing their jobs.
- discuss and attempt to resolve the problems associated with Cllr McCads inappropriate behaviour towards the Smalltown and Dullbridge Smalltown Administration Deputy (SADSAD), Eileen Mutton, advising Ms Mutton to make a formal complaint.
- decide to employ the services of Top Secret Consultants to come up with the answer to the question ‘What is a White Elephant Enclosure’
- Work on a job description for a new Smalltown Culture and Arts Manager
(SCAM) thus rejecting the approach from Blitz Cinema owner, Padraig Irishh, without giving him the courtesy of discussing the matter before a meeting of either the White Elephant Enclosure Mismanagement Committee or the Full Council. Instead his approach has been dismissed before it has even been heard.
Whilst these matters could come under the title of ‘confidential’ it is the detail which should be kept out of the public realm – not the broad subject matter.
The electorate has the right to know how the Council spend our Council Tax, figures for all other expenditure are documented in detail, however the HRSC has its own detailed budget and as long as it doesn’t overspend, it can do as it pleases with the money. If it does spend more than the approved budget it should ask the parent committee to approve the extra expenditure. Unfortunately, the HRSC Committee Budget has also fallen under the ‘Top Secret’ heading, so residents have no idea what any money will be spent on.
Hardly in the spirit of ‘Open, Honest and Transparent’ governance.
Minutes must have been prepared, because records have to be kept, so perhaps someone should put in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to ascertain exactly what has been going on asking – for the agendas for all the HRSC meetings held over the past 12 months, together with the minutes(however redacted) for the meetings.
It could make interesting reading, especially when Cllr Sherry and the SAG try to explain their justification for exemption, given that every other Parish, District and County Council publish agendas and minutes for their Human Resources meetings – including the BeFuddled Party controlled All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council.