Stockport Council News

Email received Wednesday, September 30, 2009 3:37 PM

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I write as Clerk to the Registration Authority to acknowledge receipt of your e-mail below of the 21st September 2009 and to note in particular that as indicated, you do not wish to alter the description of the locality or of the neighbourhood within the locality that is described in your application as being –

“Administrative area. Political Ward – North Reddish neighbourhood – housing bounded by Gorton Road and the two railway lines that intersect at Thornley Lane South”.

Yours sincerely,
John Hill
Principal Conveyancer and Compulsory Purchase Officer
Clerk to Stockport Registration Authority
for Town Greens
Stockport Legal Services
Business Services Directorate

And my response sent – 30 September 2009 19:09

Dear Mr Hill

I note once again you have refused to address the issue of the hundreds of pounds map. Why was this demanded of me and presumably not of other applicants? I contend that you are not impartial in your dealings as is your legal duty.

Also, why didn’t you attempt to contact the owners of the CPO land?

Yours

Mrs Oliver

Email sent to John Hill, the Council’s Legal Officer, 15 September 2009 19:58

Dear Mr Hill

Within the next week or so I shall be dropping in further evidence. Please don’t ‘lose’ it. I have copies anyway. There may be more evidence submitted right up to the cut off date. We are submitting evidence from enough streets in the area surrounding the land.

I need to point out:-

1) I dispute the date of my village green claim.

2) Unless you are able to prove that every village green applicant has been requested by you to provide a map which would have cost hundreds of pounds and to a scale which astonished the staff in the specialist map shop, then I want you or anyone selected by you to hear the case to have nothing further to do with this application, as if this is the case that I was selected for specially harsh treatment, then your impartiality and integrity are compromised and that would leave the council open to judicial review.

3) I requested from the outset that a different inspector be chosen. I assume Mr. Price Lewis doesn’t have to receive work from SMBC, so that should have been agreed to.

4) The policital ward of North Reddish was accepted for the last village green claim on adjacent land. I would be very annoyed if the village green were to be refused on these grounds this time.

5) I note you failed to inform the likely owners of the CPO ransom strip, yet Mrs Penkethman had to inform all houses either side of the footpaths she claimed. One rule for SMBC and another for us, I see. I assume you have now contacted DCSF to inform them of the presumed owners of the ransom strip. I shall be doing so anyway.

Yours

Mrs S J Oliver

Stockport’s Freedom of Information Campaigner

Free Mr Parnell, victim of a corrupt council.

Email sent to John Hill, the Council’s Legal Officer – 30 September 2009 19:09

Dear Mr Hill

I note once again you have refused to address the issue of the hundreds of pounds map. Why was this demanded of me and presumably not of other applicants? I contend that you are not impartial in your dealings as is your legal duty.

Also, why didn’t you attempt to contact the owners of the CPO land?

Yours

Mrs Oliver

Email sent to John Hill, the Council’s Legal Officer on – 21 September 2009 14:43

Dear Mr Hill

Thank you for your email.

May I remind you that you have failed repeatedly to reply to my substantive points made earlier:-

1) that I object to Mr Price Lewis hearing this application and

2) that I dispute the date of my village green application.

Please note that although there may be 44 forms they are from more than 44 people.

I wish my neighbourhood and locality to remain as the original application, which you repeatedly refused to accept.

If the size of any map is a matter for me, why was I previously asked to provide one costing several hundred pounds? I look forward to the answer and to receiving evidence that other applicants were asked to provide the same expensive evidence.

Yours

Mrs S J Oliver

Stockport’s Freedom of Information Campaigner

Free Mr Parnell, victim of a corrupt council

Email received from FOI Officer Clare Naven June 26, 2009 5:08 PM

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I am writing in response to your recent request for information (ref 1831) in which you requested ‘evidence of any senior council officer’s involvement in this case – which is the calling of the police to the peaceful town hall protester around 70 times’. I apologise for the delay responding.

Any information the Council may hold in relation to this request is likely to constitute the personal data of the individual concerned; therefore we are unable to provide the information you have requested because it is exempt information under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Section 40(2) FOIA states that information which constitutes personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 is exempt from disclosure if its release would contravene one or more of the data protection principles. Any information held in relation to your request is likely to constitute personal data because it relates to and identifies a living individual. Disclosure of these personal data would be unfair; therefore it would contravene the first data protection principle which requires the Council to process personal data fairly. This means that the information is exempt and will not be provided.

Clare Naven

Email sent to Executive LibDem Councillor Mark Weldon –

Dear Councillor Weldon

You are paid a lot of money to do the work you do. If I want to contact you I will.

Please could you clarify the appeal process regarding my being banned from asking public questions regarding Harcourt Street. You were of the eroneous opinion that I was given access to documents under the FOIA on this subject. The Information Commission has told the Council to reconsider under the EIR 2004. I asked in the first place under the EIR 2004, so it would appear the Council hasn’t got a leg to stand on.

I know a lot more about the FOIA than you do – when they reply I will be able to work out the cost of one night in such a prison and the cost of the abandoned trial in January, the one in July, the proposed one in September and the High Court Appeal. I am currently getting the cost of the police being called over 80 times, the 11 arrests and the nights spent in a police cell. I will take those figures when I have the final amount to the Taxpayers’ Alliance and with their help get a news story with a link to the actual CCTV footage of the non-incident involving Mr Parnell via the Internet. I am sure the cost will come to hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not more.

I want to know whether you checked the situation regarding my position and the FOI inquiries before you sent that email the other night. Either you checked and were lied to or you didn’t bother to check that I hadn’t had access to a large number of documetns. I shall be putting in a complaint to the Standards Board when, if ever, I receive a sensible response from you. There is already a complaint in about Goddard calling me a liar publicly which he hasn’t provided proof of and his gloating email about Mr. Parnell being in prison and him sending me confidential documents about Mr. Parnell. Someone is going to start asking questions about what on earth is going on in this town under the Liberal Democraps.

Sheila

Email received from Weldon with no reference to Mr Parnell in it – 08 August 2009 18:52

Mrs Oliver,

I was merely trying to be helpful and reminding you that the vexatious ruling was specifically on requests from you on that particular subject and not a blanket ban. You were misleading others in saying that this was a blanket ban. I did not want this factual error to be propagated by yourself, even if it was done inadvertently and without malice, as the councillor code of conduct obliges me to assume is the case in the conduct of my official duties.

The exchange did finally prove to me that as you were unable to name the precise documents you wanted, and the enquiries were indeed meant to disrupt the business of the council and so those requests were indeed vexatious. Indeed the correspondence started with a cryptic email from yourself consisting of just the words “either way I win”, as if this was just a game you were playing. I do not play games. I have a serious responsibility to provide sustainable educational facilities in North Reddish.

As an email from yourself yesterday declared I was a “complete idiot” I am not in a position to advise you of the appeal procedures. I think it would be sensible to get more expert opinion, especially as you declare (most probably correctly) you know more about FoI than I do. I am not surprised at this as you have in recent years submitted thousands of such requests.

Your constant threats to complain to the standards board are becoming repetitive. I always treat you with respect despite abusive and misleading and possibly libellous emails from yourself and I have always taken your points seriously, and have gone out of my way to be open and honest.

In the eight days of August 2009 you have emailed me 19 times , in July 2009, you emailed me 22 times, in June you emailed me 10 times. With regards to future emails; as from next week I am routing all emails from yourself to the FoI officer and they will only go to me if there is a relevant point the officer needs to verify with me. This is to avoid the constant barrage of offensive, and mocking and irrelevant emails you direct at me.

Sincerely

Mark Weldon

Email sent to Rosie Wallbank of the Standards Board – 11 August 2009 16:37

Dear Standards Board

Please see the email below from the Leader of Stockport Council.
The background story is that when a council taxpayer who got no help from Stockport Council with his out-of-area adopted daughters for over a decade, he stood on the Town Hall steps for two years in the manner of Brian Haw, the Parliamentary anti-war protester, in the hope that Stockport Council would do something. Well, they certainly did! They had him arrested circa 11 times despite the legal right to peaceful protest and peaceful protest was all he ever did. They called the police over 80 times to him, took him to court in January last year only to drop the case that time on the day of the hearing. He then was taken to court charged with assault with a sneeze with intent to inflect a council employee with a cold (pre swine flu). CCTV evidence of the non-event was not allowed to be shown in court. The Council then had Mr. Parnell arrested again for breaking his bail conditions by using the public lavatory in the town hall. For this he spent four days in Forrest Bank prison.

Below is the email sent to me by the Leader of Stockport Council apparently gloating at the fate of this poor man in being sent to prison and enclosing what I believe to be confidential court documents. Mr. Parnell, the town hall protester, has since given permission for me to have access to his personal information but at the time the Leader sent that email he was not aware of that fact. I couldn’t get any documents from the court regarding Mr. Parnell due to data protection reasons. This man had to go to prison, leaving his already very troubled adopted daughters with yet more emotional and financial hardship. Why would Councillor Goddard gloat about such a thing, and that is apparently what he is doing in this email? If someone had to inform me, why not our McCavity-like Council Solictor (who is never there) in a proper manner?

In addition at an Executive Council meeting in November 2008 Councillor Goddard called me a liar and said I repeatedly lied in the press. This meeting was packed with members of the public. I am known as a local campaigner on several issues including the environment. This caused me a great deal of distress and damage to my reputation. To be publicly branded that by the Leader of the Council, and there was no objection from the council officer chairing that meeting to that language as there would have been had it been used against another councillor, would make the council officers and members of the public think there was no smoke without fire.

I was upset and repeatedly wrote to Councillor Goddard asking for evidence of any lies I had inadvertently told and that I would immediately write to the local press to correct any incorrect statements I might have made. I didn’t get the courtesey of a reply. I asked him at the full Council Meeting in December 2008 for evidence of the lies I had told in the press, which he promised in his response to my public question to send me. By February 2009 I had heard nothing back from him so I again raised the issue in the full council meeting in a public question at which point to a packed council chamber and public gallery with members of the publicCouncillor Goddard repeated that I had lied and lied in the local press.

I took the matter to the Standards Committee of Stockport Council months and months ago but have yet to have the courtesey of a reply never mind any kind of resolution of this issue. I have taken up the matter with my local MP, but am not confident of any resolution from that quarter.

I hope you will look into this matter. There are very, very grave problems with the way Stockport Council is run – in many instances illegally – and I for one will not tolerate what it going on here.

Much obliged if you could look into this.
Kind regards
Sheila

And her reply:-

Dear Ms Oliver,
Thankyou for your email of 1 August 2009 . In your correspondence you make reference to a Code of Conduct complaint you have made to Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council that you say they have not acknowledged or assessed.

The Government has charged the Standards Board with ensuring that the process for the local assessment of complaints against elected members is working fairly and efficiently. To do this we use information which may indicate that legislation or our guidance is not being followed to help us decide whether we should contact an authority. Please be aware that Standards for England will only intervene in matters regarding the operation of the standards framework. The only information contained in your email that falls within our remit is in relation to the assessment of Code of Conduct complaints.

When a complaint is addressed to the authority’s monitoring officer, the monitoring officer should determine whether the complaint should be directed to the assessment sub-committee or whether another course of action is appropriate. If the complaint is clearly not about member conduct, then the monitoring officer does not have to pass it to the assessment sub-committee. Complaints about council decisions or procedures cannot be considered by a standards committee. However, if the complaint does relate to member conduct, the complaint should go before the assessment sub-committee. Our guidance states that this should happen within 20 working days of receiving the complaint.

We are contacting the authority in relation to the acknowledgement and assessment of complaints. Standards for England will not automatically update you on the progress of our work with them unless we consider it relevant to do so. Depending on the outcome of our discussions we reserve the right to consider further steps and may again use the information you have provided as part of the basis of this action.

Thankyou again for taking the time to contact us.

Rosie Wallbank
Solutions Development Officer

Email sent to John Hill, Council’s Legal Officer – 22 September 2009 18:32

Dear Mr Hill

Furthermore, my application wasn’t submitted 24th June 2008. I tried and tried to submit it before that. You refused to meet with me so I could submit it because Schulz said I was rude and offensive, although I don’t think I had ever been rude to you, and his remarks were defamatory and could not be substantiated when they had to prove to the Information Commission that I had been rude and offensive. The application was only accepted by lovely Damian after the Mayor refused to accept it.

I would love to go to judicial review and expose what Schulz et al have been up to and especially regarding Mr. Parnell.

Yours

Mrs S J Oliver

Stockport’s Freedom of Information Campaigner

Free Mr Parnell, victim of a corrupt council.