Were led to believe Rick O’Farrell is the Interim Director of Place at Northumberland County Council.

Mr Smith who wrote to Price Waterhouse Coopers said:

“I will be objecting to these payments at the audit but you may wish to take immediate action to prevent any further waste of council taxpayers money.”


What will the audit committee spin doctor in Northumberland make of this?


 

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Tagged: Rick O’Farrell

MAY 27, 2014

South Tyneside: Mr Monkey hunt: New plea to stop spending taxpayers’ cash

Town Hall bosses today faced a renewed call to stop using taxpayers’ money in their pursuit of the notorious ‘Mr Monkey’ internet blogger.
 The website first appeared in 2008, making malicious claims about certain political figures in the borough.
South Tyneside Council backed a bid to discover the identity of those behind the Mr Monkey blogs on behalf of four plaintiffs who came under attack – South Tyneside Council leader Iain Malcolm, Coun Anne Walsh, the late councillor David Potts and council regeneration boss Rick O’Farrell.
It instructed Washington DC lawyers McDermott, Will & Emery to find who was responsible for the website, with the firm producing a dossier which said Mr Monkey was most likely a two-person operation and that a libel action would be “highly successful” if pursued through UK or US courts.
But to this date – and at a cost of about £150,000 – Mr Monkey has yet to be unmasked, some six years after the site first appeared.
That has infuriated George Smith CBE, president of South Shields Conservative Association, who has called for immediate action to prevent “further misuse of council taxpayer’s money.”
Mr Smith  believes the four the plaintiffs in the case – not the public – should have funded the legal action.
Town Hall officials say the legal action was taken because the council has a “duty of care” to protect employees.
But Mr Smith has written to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is to conduct South Tyneside Council’s annual audit, demanding it steps in.
He says: “Although any authority may indemnify individuals in ‘defending himself against legal proceedings brought by a third party’ they are ‘prohibited from indemnifying members or officers for the cost of taking legal action for slander or libel.’
“I will be objecting to these payments at the audit but you may wish to take immediate action to prevent any further waste of council taxpayers money.”
A spokesman for South Tyneside Council said: “This legal action was taken because the council has a duty of care to protect its employees from the kind of intimidation and harassment caused by the wilfully false and defamatory statements published on the blog.
“South Tyneside Council is satisfied that Section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972 gives the power to take the action that has been taken.”
June Elsom, who stood as an independent for Cleadon Park in last week’s Local Elections, asked Northumbria Police to investigate the matter, but a force spokesman said there was no cause for a criminal investigation.
The spokesman said: “We have received correspondence raising concerns around legal costs incurred by South Tyneside Council in relation to the ‘Mr Monkey’ blog.
“Advice has been given that as it stands, this is not a matter involving criminality and there is therefore nothing to indicate a criminal investigation should be launched at this stage.
“Should another body looking into the matter decide a referral to the police is appropriate then an investigation would be carried out.”
As part of the council’s courtroom pursuit of ‘Mr Monkey’ a former South Tyneside councillor was hit with a whopping £40,000 legal bill last year.
Mr Khan had launched an American courtroom bid to halt the search for the controversial blogger, which he said was a waste of public money.
But San Mateo County Court dismissed his anti-SLAPP motion (Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation), describing it as “frivolous”.
The council is chasing Mr Khan – who has always denied being behind the ‘Mr Monkey’ blog – for the extra legal costs it incurred as a result of his unsuccessful challenge.
A council spokesman said the authority was continuing to pursue that demand – although it is not known how much, if any, of the amount owed had so far been paid.
> As far as I was aware, Mr Monkey stopped publishing in 2009. Still online, though, at:  http://mrmonkeysblog.wordpress.com
Source – Shields Gazette,  27 May 2014
 

‘Nasty Party Gagging of Councillor Steven Bridgett of Rothbury shows how the Tories expect to Control the Northumberland media in future’

In a recent article we the laymen exposed Northumberland Conservatives designed control of the press through the transfer of responsibility from democratically elected Councillors who represent the people to a series of private companies that will not be covered by laws allowing media reporters into meetings dealing with Council Business.

Today they are going one step further by denying a member of the opposition access to be able to speak with, and report locally on the good works the employees of Northumberland County Council do each and every day.

Councillor Steven Bridgett from Rothbury an independent member of Council has regularly reported on the weather in the Coquet Valley, and which access routes have been gritted and are safe for people to use.

Many people are eternally grateful for his input as it can save locals hours of frustration and for people traveling alone through one of the UK’s most remote areas the ability to reach home or work safely and soundly is paramount. We the Laymen know that this is a service second to none provided by a thoroughly well meaning Local Councillor.

Don’t let these nasty ungrateful Tories who want to stop all news of their misdemeanours and poor management being released to the people across the County drag you down and I hope social media support for your efforts shows just how bad they are.

Council bullying report finally made public ‘so its not only Northumberland?’

When Northumberland County Councils auditor dug into matters to write what turned out to be his ’final report’ he commented on the bullying of officers, indicating some experienced difficulty with bullying.
We have been told that opposition Councillors spend as little time in County hall as possible pre or après meetings (apart from the tittle-tattlers) then one has to ask who are the bully’s?

A recent report into allegations of bullying at Ryedale DC, where a former top NCC officer secured the job as its chief executive was commissioned in 2017 and completed the following year.
It has finally been made public following a Freedom of Information request. The report found that staff were reduced to tears at the council, with public humiliation, emotional abuse and unmanageable workloads common, and some staff even left feeling suicidal as a result. The council, which covers one of the country’s largest areas, but with one of its smallest populations, underwent a major restructuring in 2015, with staff numbers reduced from 270 to 170.

A spokesman for the council said that since current CEO Stacey Burlet joined in 2018, “prompt and decisive action” had been taken to address the problem, with Ms Burlet saying there is “no place for bullies or bullying at the Council.”

She should be invited back to sort things in Northumberland.

More Spin, More Fear, More Secrecy, Ever More Outsourcing and Less True Scrutiny in forthcoming Northumberland Tory Budget.

Almost three years on following their shock win in May 2017 and Northumberland Conservatives have taken their prize and sailed it onto the rocks.

Virtually unsupported through their own Governments austerity packages (cuts to you and I) inflationary growth, the giant spend on the renovations and enormous running costs of County Hall in Morpeth, the huge waste of money caused by their unbelievable planning decisions and regular compensatory payments to developers who skin them alive at planning appeals and the public becoming evermore aware of the hollow promises that are never delivered has led them to the cul de sac of despair and they are now suggesting a privatisation package that will allow then to avoid public scrutiny and possibly legally bypass audit.

This will be Northumberland Tories second attempt at privatisation of core services from 2010 until 2013 they waggle danced with local Lib Dems and North Tyneside’s Tory Mayor to jointly outsource services and unveiled a blueprint for services in Northumberland under a Conservative council.

In 2012, Cllr Jackson worked hand in glove with his current Lib Dem colleague Andrew Tebbutt of Morpeth to ‘team up then Tory led North Tyneside Council in a joint services partnership with a potential privatisation giant. It would have meant phase 1 of a privatisation of the whole council with 51% of services offered up.

At the time, Cllr Jackson denied he knew anything about the ‘secret privatisation deal’ yet he nominated Cllr Jeff Watson and Cllr Gordon Castle to represent his team on the working party which seems to cast a doubt on his denial.

This report shows how it was to be done
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/383993/response/937729/attach/html/3/iMPOWER%20Report.pdf.html

Northumberland Tories latest thoughts on the delivery of services sit within the County Council budget, a budget being set on the back of accounts that the External Auditor hasn’t signed off.

The core spending power estimate this budget is premised on does not include any allowance for the unfunded cost pressures which the Government have recently announced. These include the rise in the national living wage, the increased apprenticeship levy and the change in working arrangements through the Borderlands and NE Devolution programs.

There appears to be no funding for the increased demand from some services facing significant increased cost pressure; such as children and adult social care services. The need for adult social care across the county is ever increasing and Northumberland’s aging population is above the national average, leading to a build up of problems facing the partner organisation Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

The Tories answer: to deliver services via a private limited company, another back door privatisation from those who have an interest in paying back their sponsors at anyone’s expense.

The Council is proposing to set up its overarching company to sit over up to 10 companies that will deliver services to the public. All from a Council who doesn’t deliver best value according to its former external auditor and does all of its work in secret making these proposed changes ‘all their own work’.

Maybe now’s the time for Councillor Jackson to really tell the people of Northumberland about what he knew in 2010 and what his plans for services and jobs are in 2020?


http://committeedocs.northumberland.gov.uk/MeetingDocs/45991_M9494.pdf 

Is Northumberland about to become Margaret Thatcher’s Dream Council in Reverse?

Margaret Thatcher was a secret supporter of open government. Well, open local-government, anyway. One of the very first things she did as an MP was to introduce a Private Member's Bill to open council committee meetings to the press, thus shining a light on these hitherto murky gatherings. It was the Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill in 1960, a year after she was elected MP for Finchley. She introduced it in her Commons maiden speech, which is something no MP has done before, or since, for a Bill which became law. She said then: "The public has the right... to know what its elected representatives are doing”

Since May 2017, Tory run Northumberland County Council has become more secretive, ever more murky and less open by halving the number of meetings it holds and housing a single party cabinet to keep their secrets all too themselves as much as possible.

As the Conservatives in the County move towards the end of their third year in office having delivered diddlly squat apart from fairy tales, they have decided to part the ways with democracy altogether and go ever more secret by embracing a new corporate model that is distinctly the ‘Liverpool Pathway’ of Local Government, the probable end for the need of its shady Audit Committee and lead to the other aim of Margaret Thatcher, the privatisation of services through a centralised Board of Directors holding its own limited companies to ransom on cost, (or is that returnable profit through underspend on budgets that can be siphoned off by the Central Committee). A completely different operating model to Advance Northumberland.

A number of the current Tories on the County Council have dabbled in departmental privatisation previously with the former Castle Morpeth duo of Cllrs Sanderson and Jackson presiding over a refuse service undertaken by the contractor Cory who under the specification it worked too, tipped their waste at Lynemouth and as we have seen on TV the County Council will now have to cover the costs of the duo’s debacle.

By harnessing the model they are sending to their single party cabinet for ratification they will effectively bypass Margaret Thatchers ‘admission to the press of meetings bill’ as technically the companies they propose to set up are not committees of Council and will operate under Companies House rules.

Its been said to us that the Leader of Council has become an ardent fan of time travel who loves reading history books and he’s now trying to take us all ‘Forward to the Past’.

http://committeedocs.northumberland.gov.uk/MeetingDocs/45991_M9494.pdf 

Lack of New Council Homes Fuelling Growth in HMO’s in South East Northumberland

The massive growth of homes of multiple occupancy across the South-East of the County is being fuelled by the payments local Authorities must make to the private owners of these homes is, according to a recent Government freedom of information release leeching £1.1Bn from Local Authorities each and every year.

Prior to 2008 when Northumberland was in a pre unitary council two tier era each Council district had to deal with homeless people on its own patch and right up until May 2017 that was generally the case, with Labour from 2013-2017 building hundreds of Council houses in places such as Embleton, Amble, four sites in Blyth and had its development company ARCH modernise and improve homes across the Hirst area of Ashington to aid management of the homeless and those in need in Northumberland.

Since May 2017 the ‘new wave’ of young people who are not in a position to purchase a home and the net effect of the bedroom tax on their parents who have to seek smaller houses from the Council we have seen the number of homeless grow. This scenario along with the length of time it takes the courts to deal with what are seen as lesser crimes the number of people seeking ‘bail hostelling’ has also grown rapidly.

The current Conservative County Council although spinning out more stories about how they are going to do this and that than Hans Christian Anderson on the social housing front, have sat back and done nothing apart from steering young people towards South-East Northumberland and private owners of HMO’s.

People who live near these homes do not like the current situation and are beginning to become extremely vocal against the current rash of houses being converted to rip-off councils and have those in need wandering around their towns daily.
 

The North needs to tighten its belts as a second wave of cuts will hit soon.

U.K. shared prosperity fund is not a matter on everyone’s lips and ‘We’ suspect the majority of people reading this blog won’t have heard about it, in fact it is a scheme that will replace EU Regional Funding.

In the recent one year funding round Sajid Javid, he’s the one who lost a leadership race to the known, according to the Supreme Court, liar and charlatan Boris Johnson hasn’t set a budget line to support the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund but has uniquely spun out a situation where his electioneering single year budget hasn’t gelled with anyone other than those who want to see rapid free market economic growth and those who will benefit most from rising inflation.

Javid has also changed the goalposts in regard to funding with his promises for help in three areas in order to gather the headlines, health, police and education, leaving the other services we all rely on high and dry. He knows that the last spending round for Councils comes to an end in 2020 but has not begun to assemble a spending review that would allow councils to form new medium term financial plans. 

The last fair funding spending review 2014-2020 allows councils to plan and spend up until 2023 to give them time to complete late projects. It’s expected that Javid will claw back all funds not spent by November 2020 to pay for the two high street funds, the stronger towns fund, of which the issued list of winning bids lines up with the Conservative marginal seats list and the future high streets fund whose dates of acceptance are quoted as being after the next general election. It’s expected those towns who were not won by the Tories will be struck off the list.

Charities are also expecting to be battered by the Government as EU funded projects unspent cash, not earmarked cash, as has been the case previously, will be clawed back at the rate of 66p in the £pound. 

We all need to remember that under this Tory Government austerity is only eased for a single year leaving your Council without financial stability prior to the completion of a new spending review period and the current announcements will put local authorities into the hands of the free marketeers as they struggle to manage without medium term funding security.

The biggest concern for everyone in the North is that in a similar fashion to this years Local Government settlement that the shared prosperity fund will be divvied up among the Tory Council areas in the South and the desperately poor areas in the North will lose out on what id meant to be the replacement for Euro funding.