I reproduce below extracts from my submission. I would encourage as many people as possible to complain. Please feel free to use some of my words. The Ombudsman website is http://www.lgo.org.uk/
Please explain briefly what your complaint is about, including dates of any incidents and names of any officers or staff of the body complained about, if known. Please also explain why you are not happy with the response from the body concerned
Background. In
2011, Thanet District Council (TDC) agreed with Transeuropa Ferries Ltd (TEF) a
deferred payment arrangement for the use the facilities of the TDC owned Port
of Ramsgate. This agreement led to TEF running up a debt to TDC of an estimated
£3.4million over a 2 year period. Knowledge
of this agreement was deliberately restricted to a small group of senior
Council Officers and elected politicians.
Complaint. By keeping the agreement with TEF secret TDC
acted in contravention of its Constitutional rules and in so doing prevented meetings of the Full Council, the Governance
and Audit Panel and the Overview and Scrutiny Panel from discussing, reviewing
and/ or approving or disapproving the agreement with TEF (I will provide
separate & detailed evidence of the particular constitutional rules which I
believe to have been broken).
That TDC failed to
seek the advice of the European Commission as to whether its agreement with TEF
contravened EU State Aid regulations (I will provide separate evidence of which
EU State Aid regulations I believe to have been broken).
That in relation to its agreement with TEF, TDC has failed to follow it’s own Financial Procedure Rules (I will provide
separate and detailed evidence of the Financial Procedure Rules which I believe
to have been broken).
That TDC, in contravention of accounting best practice and
the requirement for local councils to be open and transparent about their
financial affairs, failed to explicitly include
reference to TEFs debt in its 2011-12 accounts. This failure deprived local
people of the opportunity to raise questions with the Council and/ or District
Auditor about TDCs agreement with TEF and the large and growing debt it had given to rise to
by the end of that financial year.
That TDC, in contravention of budget management best
practice and the requirement for local councils to be open and transparent
about their financial affairs , failed
to notify its elected Councillors of
TEFs large and growing with the Council when
they met to set and monitor the budget during the financial years 2011 –
12 and 2012 - 13
These increases will, in my opinion, have an adverse
financial impact upon me as a TDC taxpayer
and purchaser of TDC services and many thousands of other local
taxpayers. These increases will be brought about as a result on serious maladministration and could have been avoided
had TDCs agreement with TEF be open to debate and scrutiny by all 56 elected
councillors and the public.
Although I am an elected TDC Councillor and would not
normally be allowed to submit a complaint to the Ombudsman about the Council I
am a member of, I understand that I do I have right to complain if I am
personally affected by the maladministration of the Council, which as explained
above, I believe I am.
What do you think the
body should do to put things right?
The Council should review its Constitutional rules to ensure
that large and significant debts of over £250,000 to the Council cannot be
allowed to accumulate in secret, without all elected councillors being notified
of such debts.
The sickness of Thanet puppet councillors with business men pulling the strings and no cooperation with the residents, always carrying out their own agenda they dislike you not for what you do wrong but for what you do right carry on letting the world know what is going on down here.
ReplyDeleteStargazer.
Ian, You make no mention of the Council paying all the costs of running a ferry port with no ferry income for three years.
ReplyDeleteShould there not also be a complaint to the auditors concerning the accounting? If the auditor doesn't 'fess up to making mistakes is there not a professional body who could be approached?
ReplyDeleteI will be complaining to the District Auditor about the Councils 2012-13 accounts in July when they are published an open for inspection by the public. I am also hoping that Ombudsman will make comment on what has happened. The only real way to get to the bottom of this mess will be to have an independent public enquiry which I doubt Councillors from the Labour and Tory parties will support because their leaderships are implicated in the secret deal with TEF
DeleteThe reason we need an independent inquiry is that we don't yet know if this is the whole sorry mess or whether there is further scandal to emerge. With council officers refusing to hand over documents we can't know that we've got the bottom of it. Incidentally, the excuse that revealing documents might prejudice legal action is a load of cobblers. The Transeuropa debacle isn't going to be heard in front of a jury. It's going to be decided by judges or, more likely, settled out of court and you anyone who went into court claiming they couldn't get a fair trial because the judge had been influenced would get their ears boxed.
ReplyDeleteWhat's your view on a potential OSP T&F Group looking into the TEF debt, given your comments about a cover up by Labour and Conservative Cllrs? Do you still believe such a group could be independent enough to do what you've asked for it to do in the last OSP meeting?
ReplyDeleteHi James I am happy for Overview and Scrutiny to investigate but in my opinion there needs to be an independent and public enquiry. The people who agreed the deal with TEF are the most senior officers and councillors of the Council who, in my opinion, have broken and subverted constitutional rules. Its hardly likely that an internal OSP enquiry will name and shame and these people whereas a independent public enquiry could well do this.
Delete