Graeme Harrower's Posts - goldenlaneestate.org2024-03-28T11:50:41ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrowerhttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2545997677?profile=original&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blog/feed?user=101a56b2hvebx&xn_auth=noCITY’S STANDARDS COMMITTEE ABOLISHEDtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2021-03-25:2323372:BlogPost:1660082021-03-25T19:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p>In <strong>January 2018</strong>, a resident councillor of unimpeachable integrity successfully challenged the City of London Corporation on behalf of her constituents. Two weeks later, the Corporation referred her for prosecution which proved to be entirely groundless, and for two prejudiced hearings by its Standards Committee. The whole process cost tens of thousands of pounds of public money, and resulted in no sanction.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In <strong>December 2018</strong>, two motions were…</p>
<p>In <strong>January 2018</strong>, a resident councillor of unimpeachable integrity successfully challenged the City of London Corporation on behalf of her constituents. Two weeks later, the Corporation referred her for prosecution which proved to be entirely groundless, and for two prejudiced hearings by its Standards Committee. The whole process cost tens of thousands of pounds of public money, and resulted in no sanction.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In <strong>December 2018</strong>, two motions were proposed in the City’s Court of Common Council in response to this scandal. Supported by only 14 out of elected 125 members, the motions aimed to reform:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(1) the Corporation’s “dispensations" policy, by removing undue restrictions on resident members speaking and voting on matters affecting their constituents, and</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(2) the Corporation’s standards proceedings, by replacing members on the assessment, hearing and appeal bodies with independent persons. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Policy Chair ambushed the first motion with an amendment to preserve the restrictive policy on “dispensations" to vote. A debate on the second motion was prevented by a member moving "that the question now be put”, after which the motion was overwhelmingly voted down.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In <strong>April 2019</strong>, 1,200 City residents signed a petition in which they declared that they had no confidence in the Corporation’s standards regime, and called for it to be reformed in line with the motions.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The campaign for standards reform continued, waged by only a handful of members, but with strong resident support and external publicity. It was aided by the propensity of the Standards Committee to make the wrong decision practically every time it acted. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In <strong>March 2020</strong>, a further case exposed in open Court the folly of members judging each other. Further motions for reform were proposed in <strong>June and October 2020</strong>, but were both neutered by amendments. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even the Corporation-friendly Lisvane report, published in <strong>September 2020</strong>, recognised that the City’s standards regime was not fit for purpose. The report recommended its radical overhaul, together with the abolition of the Standards Committee.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eventually, in <strong>January 2021</strong>, the Court of Common Council adopted those recommendations.The aims of the two motions proposed more than two years earlier were finally achieved. The Standards Committee has since disappeared into oblivion. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The success of the standards reform campaign - in the face of determined resistance by the Corporation’s leadership - proves that the Corporation, with all its financial, legal and PR resources, can be defeated.</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>This should encourage City residents to take further action against the lack of democratic accountability in the Corporation. They can do so by <a href="http://chng.it/Y8H6M7DsHf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signing this petition</a>, which calls for the reform of its planning process, another area in which residents are disenfranchised.</strong></p>POSTPONING DEMOCRACY IN THE CITYtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-09-07:2323372:BlogPost:772032020-09-07T14:30:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p>Below is the text of an email I sent today to all members of the Court of Common Council (the City Corporation’s elected governing body) about the proposed postponement of the elections of the City’s 100 councillors from March 2021 to March 2022. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>What little democracy there is in the City shouldn’t be postponed by a year for no good reason. But I expect that the postponement of these elections will receive overwhelming support from members of the Court at its meeting on…</p>
<p>Below is the text of an email I sent today to all members of the Court of Common Council (the City Corporation’s elected governing body) about the proposed postponement of the elections of the City’s 100 councillors from March 2021 to March 2022. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>What little democracy there is in the City shouldn’t be postponed by a year for no good reason. But I expect that the postponement of these elections will receive overwhelming support from members of the Court at its meeting on Thursday 10 September.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR GRAEME HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL ON 7 SEPTEMBER 2020</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The public and press watching the meeting of the Court this Thursday will see it make an initial decision on a recommendation for 100 councillors to extend their terms of office by a year for no good reason. A few of the 25 aldermen may also use the postponement of the councillor elections as cover for extending their own terms of office for even less reason.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Policy and Resources Committee has recommended that the Court postpones the councillor elections due in March 2021 to March 2022 because the committee is concerned that the turnout of the business vote in March 2021 would embarrass the City Corporation by being even lower than usual. The committee fears that businesses would be even less inclined to register this autumn than usual, due to the Covid aftermath. (The majority of City businesses are so uninterested in the Corporation that 60% of them didn’t bother to register to vote last year, before Covid was an issue.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The logical solution to this democratic deficit would be to reform the City’s electoral system by:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- abolishing the undemocratic and largely unsupported business vote, and </p>
<p> </p>
<p>- reducing the number of councillors to be proportionate to the number of residents.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That would move the dial of democracy in the City from before the Reform Act of 1832 to the present day. But logic has no role in the culture of the City Corporation, which is a public authority that primarily promotes private commercial interests.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The postponement in April this year of the elections of the Mayor of London and London Assembly has been mentioned in connection with the proposed postponement of the City’s councillor elections. The awkward fact is that these Greater London elections have been postponed from May 2020 to May 2021, whereas the City’s councillor elections are proposed to be postponed from March 2021 to March 2022. There is also no reasonable comparison between:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- the postponement by Parliament at the height of the Covid crisis of Greater London elections involving millions of voters, and</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- the postponement by City councillors in the aftermath of the Covid crisis of their own elections involving a tiny number of voters.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I expect, though, that the first and second readings of the bill that will be presented to the Court on Thursday to postpone the councillor elections will attract overwhelming support.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of several elephants that will jostle for space in the virtual room on Thursday is the elections for aldermen. The terms of office of two aldermen (Graves and Wootton) expired two to three months ago, and the term of a third (Scotland) will expire in three months’ time. All these elections would use the current “ward list” (= electoral register for City councillor and aldermen elections) compiled before the Covid crisis, so the reason for P&R’s recommendation that the Court postpones the councillor elections doesn’t apply to them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The aldermen’s discussion of this subject was held in secret in accordance with conventions of their own making, although the subject is election to public office. It is reasonable to speculate that they are hoping the postponement of the councillor elections will give them cover for not holding any elections for aldermen that fall due before March 2022. Alderman Luder sought and received confirmation at the P&R meeting at which the postponement was discussed that no councillor by-elections (which resemble elections for aldermen insofar as they are not held at regular times) would be proposed to be held before March 2022. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>For Alderman Graves’ views on the holding of his own overdue election, and for the opposing views of a number of his constituents, see the comments on this blog: <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/alderman-postpones-date-for-his-re-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ALDERMAN POSTPONES DATE FOR HIS RE-ELECTION</a>. The collective wish of those constituents that his election be held now is described by him as “idiotic”, which must be a unique way of seeking re-election. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Finally, the bill that will be presented to the Court on Thursday refers to a statute of Edward III (a war-mongering tyrant) as giving the Court authority to postpone its councillor elections, on the basis that doing so is “profitable to the King and to the citizens” and “agreeable ... to reason and good faith”. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There is real reason to doubt that this statute provides authority for the Court to enact the bill. I am taking this up as a legal matter with the Recorder.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For now, I would observe that the quaintness of relying on a 14th century statute may be appreciated by the Court and those it seeks to impress with its history (as long as one does not look at that history too closely). This quaintness is not, though, appreciated by the residents of the City’s largest social housing estate whom the Corporation has consistently failed, most recently and spectacularly during the Covid lockdown. </p>
<p> </p>ALDERMAN POSTPONES DATE FOR HIS RE-ELECTIONtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-07-19:2323372:BlogPost:760132020-07-19T18:30:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<div><b><i>The election for alderman in Cripplegate Ward has been postponed....</i></b></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div>David Graves, the alderman for Cripplegate Ward (which covers Golden Lane Estate and part of the Barbican) reached the end of his six year term of office on 17 June 2020.</div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div>The archaic conventions that govern this archaic public office require that upon the expiry of the term of office of an alderman, he or she submits a “letter of…</div>
<div><b><i>The election for alderman in Cripplegate Ward has been postponed....</i></b></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div>David Graves, the alderman for Cripplegate Ward (which covers Golden Lane Estate and part of the Barbican) reached the end of his six year term of office on 17 June 2020.</div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div>The archaic conventions that govern this archaic public office require that upon the expiry of the term of office of an alderman, he or she submits a “letter of surrender“ to the Lord Mayor. The letter <span>is then placed on the “summons” (= agenda) for the next meeting of the Court of Alderman, so all the aldermen "can consider whether to receive it”. </span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>When asked, Alderman Graves explained that his “letter of surrender” did not appear on the “summons” for the meeting of the Court of Aldermen on 10 July because he had not submitted it. That was because: </span></div>
<div><span><i> </i></span></div>
<div><span><i>“given the current CV-19 concerns and limitations, I decided that to trigger a 42 ... day electoral process now would be inappropriate and unsuitable for the good conduct of a fair election.”</i></span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>But his submitting a “letter of surrender“ would not have triggered the 42 day electoral process. The letter would first need to be “received” by the Court of Aldermen. The Covid crisis is one of the few situations imaginable in which the Court could justifiably defer the start of the electoral process - but for no longer than necessary. Should not the time at which the electoral process starts be a matter for the Court of Aldermen to decide, rather than the </span><span>alderman whose term of office has expired and who seeks re-election?</span></div>
<div><span><i> </i></span></div>
<div><b><i>.... but postponed until when? </i></b></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>When asked about the timing of the election, </span><span>Alderman Graves observed that the Policy and Resources Committee had agreed to recommend to the Court of Common Council </span><span>that elections for the City’s 100 councillors, due to be held in March 2021, be postponed to March 2022.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>The members of the Policy and Resources Committee agreed to make that recommendation</span><span> because they were concerned that the turnout of the City Corporation’s (unique and undemocratic) business vote in March 2021 would embarrass the Corporation by being even lower than usual. They were concerned that City businesses might be even less inclined to register to vote this autumn than usual, due to the Covid aftermath. (The majority of City businesses are so uninterested in the Corporation that 60% of them didn’t bother to register last year, before Covid was an issue.)</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>The election for alderman in Cripplegate, if held before February 2021, will be held on the basis of the “ward list” (= City electoral register) </span><span>that was compiled </span><i>last</i><span> autumn, pre-Covid, so the rationale for postponing the councillor elections due in March 2021 does not apply to it.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>Regarding a date for that election, there seems to be no good reason why the electoral process cannot begin this September. Many voters use a postal ballot anyway. Those who do not could register for one. The City Corporation could spend some of the unused £70,000 it set aside for a campaign to encourage more business registration this year on facilitating postal registration. For voters willing to attend a polling station, and if conditions allow for one to be open at the relevant time, </span><span>social distancing would be much easier to achieve than in a shop or pub.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>Alderman Graves responded by saying:</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span><i> “offering voters a choice between registering for a postal vote and disenfranchisement is to my mind undemocratic and wrong”.</i></span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span><b>So is it democratic and right to offer voters no choice as to who represents them as alderman until such time as the incumbent, whose term of office expired a month ago, unilaterally decides when to seek re-election?</b></span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span><b><i>The secrecy of the aldermen</i></b></span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>Two other elections for aldermen fall due within the next six months. The term of office of Alderman David Wootton (Langbourn Ward) expired on 19 July and that of Alderman Patricia Scotland (Bishopsgate Ward) expires on 8 December.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>We know that the aldermen were due to consider the three forthcoming elections at the meeting of their General Purposes Committee (to which they all belong) on 10 July. But we don’t know what they decided. That’s because they won’t tell us, and their meetings and papers are secret - even from City councillors. The one insignificant exception is that formal Court of Aldermen meetings are held in public, but they typically last for only a few minutes and deal with routine matters like approving applications for Freedom of the City.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>This extraordinary secrecy is a problem. </span><span>Some organisations that are closely associated with the City Corporation, such as livery </span><span>companies and certain masonic lodges, </span><span>meet out of public view</span><span>, but do not exercise public functions. Aldermen do, and the “Principles of Public Life“ - which include “openness” and “accountability” - apply to them as much as to any other holder of public office. </span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>The best solution to this problem is simply to abolish the archaic and superfluous office of alderman. But that </span><span>is likely to require government intervention. While the office of alderman still exists, the basic democratic imperative</span><span> should at least be met of holding elections as soon as practicable after they fall due, and by appropriate means.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span>Hopefully whoever is elected as the next alderman for Cripplegate will represent voters to the Corporation, not the other way round, and will campaign for real change to the Corporation.</span></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<div><span><b>The process for that election should be begin as soon as practicable, i.e. this September. </b></span></div>CITY CORPORATION’S PROPAGANDA AGAINST GOLDEN LANEtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-05-11:2323372:BlogPost:752842020-05-11T13:56:37.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p>Below is the text of an email that I sent today to all members of the Court of Common Council (the City Corporation’s elected governing body). It covers two subjects.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First, it satirises the lack of democracy in the City Corporation. As 80% of members of the Court of Common Council are elected mainly by tiny numbers of generally uninterested business voters - a system unique to the City - the Corporation cannot claim to be a democratic institution. For background, see…</p>
<p>Below is the text of an email that I sent today to all members of the Court of Common Council (the City Corporation’s elected governing body). It covers two subjects.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First, it satirises the lack of democracy in the City Corporation. As 80% of members of the Court of Common Council are elected mainly by tiny numbers of generally uninterested business voters - a system unique to the City - the Corporation cannot claim to be a democratic institution. For background, see <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/the-lord-mayor-and-the-elephant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">THE LORD MAYOR AND THE ELEPHANT</a>. Since the current crisis began, what little democratic accountability there was has further diminished.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Second, the email exposes the City Corporation's propaganda by looking at its latest COLPAI project newsletter. For background to the COLPAI issue, see <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/alderman-luder-justifies-work-on-colpai-during-lockdown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ALDERMAN LUDER JUSTIFIES WORK ON COLPAI DURING LOCKDOWN</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR GRAEME HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL ON 11 MAY 2020</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Some members are more equal than others</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The public watching the virtual meeting of the <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Politburo</span> Policy and Resources Committee last Thursday heard a lot of discussion about the date of the next <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Soviet Congress</span> Court of Common Council elections (but no conclusion, except that the date will not coincide with that of the democratic GLA elections in May 2021). </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another matter on which the committee spent a lot of time was the formation of six “cross-cutting Member Thematic Consultation Groups”. These groups will form a temporary addition to the Corporation's existing 130+ committees, sub-committees, etc, and will operate in conjunction with an informally enhanced RASC. The formation of these groups reveals a universal tendency of bureaucracies to respond to any situation by forming more committees. Contrary to their collective name, these groups don’t involve consultation with <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">local Soviet representatives</span> ordinary members, because their membership is restricted to <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">the Central Committee</span> committee chairs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Chief <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Commissar</span> Commoner conveyed to the meeting the “view from below decks”, saying ordinary members have:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>“a sense of being dispossessed, of being disengaged, rendered superfluous, and so on”</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">General Secretary</span> Policy Chair replied:</p>
<p> </p>
<p> <em>“this is a very difficult time for all of us, and of course we’re not able to involve members…and I can understand the frustrations of that….I’m actually taking a BIG STEP in making transparent the fact that the Policy Chair does take soundings as part of their job…. I’m trying to do it in a systematic way, which will INVOLVE AS MANY CHAIRS AS POSSIBLE at this time”.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>So no move then towards <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">perestroika</span> anything that is recognisably democratic.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The total amount of time the committee spent discussing anything relevant to the electorate was nil. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> <strong>Propaganda</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another Soviet-style characteristic of the Corporation is its reliance on propaganda. The Corporation’s oppressive treatment of Golden Lane residents, including social housing tenants and schoolchildren, consists not only of letting them suffer intolerable construction noise during lockdown, but also of insidiously making them feel bad about objecting to it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://mailchi.mp/cdfa034d4551/weekly-work-update-wc-monday-11-november-4309137?e=54f2b3f4c4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Corporation’s latest COLPAI project newsletter</a> reminds residents that:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>"…our priority is to complete the new primary school, ensuring [its] children and staff can move out of their temporary accommodation into new state-of-the-art facilities…..we are committed to providing social homes for local people on Islington Council and City of London Corporation’s waiting lists….We understand that this is a challenging time for all and appreciate that residents will be at home….we thank you for your continued cooperation during this time”.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Delaying this three year project for a few weeks obviously doesn't justify the suffering of the Corporation’s existing social housing tenants and schoolchildren during lockdown. So any communication by the Corporation about the COLPAI work must:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- distract attention from this fact,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- say something that sounds good - and what can be better than social housing and education? and</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- imply that anyone who objects to what the Corporation is doing opposes social housing and education, and is therefore bad. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Corporation’s current messaging on this topic has quietly dropped any reference to the alleged financial consequences for it of suspending work during lockdown. Could it be that it doesn’t sound good for a public body that controls billions of pounds to save a relatively small amount of money at the expense of the welfare of people it is supposed to serve? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One resident wrote to the Corporation in response to this latest communication saying:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>“Your newsletter was an insult….I am not in any way opposed to increased provision of social housing on this site….your public communications are appalling, cliché-ridden drivel. If you want a less hostile relationship with local residents, do better.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>A constant theme in all the Corporation’s propaganda is virtue signalling. The newsletter mentioned is full of it. The "Rules for the Conduct of Life” [attributed to an 18th century Lord Mayor], however, admonishes those who invite others to share their self-praise, saying:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>“But take not praise to yourself of anything which you do….the praise of men is an empty bubble, and so far from being of any real benefit, it serves only to puff up those who are fond of it with pride and vanity, and thereby make them odious to God, and despicable in the sight of even those who praise them”</em> (Rule IX).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This prompts a further suggestion for a replacement of the Corporation’s motto with one that is more accurate:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Domine</span> Pecunia et laudatio dirigite nos</strong> (Money and praise direct us).</p>
<p> </p>CITY CORPORATION CONTINUES TO FAIL RESIDENTStag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-04-27:2323372:BlogPost:750372020-04-27T15:12:21.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><strong>QUESTIONS WITH NO ANSWERS</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>On Friday 24 April, in a live streamed virtual meeting of the City Corporation’s Community and Children’s Services Committee, the Chair was asked questions about the Corporation allowing non-essential construction work to restart on one of its own developments within touching distance of its own densely populated Golden Lane estate.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For the background, see:…</p>
<p><strong>QUESTIONS WITH NO ANSWERS</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>On Friday 24 April, in a live streamed virtual meeting of the City Corporation’s Community and Children’s Services Committee, the Chair was asked questions about the Corporation allowing non-essential construction work to restart on one of its own developments within touching distance of its own densely populated Golden Lane estate.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For the background, see: <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/city-corporation-fails-to-show-leadership-in-this-crisis?xg_source=activity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CITY CORPORATION FAILS TO SHOW LEADERSHIP IN THIS CRISIS</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Councillor Sue Pearson, a resident of Golden Lane estate herself, put the first question:</p>
<p><em>"The Policy Chair told the Policy and Resources Committee last week that if the Corporation stopped work on its own COLPAI project “without good reason” it would be in breach of contract. That sounds more like a general statement of legal principle than definitive advice on whether this particular contract would be breached in these particular circumstances. Did the Corporation actually receive definitive legal advice to the effect that if it stopped work on COLPAI it would be in breach of contract? If so, did that advice state that “good reasons” for stopping the work didn’t include protecting the life and health of the construction workers, their families and people they come into contact with, or protecting the welfare of the residents on the other side of the hoarding?”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Chair replied:</p>
<p><em>“Yes, we did get definitive advice on this specific contract…it wasn’t framed exactly in the way that you framed it, because the fundamental issue from assessing whether it would be a breach is if we had some reason to think that safety - either for the residents or for the workers on site - was somehow dramatically different from other construction and we could make a good case, then possibly we could avoid getting tagged with the breach. But even within that, fundamentally there is a very limited time under contract in which we can do this without being in breach, and given the government’s strong advice, and they’ve made it even stronger in the last couple of days, you will have seen that other sites...are opening back up.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>But why wasn’t the advice framed in the way she framed her question? Aren’t the life and health of the construction workers, their families and people they come into contact with, and protecting the welfare of the residents on the other side of the hoarding, relevant in considering whether there are “good reasons” for stopping the work? COLPAI <strong>is</strong> "dramatically different” from most other construction sites, because at its nearest point it is less than social distancing length away from residents' homes. Work done on a City office building surrounded by other, currently unoccupied, office buildings is not comparable.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One Golden Lane resident reported that last week he felt his flat shake. <a href="https://youtu.be/z-sXnAvWsfw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here is a video of what caused it</a>: </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sXnAvWsfw" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4529126752?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p></p>
<p>City councillors spending the lockdown in their main residences in the Home Counties or in their country retreats may not appreciate what it is like to live week after week within a few metres of a major construction site, and in present circumstances be unable to escape.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Chair had earlier mentioned that this work was being done to provide social housing and to provide a school. But Sue Pearson had already addressed this argument in the link above, saying that:</p>
<p><em>"No-one opposes the provision of more social housing or another primary school. They will be built. All that is required is a delay of a few weeks in a three year project. Not delaying will harm the welfare of the City’s social housing tenants, who comprise half the population of Golden Lane estate, and a number of primary school children, who are at home on the estate during the lockdown."</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>I followed up with this question:</p>
<p><em>"Before I put my question, I will say that the answer is <strong>not</strong> that "the Corporation is following government guidance”, which has become the Corporation’s standard soundbite. The government has obviously been mismanaging this crisis, the ruling party receives substantial donations from the construction industry, so we can't look to the government for moral leadership. The City Corporation, however, has an opportunity to provide such leadership, particularly on one of its own projects affecting its own residents. </em></p>
<p><em>So my question is this: do you consider that it is more important for the Corporation to save a relatively small amount of money by allowing the non-essential construction work on COLPAI to continue than to protect:</em></p>
<p><em>- the life and health of the construction workers, their families and the people they come into contact with; and</em></p>
<p><em>- the welfare of the residents on the other side of the hoarding?</em></p>
<p><em>And I think that the City residents who are patiently listening to this call would appreciate a straight yes / no answer."</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>After a silence, the Chair said:</p>
<p><em>"I think I’ve already answered that question. First of all... it is a non trivial amount, but set that aside completely. What we really don’t want, and I would think many of the residents would entirely agree, is we don’t want this site to sit derelict for an extended period of time...Are we endangering the health of the workers or the residents? I think we believe that we are not. If we believe we were, there would be a different view.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>But he hadn’t already answered the question. The core of the question, about the Corporation showing moral leadership and not clinging to whatever the government says, has been consistently evaded by those speaking on behalf of the Corporation. As mentioned in the link above, if the government were to decree that it was acceptable for workers to remove asbestos without wearing protective clothing, would the Corporation allow workers to do that on its own projects, just because the government said so, and in order to save cost?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Regarding the derelict site point, I replied that : </p>
<p><em>“it’s the first time we’ve heard this particular reason for work not ceasing on COLPAI - we’ve heard many, and this is the first time we’ve heard this one - but you can just put it back into the question, and ask which is more important: a site being derelict, or the health of construction workers, their families and people they come into contact with. It’s a fact the workers are more at risk by working there than not - that cannot be disputed.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Chair replied:</p>
<p>‘’<em>I think if ... [the workers] are properly socially distancing, they are not significantly more at risk, and I know there have been some discussions with some of the workers on the site who are happy to be at work because they are able to earn a living…I am very confident that we would not permit this if it were clearly unsafe. If ISG were prepared not to proceed for a period of time, we would probably welcome that, because obviously we have residents who would prefer that this would not be going forward…”.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Before I could reply, a senior officer interjected to remind the Chair that time was passing. What I would have said was that:</p>
<p>- I understand some ISG workers are in fact concerned about continuing to work;</p>
<p>- for those who aren’t, this isn’t just a matter for them: the point of lockdown is to minimise non-essential activity, as it potentially spreads the virus among others; and</p>
<p>- construction workers who are not working are entitled to the same government support as others.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The workers on site are <strong>not</strong> “properly socially distancing”. While a resident was listening to the livestream of the meeting, she saw from her window workers standing less than two metres apart. Below is a photograph taken this morning showing a group of workers bunched together.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4528737221?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4528737221?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Corporation claims it will monitor compliance on the site closely, but is someone going to watch CCTV on the site ten hours a day? I don’t think any resident believes that. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Although the Chair of the Community and Children’s Services Committee faced these questions, he is not individually responsible for the Corporation’s policy. That is decided by the Policy and Resources Committee. At its last meeting, the members of this committee were more concerned with discussing questions like whether a deputy chair of a committee could succeed a retiring chair when that deputy chair was already the chair of another committee, than in the lives of City residents being made intolerable by this non-essential construction work.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> <strong>CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Golden Lane estate has the largest concentration of social housing in the City. Support for those in need during the lockdown has been largely provided by a group of resident volunteers, led by Sue Pearson and Jacqueline Swanson, working closely with the Square Mile food bank run by Barbican residents Liz King, Melissa Ramos and Antonia London.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The City Corporation has described them as “our” volunteers whom it is “utilising”, thus implying it is controlling front line support on the estate, which it isn’t. It often hasn’t even met requests for limited assistance from the volunteers on a timely basis (although an individual manager has been as helpful as he can). When name tag lanyards were requested for volunteers making deliveries on the estate, it took a whole week and a tussle with bureaucracy to get a batch from the Corporation, which has an abundant supply currently unused in the Guildhall. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Corporation has praised itself for making a currently unused community centre available to the food bank, and for eventually providing it with some funding, the amount of which is less than 4% of what it plans to spend on a communications campaign to persuade uninterested business voters to register in the Corporation’s unique electoral system. The purpose of this campaign is to avoid “reputational and political risks” for the Corporation, as only 40% of eligible businesses bother to register, and of those that do, typically less than half of the employees they nominate bother to vote. For more information on this system that escaped the electoral Reform Act of 1832, see: <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/the-lord-mayor-and-the-elephant">THE LORD MAYOR AND THE ELEPHANT</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> <strong>CAN'T PAY, WON’T PAY… </strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Earlier in the meeting last Friday, a member urged the Corporation to establish a Covid testing facility in the City. The idea was rebuffed, because it would entail the Corporation “entering into a world that central government has not yet opened up”. The member replied: </p>
<p><em>“Central government is not the 'be and end all'. I think we sometimes have to take the lead…the Corporation is big enough to do something like this... let’s be very bold.” </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Chair of the Policy and Resources Committee remarked: </p>
<p><em>“We don’t want to be big and bold and broke. We are suffering our own significant financial loss…”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>That remark reveals the chasm between the Corporation’s leadership and reality. This chasm was already evident when the Corporation distributed a special Covid edition of its magazine “City Resident” during the fourth week of lockdown. It was, incidentally, the only communication residents had received from the Corporation by post since lockdown began, apart from their council tax bills. In spite of the magazine being called “City Resident” and distributed to City residents, it devoted space to the Lord Mayor and Policy Chair reassuring them that:</p>
<p><em>“London will always be one of the world’s leading financial centres…with… more international HQs than any other European city. The timezone that spans Asia and North America will not change.” </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Why would anyone living in social housing on Golden Lane estate, confined to a small flat for most or all of every day, suffering noise and vibration from the Corporation’s own non-essential construction work, and facing an even more perilous financial future than before, feel reassured by being told that global financial institutions will continue to flourish in the City? In case anyone invokes trickle-down economics, it doesn’t apply to residents in the City: only 18 months ago the Corporation planned to start and finish an external refurbishment of Mansion House, the Lord Mayor’s palatial residence, before it even began the decades overdue replacement of decaying windows on Golden Lane estate: see <a href="http://www.cityam.com/271807/city-corporation-criticised-pressing-ahead-mansion-house">City A.M.</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Going back to the Policy Chair’s concern about the Corporation incurring a “significant financial loss” during the lockdown, it needs to be put into the perspective of the Corporation controlling £1.4 billion in its "City Fund" (for public authority purposes), £1.5 billion in its “City Bridge Trust” (for charitable purposes) and £2.6 billion in its “City’s Cash” (for non public authority purposes). It uses “City’s Cash”, among other things, to: </p>
<p>- fund the promotion of the UK financial sector, which can well afford to pay for itself;</p>
<p>- fund the promotion of vanity projects, including the proposed Centre for Music, which will be located only a few hundred metres from the existing concert hall in the Barbican;</p>
<p>- host a range of banquets in the Guildhall and Mansion House for local and foreign dignitaries, with no measurable outcomes; </p>
<p>- subsidise, at a quarter of million pounds a year, the "Guildhall Club”, to which all elected members of the Corporation belong without subscription, and which provides them with free or subsidised meals and drinks in spacious private facilities in the Guildhall; and</p>
<p>- provide a number of bedrooms for elected members to use in the Guildhall for free or at nominal rates.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When people everywhere emerge from this crisis into an economically devastated landscape, and discover how much money the Corporation has and how it’s spent, it’s hard to imagine that the Corporation will be able to return to business as usual. </p>THE LORD MAYOR AND THE ELEPHANTtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-03-08:2323372:BlogPost:741682020-03-08T16:53:42.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><br></br> A previous post <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/the-last-word-standards-committee-climb-down-and-spin" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Last Word…Standards Committee Climb Down and Spin</a> illustrates how the City Corporation spins its mistakes into achievements. It’s done it again. Here’s a press release announcing a reform of the selection process for the Lord Mayor: …</p>
<p><br/> A previous post <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/the-last-word-standards-committee-climb-down-and-spin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Last Word…Standards Committee Climb Down and Spin</a> illustrates how the City Corporation spins its mistakes into achievements. It’s done it again. Here’s a press release announcing a reform of the selection process for the Lord Mayor: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4044837915?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">City Corporation reforms Lord Mayor selection process</a><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4044734012?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a>. That reform was triggered by a diversity blunder made in the selection process in 2018, as reported in the national press: <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/city-corporation-forced-to-confront-winds-of-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">City of London Corporation forced to confront winds of change</a>. Some of what the press release says isn’t true - but more of that later. The main point is that even if the <em>selection</em> process has been improved, there remains an elephant in the room: the <em>election</em> process.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First, some background. The Lord Mayor is one of 25 aldermen, each of whom represents one of the City's miniscule wards. Aldermen are elected by tiny numbers of voters, particularly in the 21 wards that have a majority of “business” voters. In fact, often aldermen are “elected” without any vote at all, because there are no other candidates. There has long been a convention in the City that it’s “bad form” to stand against an alderman seeking re-election. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The selection process that has now been reformed is the means by which an alderman is put forward for election as Lord Mayor, an office with a one year term. The “independent panellists” involved in the selection process - who, the press release says, will be a majority by 2021 - haven’t been elected by anyone. The elephant in the room, which the press release carefully ignores, is the means by which the Lord Mayor is then elected. It isn’t done, as you might suppose, by those who vote for the 100 councillors and 25 aldermen of the Court of Common Council, namely City residents plus the (thoroughly undemocratic) business voting system. It isn’t even done by the 125 elected representatives themselves. Instead, it's done by the aldermen asking liverymen, who haven’t been elected by anyone, to “nominate” an alderman selected under the reformed process. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now for some more background. Liverymen are individuals who belong to the City’s 110 livery companies. These companies are private associations that are regulated by the City Corporation. Some of them began as medieval trade monopolies. The purposes of all of them today are mostly social and charitable. Many have exclusive membership criteria. In a few companies, you become a member usually by being the descendant of a member, who was in turn the descendant of a member, and so on. In most companies, you need to know members to nominate you. Liverymen, or in practice a fraction of them, meet once a year in the Guildhall to vote for an alderman selected under the now reformed process to be Lord Mayor. Except that they don’t vote in any democratically recognisable way. There are no ballot papers, and no need for them, because there's only one selected candidate. When that candidate’s name is called out, the liverymen shout “all!”, meaning that they all assent. Another alderman’s name is mentioned, but it’s understood by all that they’re not supposed to vote for him (and it’s nearly always “him”), so they all shout “next time!”. It’s all rather jolly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>These liverymen don’t need to have a real connection with the City, like living or even working there, and many don’t. So why do they have a role in “electing” a local authority politician to the highest office in the City? The answer is historical. But why is that a good answer? It's equally part of our history that before the national electoral reform of 1832, members of parliament were elected in “rotten” and “pocket” boroughs. These boroughs somewhat resemble the City’s 21 business wards. No-one advocates reversing that reform in national politics. The logical corollary is introducing it in City politics.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This mayoral electoral elephant has stood in the Guildhall for a long time, but it's becoming restive. Outside the walls of the Guildhall, deference and secrecy have been replaced by accountability and openness. But, as the system for the election of the Lord Mayor proves, this has yet to happen within its walls. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This might not matter if the City Corporation wasn’t a public authority. But it is, and has the power to affect people's lives, which it does, often badly - for example <a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/profiles/blogs/beech-street-tunnel-closure-uk-s-first-zero-emission-street-and" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Beech Street Tunnel Closure</a>. It has several functions that have nothing to do with being a public authority, and sometimes conflict with that status. It uses some of its great wealth to promote the financial City, which can easily afford to pay for its own promotion. It regulates the livery companies, and runs a large charity. It also provides a free private club for the members of the Court of Common Council, and a free meeting place for Freemasons, who account for more than a quarter of the Court. There is now a growing discussion of the need to disaggregate these disparate functions, and to abolish at least the last two of them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The City Corporation’s survival strategy is spin. The press release makes the reformed selection process for the Lord Mayor look as shiny as an HR process in any modern progressive institution, while ignoring the elephantine democratic deficit of the election to which that selection leads. Even ignoring the elephant’s swishing trunk, the press release had to make the following departures from the truth to make the reform look shiny:-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It said that the reform was introduced “to enhance the transparency of the process”. “Enhance” means “heighten, intensify”. But you can’t “heighten” or “intensify” nothing, which was the previous level of “transparency”. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It also said that “independent consultants … ran a widespread consultation with … City Corporation Councillors”. A number of City Corporation councillors weren't consulted, and knew nothing about the consultation except what they read in the press.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>An unnamed spokesperson for the City Corporation was quoted as saying that “We are determined to ensure there are no barriers to any member of the community standing for the elected office of Lord Mayor".The word “elected” was added before “office of Lord Mayor” presumably to “enhance” the impression of democracy, but as anyone who has read thus far will know, that there is nothing democratic about the Lord Mayor’s election.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Corporation’s website specifies that a candidate for Lord Mayor should “have a significant track record and be recognised as a leader in their field” (typically in the financial City) and “have an extensive network”. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here's a translation into truth of the sentence in the press release, with added words emboldened:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"We are determined to ensure there are no barriers <strong>except status and connections</strong> to any member of the community standing for the <strong>undemocratically</strong> elected office of Lord Mayor.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The press release proves the equation that PR + HR = nonsense.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It also proves that adapting a feudal system of local government to the modern world is impossible. It’s time for the Corporation to be disaggregated.</p>
<p> </p>CITY CORPORATION FORCED TO CONFRONT WINDS OF CHANGEtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-02-13:2323372:BlogPost:741392020-02-13T12:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
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<div class="yj6qo">On 11 February the Telegraph published this article describing some of the many issues affecting the City Corporation: <a href="https://st4.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3859596086?profile=original">City of London Corporation forced to confront winds of change…</a></div>
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<div class="yj6qo">On 11 February the Telegraph published this article describing some of the many issues affecting the City Corporation: <a href="https://st4.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3859596086?profile=original">City of London Corporation forced to confront winds of change</a></div>
<div class="adL"><p>It’s interesting to read the remarks of some of the Corporation’s supporters.</p>
<p>An unnamed supporter smears all the Corporation’s critics by mentioning only conspiracy theorists, whom one finds expressing views - invariably unsupported by facts - about all secretive and influential institutions (CIA, Vatican, etc). This supporter has never tried, though, to dispute any of the verifiable facts that I have disclosed, or to find flaws in the logic of my arguments, during the 16 months that I have been publicly seeking accountability in the Corporation.</p>
<p>Mark Boleat, former Chair of the Policy and Resources Committee, concedes that “<em>you would not invent the City of London, absolutely not</em>” but asks “what is the practical problem you are trying to solve?” Had he asked me that question when we were both on the planning committee, instead of asking it rhetorically after his retirement, I would have answered with a long list of "practical problems", including: the case of a resident councillor who stood up for her constituents against one of the Corporation's own developments and was referred by the Corporation to the police for prosecution that turned out to be entirely groundless; having a planning committee that cannot say “no" to any major developer, even if the development fails to comply with planning rules and blights the lives of the City’s own residents; spending an undisclosed six figure sum every year on the dining and wining of City councillors while the Corporation's own housing estates are visibly poorly maintained; and the many other issues identified in my <a href="https://st4.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3860444699?profile=original">Christmas Quiz</a></p>
<p>It’s good to see that discussion about radical change in the Corporation is now being aired in the national media. One issue which the article doesn’t focus on is the undemocratic nature of the City’s business vote, that is a root cause of much of what is wrong in the Corporation. But it won’t be long before we hear more about it. </p>
<p> </p>
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</div>THE LAST WORD….Standards Committee Climb Down and Spintag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-02-10:2323372:BlogPost:741332020-02-10T16:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p>The recent climb down by the City Corporation's Standards Committee over its dispensations policy was a victory for residents. The Standards Chair, though, has tried to spin it as an achievement of her committee. What follows is her “delighted” announcement and my satirical response, which reminds the Court of Common Council that it was the persistence of residents that compelled the Standards Committee to reverse its policy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The fact that in a period of more than a…</p>
<p>The recent climb down by the City Corporation's Standards Committee over its dispensations policy was a victory for residents. The Standards Chair, though, has tried to spin it as an achievement of her committee. What follows is her “delighted” announcement and my satirical response, which reminds the Court of Common Council that it was the persistence of residents that compelled the Standards Committee to reverse its policy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The fact that in a period of more than a year:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- well over a thousand residents signed a petition declaring no confidence in the City Corporation’s standards regime, including its dispensations policy; </p>
<p> </p>
<p>- their representative associations wrote repeatedly to the Standards Committee asking for change; and</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- several residents took time (in some cases out of work) to attend a series of committee meetings, and to film them for those who could not attend;</p>
<p> </p>
<p> to get the same right to be represented by their elected councillors as residents in other boroughs is no cause for the City Corporation to be “delighted”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This episode, like the City Corporation’s recent climb down over the proposed expansion of the City of London School for Girls, proves that resident activism can defeat the Corporation. But it shouldn’t be necessary for residents - who are the only truly engaged section of the City’s electorate - to fight their own elected body. They have to do so because only 20% of City councillors are elected by residential wards; the rest are elected by the undemocratic business vote, which doesn’t exist anywhere else (and for good reason). Abolishing the business vote, and disaggregating the City Corporation’s various non local authority functions, is the key to bringing democracy to the City.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>EMAIL SENT ON 7 FEBRUARY BY THE STANDARDS CHAIR TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>I’m delighted to say that we have agreed further liberalisation of our dispensations policy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At the meeting of the Standards Committee, on 24 January, we considered the opinion of Philip Kolvin QC. The Committee voted nine in favour with one abstention, to accept his opinion that the approach suggested by Mr Harrower is unlawful.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>We then continued to agree ways in which we are able to further liberalise our policy. Greater detail of our discussion can be found in the draft minutes of the meeting, which are now available on the website, as are the public committee papers, which include Mr Kolvin’s opinion, previously circulated to all members.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Our Policy</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Members have been advised to seek advice from the Comptroller as to whether or not their disclosable pecuniary interest (DPI) is engaged, if they are in any doubt as to their position in any given case. In accordance with the wishes of the Court, since March 2019, our policy on granting dispensations to speak to those who do have an engaged DPI has sought to be as liberal as possible.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Delegated Right to speak</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Since that time, in addition to a dispensation to speak and vote on council tax, general dispensations to speak have been allowed for a member’s entire term of office on general housing matters and, for those who are not members of those committees, to speak, as a member of the public, on planning and licensing matters. At our meeting on 24 January, we agreed to extend such dispensations to include storage and car parking within general housing matters, and also to allow members of the Planning and Transportation and Licensing Committees to speak as members of the public. Members can still apply for dispensations to speak as a member, and members of Planning and Transportation, of course, remain free to seek a dispensation to speak and/or vote as a member of that committee*. Such a right would be unlikely to come into force for members of licensing panels, as the committee’s own rules do not allow members to sit on panels, which are dealing with applications in the ward they represent.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was also agreed that, upon election, members will routinely be invited to make an application for these dispensations. Officers will put in place arrangements for this.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Specific applications to speak</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Since March 2019, all specific applications to speak have been granted. Following the meeting in May, in order to make the process easier, the application form was significantly shortened.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Since the meeting of the Standards Committee in October, panels have been set up at bi monthly intervals - the first had to be cancelled as there were no applications to consider. We will continue to monitor and, if necessary, arrange these to take place at shorter intervals. Since March, members have been advised to seek dispensations as early as possible and not to wait for a matter to appear as an agenda item. If an application needs to be decided before an arranged panel is to meet, every attempt will be made to assemble one. Urgency arrangements will continue to be in place, to deal with situations where the unforeseeable occurs, and a dispensation is required at short notice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Dispensations to vote</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Those with an engaged DPI on housing matters will usually be resident in City owned properties. Section 618 of the 1985 Housing Act prohibits such members from voting on housing matters and has no facility for dispensation. At its meeting, in October, the Standards Committee set in progress seeking the repeal of s 618. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Most other applications for dispensations to vote relate to planning matters and applications will continue to be considered on their merits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At its meeting on 24 January, however, the committee decided that in these cases it would apply the tests recommended by Philip Kolvin QC, rather than state that such dispensations would only be granted in exceptional circumstances. It was further agreed that members applying should be directed to address these test matters in their application forms.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>In Conclusion</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>There has been considerable liberalisation of our dispensations policy over the past eleven months. I hope that the Court will now feel confident that we are operating as liberal a dispensations policy as the law will allow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Please feel free to pass on this email to anyone to whom you think it may be of interest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*However, a member with a financial interest in a planning matter or where there is otherwise ‘a real possibility of bias’ (objectively viewed in all the circumstances) will be precluded, by the rule against bias. We have no power to disapply this rule.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>* * * * *</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>EMAIL SENT ON 10 FEBRUARY FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Members will have seen the email from the Standards Chair last Friday afternoon about the “liberalisation” of the dispensations policy.</p>
<p><br/> I trust that all members accept that full credit for this “liberalisation” belongs entirely to the Standards Chair and the other longer serving members of the Standards Committee, notwithstanding that:<br/> <br/> (1) these same members had supported a policy that denied resident councillors the right to speak, until the Court compelled them to reverse that policy because of a motion I proposed in December 2018 which was supported by the City’s two largest residents’ associations; and<br/> <br/> (2) these same members had supported a policy that allowed resident councillors the right to vote "only in exceptional circumstances”, until they reversed that policy after a year of intense pressure from residents, many of whom signed a petition declaring that they had no confidence in the City’s standards regime. This resulted in the Standards Committee becoming such a reputational liability to the Corporation that all its recent meetings have been attended by members of the City’s PR department. <br/> <br/> I also trust that no member will give any credence to the notions that: <br/> <br/> (a) the most recent reversal was initiated by an external legal opinion, which drew attention from the substantive reversal of the policy by opining that the procedural solution of “general” dispensations was “unlawful”;<br/> <br/> (b) that opinion was widely promoted to the Court and (via the Corporation’s website) to the public, apparently to discredit me for having advocated that procedural solution during the previous six months, although no-one had during that period suggested this solution was “unlawful";<br/> <br/> (c) the opinion was obtained on the basis of partial instructions, and many of the issues I raised (which were not posted on the Corporation’s website) remain unaddressed;<br/> <br/> (d) the Standards Committee (with the exception of one member) accepted the opinion, thus ignoring the advice of the counsel who wrote it that “members should not automatically accept an opinion by Queen’s Counsel as a definitive statement of the law”; <br/> <br/> (e) the opinion covered when a “pecuniary interest” was engaged in a matter in a way that undermined entirely the Corporation’s case in the standards proceedings that it brought against a member in 2018; and <br/> <br/> (f) processing applications for dispensations at two monthly intervals when members usually only have a week’s notice of what will be considered at a committee meeting makes no sense.<br/> <br/> I expect all members appreciate that when the Corporation does a U-turn on an important policy in just over year, it is appropriate for it to do the following:<br/> <br/> (i) not to admit that it has made any mistakes;<br/> <br/> (ii) to spin a narrative to make it look as if it is doing something good on its own initiative; <br/> <br/> (iii) to smear those who compelled it to make the U-turn (by calling a significant part of its residential electorate who signed the petition “confused”);<br/> <br/> (iv) to promote its narrative in the local press, which receives significant revenue from the Corporation and no longer publishes material critical of it; and </p>
<p>(v) to have the last word. </p>DOWNFALL OF THE CITY CORPORATION'S DISPENSATIONS POLICYtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-01-27:2323372:BlogPost:740122020-01-27T11:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><strong>This is the text of an email that I sent to all members of the Court of Common Council on 27 January:</strong></p>
<p><strong>SUMMARY</strong></p>
<p>During the last 15 months, the Standards Committee has done a 170 degree turn on its dispensations policy, ending with the decision at its meeting last Friday to abandon the restriction on granting dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances”, and to require democracy to be taken into account when granting such…</p>
<p><strong>This is the text of an email that I sent to all members of the Court of Common Council on 27 January:</strong></p>
<p><strong>SUMMARY</strong></p>
<p>During the last 15 months, the Standards Committee has done a 170 degree turn on its dispensations policy, ending with the decision at its meeting last Friday to abandon the restriction on granting dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances”, and to require democracy to be taken into account when granting such dispensations. This is nearly the outcome I had envisaged when I proposed a motion in Court in December 2018 to appoint a working party drawn from outside the Standards Committee to consider the reform of our dispensations policy. I say "170 degree turn” and “nearly” because the new policy is procedurally inoperable. I suggest below short and long term solutions to this unsatisfactory situation. I then set out the timeline that led to it. Finally, as this dreary dispensations soap opera comes to an end, I comment on the last episode - "a matter of opinion”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>SHORT TERM SOLUTION</strong></p>
<p>Since it isn’t realistic to expect the Corporation to reform itself to the fundamental extent needed, the current governance review is likely to be a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. But a short term improvement could still be achieved by chucking overboard a particular broken deckchair called the Standards Committee. For several years there has been no legal requirement for a local authority to have one. I sense that a number of members would consider the abolition of our Standards Committee to be a positive development.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>LONG TERM SOLUTION</strong></p>
<p>In December 2018, the City Corporation backed down on the proposed expansion of its own City of London School for Girls, which would have harmed the amenity of its own residents and vandalised its own architectural heritage. A month later it has finally backed down in principle on trying to prevent its resident councillors from participating in decisions that affect their constituents, although it has done so in a muddled and unsatisfactory way. Both of these defeats for the Corporation have been achieved through strong resident action. The election of more resident councillors in March 2021 who are willing to represent their electors against the Corporation, rather than the other way round, should further contain the Corporation’s bias against residents. But if resident councillors remain only 20% of the total, instead of 100% as in any other local authority, that bias will remain. The business voting system isn’t democratic, literally: <em>demos</em>= the people<em>, kratia </em>= government.<em> </em>The ultimate solution is to abolish this system and to disaggregate the Corporation’s disparate and conflicting functions.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>TIMELINE</strong></p>
<p><strong>Oct - Nov 2018:</strong> The Standards Committee promoted a new dispensations policy that effectively prevented resident councillors from speaking and voting on matters affecting their constituents.</p>
<p><strong>Dec 2018:</strong> In the face of this vigilantism, and following revelations about the conduct of several members of the Standards Committee in a case that scandalised the public because of its unfairness, the Court of Common Council compelled the Standards Committee to grant dispensations to speak. This was done after the Policy Chair hijacked my original motion, and left untouched the policy of granting dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances”.</p>
<p><strong>Jan 2019:</strong> The fallacy of omitting half the necessary reform of the dispensations policy became apparent only a month later. The Standards Committee became an object of ridicule - both inside and outside the Court - for deciding that a resident councillor had a "pecuniary interest” in a tree owned by a local authority, and for its refusal to grant her a dispensation to vote on whether the tree should be felled, although its felling would affect scores of her constituents as much as - or more than - herself. </p>
<p><strong>Mar - Apr 2019:</strong> The involuntary departure of several members of the Standards Committee took place. Some of the members who replaced them began to be dissenting voices in the meetings that followed.</p>
<p><strong>Apr 2019:</strong> The Court received a petition signed by 1,100 City residents, declaring that they had no confidence in the Corporation's standards policy and practice. They called for the Court to make immediate and fundamental reforms, so that their elected representatives would be free to speak and vote on their behalf, including on matters in which those representatives had a declared interest (unless the matter uniquely or especially affected them). This would give City residents the same level of representation as residents of other local authorities. The Court referred the petition to the Standards Committee, which ignored it. In the six meetings of this committee and its sub-committees that took place during the months that followed, the petition - and a couple of similar resolutions passed by the City’s two largest residential wards - were barely mentioned.</p>
<p><strong>July 2019:</strong> This led to a satirical proposal being made to the Court that it should abolish its residential electorate as a quick and easy way of solving the problems with the standards regime.</p>
<p><strong>June - Nov 2019:</strong> Some resident councillors made identical applications for “general” (but not unlimited) dispensations to speak and vote that reflected precisely what the petition called for. Those applications were considered in five meetings of the Standards Committee and its Dispensations Sub-Committee. In every meeting the applications were not properly addressed, and were often mischaracterised as "blanket” dispensations. By the end of the year, still no decision had been taken on them. It had however been proved that the current policy of granting dispensations mainly on a case by case basis - which the “general” dispensations would have rendered unnecessary - was procedurally inoperable, because members were usually aware of the agenda for a particular committee meeting only when it was published - usually a week in advance - and a Dispensations Sub-Committee could not be convened within that timescale. Dispensations could be granted under urgency, but that would entail the democratic deficit of the decision on whether an elected councillor could speak and vote being made by an unelected official (in consultation with the Chair and Deputy Chair of the Standards Committee).</p>
<p><strong>Oct 2019:</strong> Responding to pressure from residents, the Standards Committee decided to ask the Policy & Resources Committee and certain other committees to lobby for the abolition of section 618 of the Housing Act 1985 - an obscure provision that applies only to the City, and prevents resident councillors from voting on certain housing matters. It is not subject to the dispensations regime introduced by the Localism Act 2011.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>A MATTER OF OPINION</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan 2020: </strong>The Standards Committee adopted a proposal, originally made in a Counsel’s opinion obtained in December 2019, to abandon the restriction on granting dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances”, and to require certain factors to be taken into account when granting such dispensations. Those factors include public confidence in the Corporation, democratic debate and accountability. This suggestion must have arisen from criticisms made on behalf of residents of the Corporation’s existing dispensations policy. They were also the criticisms that underpinned the applications for the “general” dispensations. The seismic shift in policy represented by the adoption of this proposal should go a fair way towards meeting the residents’ expectations that they will have the same level of representation as residents of other local authorities.</p>
<p>When the Standards Committee considered the applications for the “general” dispensations, however, now for the sixth time, it refused to grant them, because the opinion stated that they were “unlawful”. I challenged both the original opinion and a second opinion issued in January 2020 in detail on this point. Counsel stated in his second opinion that “it must be correct" that “members should not automatically accept an opinion by Queen's Counsel as a definitive statement of the law”, and that "the correctness of the conclusions” in his opinion “may be tested”. Unfortunately, the Standards Committee ignored his advice on this point, and uncritically accepted it on the “general” dispensations, without referring to any of my comments. </p>
<p>The procedural inoperability of the case by case approach to granting dispensations under the new policy - a problem that the "general” dispensations would have solved - has been known for several months, and was raised in my comments, but ignored. In practice, most applications will probably need to be dealt with under urgency, with the democratic deficit that entails. But the Town Clerk is required by the new policy to take account of factors like democracy, and the refusal of a dispensation for a resident councillor to speak and vote on a matter affecting their constituents no less than themselves could become a focus of resident action.</p>
<p>There is one point on which I agree entirely with Counsel. In his original opinion, he expressed a view on when a “pecuniary interest” was engaged in a matter. His view is precisely what I, and the defence QC, had advocated in the case in which I represented another councillor in 2018, and which scandalised the public because of its handling by the Standards Committee. It would be interesting to know whether the Corporation will adopt this view in future cases, or whether it will reject Counsel’s advice on this point while accepting it on the “general” dispensations.</p>
<p> </p>The latest on the City’s “standards” shambles….tag:goldenlaneestate.org,2020-01-23:2323372:BlogPost:741922020-01-23T10:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p></p>
<p>For the last five months, three resident councillors have been trying to obtain general “dispensations” from the City’s standards committee to speak and vote on behalf of their constituents on matters which affect those councillors no more than any of their constituents. In any other local authority, where 100% of the councillors are elected by residents, it would be taken for granted that councillors speak and vote on matters affecting those who elected them. But in the City, where…</p>
<p></p>
<p>For the last five months, three resident councillors have been trying to obtain general “dispensations” from the City’s standards committee to speak and vote on behalf of their constituents on matters which affect those councillors no more than any of their constituents. In any other local authority, where 100% of the councillors are elected by residents, it would be taken for granted that councillors speak and vote on matters affecting those who elected them. But in the City, where only 20% of the councillors are elected by residents (the others being elected by sometimes tiny numbers of typically disengaged business voters), and where residents are widely regarded as a nuisance, the idea that resident councillors be allowed to speak and vote on matters affecting their constituents was, during 2018, rejected by the standards committee, which is the body responsible for granting “dispensations".</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In December 2018, following several revelations about the standards committee, the Court of Common Council compelled it to change its policy so as to allow resident councillors to speak. The right to vote was left untouched, however, even though it is more important: residents are more interested in their councillors voting on their behalf than merely speaking. For more than a year, the standards committee has been under pressure to allow resident councillors to vote. Read more background and links to many posts under “<a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/page/gagging-row" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gagging Row</a>” in the “Local Politics” section of this website.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In December 2019, the City Solicitor, who had not previously suggested that the “general” dispensations sought by the three resident councillors were unlawful, suddenly instructed a QC to opine that they were: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831024451?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DPI Advice</a>.</p>
<p><span>As one who practised law for 30 years,</span> I consider that this opinion should not be relied upon, particularly because of the way the instructions were written: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831025030?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instruction to Counsel</a>.</p>
<p>Here are my reasons: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831032204?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extract from an email dated 18 December 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The City Solicitor replied: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831032783?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extract from an email dated 20 December 2019</a> and I responded: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831033165?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extract from an email dated 23 December 2019</a>.</p>
<p>A week ago, a second opinion from the QC responding to my comments was posted on the Corporations’s website: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831033692?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Second Opinion</a>, although my comments were omitted.</p>
<p>Also posted on the website was a report of the City Solicitor to the standards committee for its meeting on Friday 24 January: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831034752?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Report</a>.</p>
<p>I sent an email to the standards committee yesterday, commenting on the second opinion and on the proposals in the City Solicitor’s report: <a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3831035094?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Email dated 22 January 2020</a>.</p>
<p>I think the second opinion underscores the unreliability of the first one, and the vague/peripheral proposals in the report are unacceptable. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Anyone who is able to attend the standards committee meeting on Friday 24 January at 11am in the West Wing of the Guildhall is welcome to do so. Some members of that committee are trying to achieve reform, but they face determined opposition.</strong> </p>The Standards Committee fails again….tag:goldenlaneestate.org,2019-10-10:2323372:BlogPost:737312019-10-10T09:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><strong>TEXT OF AN EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL ON 8 OCTOBER 2019 </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>The Standards Committee fails again….</strong></p>
<p>The Standards Committee, at its meeting last Friday, did not abandon its policy of granting residential councillors dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances", and will thus continue to disenfranchise the City’s residential electorate. It also failed to hold a proper vote…</p>
<p><strong>TEXT OF AN EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL ON 8 OCTOBER 2019 </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>The Standards Committee fails again….</strong></p>
<p>The Standards Committee, at its meeting last Friday, did not abandon its policy of granting residential councillors dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances", and will thus continue to disenfranchise the City’s residential electorate. It also failed to hold a proper vote itself in public.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What happened?</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Standards Chair asked for a vote on a recommendation that "a blanket dispensation be given to members to speak for their terms of office (subject to fine tuning the wording)". Eleven of the twelve elected members of the Standards Committee were present, and two of the three co-opted members. Two votes were held on this recommendation, and some confusion ensued as the co-opted members voted, which they should not have done. (One would expect that co-opted members, who readily express views on how elected members should perform their role, would have an elementary understanding of their own.) After the co-opted members’ votes had been discounted, it was declared that the recommendation had been defeated 6-5. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This caused concern among a number of residents who had come to observe the meeting. They clearly saw that the vote was 5-5. One of them raised her hand, and politely said that she wasn’t going to ask a question, but she see didn’t see how that result had been reached. The Standards Chair retorted “Nor do you need to”, adding that she wasn’t having any of the members “pilloried”, thus wrongly attributing to the resident the motive that she wanted to identify which members had voted against the recommendation (although, according to the “accountability” Principle of Public Life, there would be nothing wrong with identifying them).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Later in the meeting, after the public had been excluded, one of the newer members said he had not wanted to raise the point at the time because of the "tense" situation, but he also queried the vote. After discussion, it was agreed that the vote should have been 5-5. (The discrepancy was due to the Standards Chair having decided not to use her casting vote.) Another newer member called for the correct vote to be recorded in public session.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So the residents were right. That is a theme which runs throughout the matters decided at the meeting, as summarised below.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Summary of the key outcomes of the meeting</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Standards Chair referred to the experience of the last six months, during which the operation of the dispensations policy had been “monitored”. The declaration by a significant proportion of the residential electorate at the outset of that period that they had no confidence in the dispensations policy would, one might think, be a material consideration, but the longer serving members of the committee seemed not to think so. None of them addressed the points raised in the petition, the two ward mote resolutions or the two letters from the City’s two largest residents’ associations. They acted as if those things simply didn’t exist.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Some of the longer serving members persisted in referring to “blanket dispensations”, implying a dispensation to speak and vote on any matter during a member’s term of office. That would plainly be unlawful, and has never been called for by the residents. What the residents have consistently called for, beginning with the petition, is a “general” (but not unlimited) dispensation of the kind described in the attached graphic. All the members of the committee were sent the graphic before the meeting, but the longer serving members ignored it in the discussion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>If any member of the Court can explain why a “general” dispensation of this kind would not provide a lawful, sensible, practical and simple solution, or why it should not at least be trialled up to March 2021, they should say so. So far no-one has. </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the co-opted members referred to the rule against bias, which applies largely to planning and licensing meetings, and expressed concern about the Corporation being exposed to damages if that rule was breached. A newer member pointed out that this was an entirely separate matter from dispensations under the Localism Act, which have a wider scope. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Section 618 of the Housing Act 1985 is an outdated and restrictive provision that applies uniquely to residential councillors in the City. The committee agreed unanimously (but it would have been difficult for it not to) that it would recommend to other committees that they approve lobbying for the repeal of this section. The City Solicitor advised that “on any analysis, it [section 618] will be with us for some years to come”. A newer member pointed out, however, that a housing act would come out of the next Queen’s speech, and that would be an obvious opportunity to make the repeal.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The committee decided to reject four applications for “general" dispensations that had first been made four months ago, and resubmitted after the Dispensations Sub-Committee failed to address the points made in support of those applications either properly or at all. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The committee decided to shorten the application form, but make it mandatory.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What next?</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next committee meeting is scheduled to be held on 24 January 2020. One can expect more discussion then on dispensations to speak and vote, because the members agreed to revisit both subjects at their next meeting. However, in view of the divided opinion in the committee and the continuing opposition to reform from the longer serving members, one cannot expect anything useful to come of it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The current situation will therefore continue. Resident members will continue to face a confusing patchwork of existing dispensations and a need to apply specifically for new ones. New applications will often need to be made at short notice because meeting agendas are generally only distributed a week in advance. Many applications will have to be decided under the urgency procedure, because it has been proved that Dispensation Sub-Committees cannot be convened within a week. Members can expect most applications for dispensations to vote to be refused, because in the City (uniquely, it seems, among local authorities) the interest of members’ constituents is not considered to be a sufficient reason for members to vote. Matters which most affect their constituents may therefore be decided by other members with no local knowledge, interest or mandate. There is no appeal from a dispensation decision, and judicial review would not normally be practicable in terms of time and cost. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>City residents will remain disenfranchised, compared with residents anywhere else in the country. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This may be acceptable to the Court, most of whose members represent generally uninterested business voters. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>But it won’t be acceptable to residents. I predict that, over the next six months, the dispensations issue will be conflated with other issues, some of which are in the public domain, and some not yet. Those issues will together feed growing resident activism (as evidenced by the demonstration outside the west wing at the last Court meeting). Pressure will increase, and external political intervention will be sought, for the Corporation’s local authority functions to be exercised by a more democratic institution.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Graeme Harrower</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3659843438?profile=RESIZE_710x" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3659843438?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3655347182?profile=RESIZE_710x" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3655347182?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center"/></a></p>Standards Committee meets because of the residents’ petition, and.... IGNORES it!tag:goldenlaneestate.org,2019-09-08:2323372:BlogPost:736292019-09-08T08:30:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Dear Resident</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Concern over standards in the City Corporation is increasing as some members of the Standards Committee devise increasingly bizarre excuses to resist the erosion of its power over residential councillors.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">For example, in the Dispensations Sub-Committee meeting on 4 June, a "co-opted" (meaning…</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Dear Resident</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Concern over standards in the City Corporation is increasing as some members of the Standards Committee devise increasingly bizarre excuses to resist the erosion of its power over residential councillors.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">For example, in the Dispensations Sub-Committee meeting on 4 June, a "co-opted" (meaning unelected) member rejected the notion that residential councillors should be trusted to exercise their judgment, because in future the "wrong sort of person might join the Corporation". Since the only way a person can join the Corporation as a member is to be elected, the concern must be that City residents might in future elect the "wrong sort of person". The residents are therefore being told that not only are they "confused" (<a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2662477049?profile=original">as the Standards Chair called them in response to the petition)</a>, but that they must also be protected from the consequences of their voting decisions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Standards Committee itself prefers to decide, through less than a handful of its own members, when resident councillors can speak and vote on matters which affect them and their constituents equally, but the answer - when it comes to voting, which is more important - is usually "no". So decisions affecting residents may end up being taken by councillors who have no knowledge of the residents’ area. Most of those councillors are likely to represent business wards, so they may have no interest in residents’ concerns at all. The Standards Committee’s policy is therefore a barrier to democracy.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Standards Committee will meet on Friday 4 October at 11 am at the Guildhall to make a final decision on its dispensations policy</span></strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">. Based on its meetings on 4 and 6 September, it looks set to keep this barrier to democracy firmly in place, claiming that it is doing so "to maintain public confidence". The meeting will be open to the public - but only to listen, of course, not to speak. Please come if you can, and at least be a presence there.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Yours sincerely</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Cllr Graeme Harrower</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE AND RESIDENTIAL WARD COUNCILLORS ON 7 SEPTEMBER 2019 </span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">What didn’t happen at the Standards Committee meeting on 6 September </span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">At the meeting of the Standards Committee yesterday, the Chair said that full minutes would be prepared. Since they will be prepared by the City Corporation’s premier minute writer, I expect they will give a detailed account of what was said. What is important about this meeting, however, is what was not said, as I explain below.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(1) The meeting was attended by just over a third of the committee members. There were fewer committee members present than members of the public. That is remarkable, when you consider that this committee has, for the last five months, been the object of an expression of no confidence by City residents.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(2) Even more remarkable is that if you didn’t know this committee had lost the confidence of the public, you would never have guessed it from the discussion during the meeting. Not once during the hour and a half of discussion did anyone mention the residents’ petition, two wardmote resolutions, annual residents’ meeting or the representations from the City’s two largest residents’ associations, all calling for fundamental reform, including the grant of “general” dispensations.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(3) Instead, the committee avoided addressing the points made in the two emails below about the grant of “general” dispensations as the only way of resolving the grave democratic deficit and the lack of trust of members’ judgment which are both implicit in the current dispensations policy. Regarding the secondary issue of section 618, a couple of members supported making a recommendation for the prompt repeal of this outdated, obscure and repressive provision (something that the committee has done nothing about since it was first raised by a residents' association eleven months ago).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(4) The battle for councillors being granted dispensations generally to speak on matters affecting their constituents was largely won when the committee was compelled by the Court to change its previous repressive policy in this regard last December. One member at yesterday’s meeting, though, still seemed to find this too much, and advocated that the right to speak be restricted in some circumstances.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(5) Regarding dispensations to vote, no-one could explain why a councillor should be refused such a dispensation when their interest in a matter was not greater than their constituents’, and when the absence of their participation in a vote could distort the outcome against the interest of those constituents.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(6) The grant of “general” dispensations would neatly solve the problem of the "cliff edge" between what is acceptable and what is not. A "general" dispensation would not cover a matter that affected a councillor uniquely or more than any of their constituents. That is the kind of matter on which speaking or voting would cause concern about the misuse of public office, and is what the legislation is aimed at. In practice, it should not be difficult to tell whether a matter affects a councillor uniquely or more than any others - it is a simple matter of fact. A “general” dispensation would cover a matter that did not affect the councillor more than any of their constituents. In that case, the councillor would - by definition - be speaking and voting on it in the interest of their constituents, which is exactly what the law permits, and democracy requires. In a case where only a small number of constituents are equally affected, the councillor should be trusted to use their judgment as to whether it would be appropriate to rely on the dispensation and to speak and/or vote on the matter.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(7) Regarding the process of requesting dispensations, the discussion parted from reality as much as it did on the substantive issues. It is a fact that a councillor will usually only know of the agenda for a meeting when it is published a week in advance. It was acknowledged by the Standards Chair that it is very difficult to convene a Dispensations Sub-Committee within a short period. The logical conclusion to draw from these two facts is that the current policy of granting dispensations on a case by case basis is inoperable. Bizarrely, the committee’s solution to this problem was to propose having fixed meetings of the Dispensations Sub-Committee every two months. Most requests for dispensations would therefore not be considered until after the meetings for which they were needed had taken place. The urgency procedure would have to be used instead. That would be highly undesirable, as it would entail decisions on the ability of elected members to represent their constituents being made on a case by case basis by unelected officials, with only the concurrence of the Chair and Deputy Chair, who supported the previous restriction on speaking and now support the restriction on voting. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Here are some reactions afterwards from residents who attended the meeting:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">- There seemed to be some "face saving" going on within the committee.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">- There is indeed "confusion" about standards in the City, but it isn’t on the part of the residents (as the Standards Chair claimed in response to the petition): it’s on the part of this committee.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">A decision on whether to change the current dispensations policy, and on the four resubmitted requests for "general" dispensations, is due to be taken at the committee meeting on 4 October. Based on the experience of yesterday's meeting, we can expect a few cosmetic changes to be proposed, and a vague commitment to a more “collegiate” culture (which presumably means less of the vigilantism we have seen in the last couple of years), but with nothing to back it up. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The overriding impression of yesterday’s meeting was of crew members rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, still in denial that it had struck an iceberg and was going to sink. They would be better advised to look for the lifeboat named "general dispensation".</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Regards,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Graeme Harrower</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE ON 5 SEPTEMBER 2019</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">Outcome of the Dispensations Sub-Committee meeting on 4 September</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Dispensations Sub-Committee decided at its meeting yesterday to defer making a decision on the four requests for General Dispensations until the Standards Committee had decided either to change or confirm the current dispensations policy at its meeting on 4 October.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Points raised in that meeting which are relevant to the consideration of that policy by the Standards Committee in its meetings on 6 September and 4 October</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(1) Previous submission of requests / nature of a General Dispensation </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Sub-Committee Chair said that “we have decided these applications [for General Dispensations] before [at the meeting of the Sub-Committee on 3 July], and can’t decide them differently without a very good reason. We can’t [approve] them for the reasons given last time. Nothing has changed.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">As Councillor Bostock made clear in the email by which he resubmitted his request (and which appears in an agenda supplement after he pointed out that it had been omitted from the agenda pack), the reason for his resubmission was that the previous Sub-Committee had ignored the fact that the original request was for a General Dispensation, and treated it as if were a request for dispensations for specific matters that had been mentioned only to explain the urgency of the request at that time. The previous Sub-Committee had not addressed, properly or at all, the points made in support of the General Dispensation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">In spite of this, the Chair yesterday continued not to address those points. In the previous meeting, she had described a General Dispensation as a “blank cheque”. In the meeting yesterday, she described it in equivaent terms: it would be a “ blanket dispensation”, and allow a member to “do what you like during your term of office”. The co-opted member described it as a “blanket permission to speak and vote” which would be “very dangerous”. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">As explained in my email below, this is simply untrue: “a General Dispensation excludes the very matters that cause concern about the misuse of public office, which is what the legislation is aimed at”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The co-opted member said she was concerned with the wording of the General Dispensation, giving as an example the situation where a member and nine other residents were affected by a planning application that would improve the value of their properties significantly but adversely affect the rest of the ward. She thought that the member should not have the right to vote in those circumstances. The Chair said she had the same concern. In that example, however, a General Dispensation would not, on its own terms, apply. That is because it excludes a situation where a matter affects a member more than their constituents, as it would where the value of the member’s property rose while the value of other residents’ properties fell because of the proposed development. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(2) Public confidence</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">At the meeting yesterday, an elected member remarked that not allowing a resident member to vote with a General Dispensation could have the effect of “distorting or changing a decision”. (The same point is made in the email below in (2) and (3) under "Standards Chair’s notes”.)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Chair replied “That’s the price one pays to maintain public confidence”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The member said “But the public don’t have confidence”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Chair said that even if the City residents didn’t have confidence in the dispensations policy [which is clearly the case, having regard to the petition, two wardmote resolutions, the residents’ annual meeting and representations from the associations], “we must look to the wider public”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Chair did not indicate who the members of this “wider public” were, why they would be interested in the City’s dispensation policy (which would not affect them as non-residents) or what evidence there was that they would think differently from the residents, whose view has already been tested. In fact, the only thing that non-residents are likely to know about the City’s standards policy is what they read in the press and online, which is that the City has a serious standards problem caused by the policy and actions of its previous Standards Committee.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(3) Trust in members </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The co-opted member said that she was “sure current members would not exploit their position, but [granting general Dispensations] would open the door to future members who might take advantage - the wrong sort of people might join the Corporation.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The Chair echoed this, saying that “future members may not have the same standards”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">If there has been no problem with members seeking to exploit their position during the last few decades (a point made by one of the elected members), why is there suddenly a concern about the future? In any case, the only way to “join” the Corporation as a member is to be elected. The co-opted - and unelected- member of this Sub-Committee therefore seemed to be concerned that the City residents might elect the “wrong sort of person”. I expect that the City residents - having already been told by the Standards Chair that they were “confused" - will find it offensive to hear that an unelected member of the Standards Committee thinks that they must be protected from the consequences of their electing the “wrong sort of person”. This email is being copied to the two largest residents’ associations, so the residents’ actual views on this matter can be known.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(4)The City Solicitor’s Views </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Towards the end of the meeting yesterday, the City Solicitor gave his views. He repeated what he stated in the Report to be presented to the meeting of the Standards Committee tomorrow. The most relevant points were as follows:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> ”Members are entitled to put in broad applications, for up to four years, and they don’t have to be considered on a case by case basis.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">A dispensation may only be granted if “having regard to all the relevant circumstances” the grant would be in the “interest of persons living in the area”. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The members of the Sub-Committee therefore had a "duty to take account of all the relevant circumstances”. and per the Tameside case [mentioned in the Report] to “make reasonable enquiries” to fulfil that obligation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">In the light of the fact that the terms of a General Dispensation exclude matters that would cause concern about the misuse of public office, which is what the legislation is aimed at, and are restricted to matters where the resident member is acting in the interest of persons living in their area, this duty should not be difficult to discharge. The reason for the legislation providing for dispensations is to facilitate democratic representation. That is a fact which did not feature in the comments of the Chair and the co-opted member in the meeting yesterday. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(5) Possible changes to the current dispensations policy</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">At the meeting yesterday, the co-opted member mooted the possibility of changing the current dispensations policy by perhaps “delegating more” and having a “shorter application form”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Minor or cosmetic changes of this kind, or some “meet in the middle solution", will do nothing to address the grave democratic deficit that is inherent in the current policy’s near prohibition on the right to vote (“only in exceptional circumstances”), and the implicit lack of respect for members’ judgment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Regards,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Graeme Harrower </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE ON 2 SEPTEMBER 2019</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">As a member who has taken a close interest in standards matters over the last 18 months, I offer below a few thoughts on the matters to be considered by the Dispensations Sub-Committee this Wednesday (4 September) and by the Standards Committee at its meeting this Friday (6 September).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Two wardmote resolutions</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The report of the City Solicitor in the agenda pack for the Standards Committee meeting on 6 September (the “Report”) refers only to a wardmote resolution passed by the Ward of Aldersgate in similar terms to the petition. Appendix 2 to the Report, though, reproduces a copy of a wardmote resolution passed by the Ward of Cripplegate in similar terms to the petition. To clarify, there were two wardmote resolutions passed by the City’s two largest residential wards in similar terms to the petition. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Legal advice</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The effect of the legal advice given by the City Solicitor in the Report is that the law does not prevent the granting of a request for a “general” dispensation of the kind reproduced in Appendix 5 (a “General Dispensation”).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">In the Standards Committee meeting on 15 November 2018, the City Solicitor stated that: </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">“….as a Member led authority,…. [the dispensations policy] was ultimately a political issue to be determined by members within the legal framework”, and that “members had a broad authority but not an unlimited one".</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Regarding the legal framework and the scope of members’ authority, he states in the Report that “it would be unlawful to adopt a policy at the extreme ends of the discretion i.e. to always to refuse applications or to always grant them”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The original dispensations policy proposed by the Standards Committee last year before the Court required the policy to be amended came close to the first of those extremes, restricting resident councillors from even speaking on matters which affected their constituents, and granting dispensations to vote “only in exceptional circumstances".</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">By contrast, a General Dispensation goes nowhere near the second of those extremes. It excludes any matter which affects the member concerned uniquely or more than any of their constituents. Rather than being a “blank cheque”, as it was wrongly described by a member of the Dispensations Sub-Committee at its meeting on 3 July 2019, a General Dispensation excludes the very matters that cause concern about the misuse of public office, which is what the legislation is aimed at. Matters in which the member has no greater interest than their constituents are plainly covered by the statutory ground for granting dispensations of being in "the interest of persons living in the authority’s area”. Otherwise, the constituents would be put at a disadvantage because their elected member happened to share with them an interest in a matter to be voted on by that member.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The rule against actual or apparent bias that is summarised in the Report is, as the City Solicitor acknowledges, an entirely separate matter from the dispensations policy. It applies in practice mainly to members of the Planning and Licensing Committees, and no less to “business” members who comprise a majority of those committees than to residential members. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Public confidence</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">A dispensations policy adopted by elected members needs to have the confidence of the public that elects them. The Corporation’s current dispensations policy does not have the public’s confidence, as evidenced by the petition, the two wardmote resolutions and representations made by two associations representing a majority of the City’s residents. All those documents call for General Dispensations to be granted. Anything short of that is likely to cause the present crisis of confidence in our standards regime to continue and escalate.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Incidental benefits of General Dispensations</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(1) The grant of General Dispensations should, in many cases, make the issue of whether a member has an engaged “pecuniary interest” in a matter a moot one, and thus avoid an issue on which the Corporation’s own legal advice seems to have lacked consistency over the last 18 months. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(2) The Corporation’s current policy of granting dispensations on a case by case basis (except for a few peripheral matters, like speaking and voting on council tax) has been proved to be inoperable. Usually a member will only know of the agenda for a meeting when it is published a week in advance, and recent experience has shown that it seems not to be possible to convene a meeting of the Dispensations Sub-Committee within a week. It is obviously undesirable that a matter which involves democratic representation be decided under urgency by unelected officials with the concurrence of just two members. In a recent case, a request for a dispensation made one working hour after the agenda was published and nearly a working week before the meeting was held was not processed even under urgency.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(3) The Corporation’s current policy of granting dispensations on a case by case basis has resulted in its breaching its own policy, as in the case just mentioned. This undermines public confidence in our standards regime generally.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Standards Chair’s notes</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">There is nothing in the Standards Chair’s notes in agenda item 9 of the Standards Committee meeting on 6 September which addresses the points above.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">I comment on three points in those notes as follows:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(1) The fact that a majority of the residents signing the petition were from the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, and that the “only” comments received in response to the Standards Chair’s letter in response to the petition came from the Barbican Association and Golden Lane Residents’ Association, is entirely to be expected, because a majority of City residents live in those estates and are represented by those associations.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(2) With regard to granting dispensations to vote, it is stated that “Should Members [of the Planning Committee and Community & Children’s Services Committee], with an engaged DPI, be able to vote, their vote would only tend to be significant if there were a relatively close division of opinion amongst members of the committee.” That is plainly correct. It is then stated that “By the same token, in this situation, members with an engaged DPI could be seen to be determining the outcome”. But what is wrong with that? The members concerned, if granted General Dispensations, could only vote if the matter did not affect them uniquely or more than their constituents. By denying them a vote in circumstances in which they have no greater interest in the matter than their constituents, the outcome of the matter could be determined by other members, including from business wards, who do not directly represent the affected public. How would that “be seen” by the public, and how would that be consistent with democracy?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(3) Regarding section 618, it is stated that “the only major exception [to residential members with an engaged DPI affecting the outcome of a vote] is the BRC….If section 618 were to be removed, however, with a general dispensation to vote that would mean that those with an engaged DPI could form the majority deciding policies, including in regard to charges impacting all residents.” As in (2) above, what is wrong with that, as the members could only vote with a General Dispensation in circumstances in which they have no greater interest in the matter than their constituents? There is also the point that - in the City Solicitor’s view - section 618 applies not only to Barbican resident members of the BRC, but also to other residential members voting on housing matters in other committees. It would surely serve the interests of transparency and democratic representation for the Standards Committee to recommend to the Policy and Resources Committee that the Corporation lobbies for the repeal of this antique, obscure and repressive provision, and relies on General Dispensations, the exclusions contained in them and members’ judgment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Final observations</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The current dispensations policy seems to be based on the unexpressed assumption that residential members are inclined towards unlawfulness in speaking and voting on matters that affect their constituents, and need to be closely controlled in doing so by other members on the Dispensations Sub-Committee. There is no justification for this assumption, as revealed by a comment made by a long standing member of the Court in its meeting last March. If a member did, in future, misuse public office to make money, that would be a matter for the criminal law.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">It is worth noting the point made in the requests for the General Dispensations in Appendix 5 that the fact that a member is granted a General Dispensation does not mean that they will necessarily use it. In a situation where, for example, the member does not have a greater interest in a matter than any of their constituents affected by it, but the number of those constituents is very small, the member may decide not to speak or vote on it, notwithstanding that they have a General Dispensation to do so. The judgment of members should be respected by other members, and not replaced by the view of less than a handful of their peers. Ultimately it should be for members’ constituents to decide whether they exercise their judgment correctly.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Regards,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Graeme Harrower </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>Dispensations Sub-Committee fails the testtag:goldenlaneestate.org,2019-07-15:2323372:BlogPost:736262019-07-15T10:00:00.000ZGraeme Harrowerhttp://goldenlaneestate.org/profile/GraemeHarrower
<p><strong>For more background information:</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2737755024?profile=original">Wording of the petition: Disenfranchisement of local residents</a></p>
<p><a href="https://st5.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2662477049?profile=original">Response to the petition from Chair of the Standards Committee</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/forum/topics/letter-from-chair-of-the-standards-committee">Subsequent…</a></p>
<p><strong>For more background information:</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2737755024?profile=original">Wording of the petition: Disenfranchisement of local residents</a></p>
<p><a href="https://st5.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2662477049?profile=original">Response to the petition from Chair of the Standards Committee</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.goldenlaneestate.org/forum/topics/letter-from-chair-of-the-standards-committee">Subsequent response from GLERA and the Barbican Association</a></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>From Graeme Harrower (member for Bassishaw) 3 July 2019</strong></p>
<p><strong>Subject:</strong> Dispensations Sub-Committee fails the test</p>
<p> </p>
<p><u>To All Members of the Court of Common Council</u></p>
<p>This afternoon I sat in the "public gallery" for a meeting of the Dispensations Sub-Committee of the Standards Committee. This sub-committee considered test dispensation requests made by four resident councillors from three wards.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What was the test?</strong></p>
<p>On 7 June, Mark Bostock, a resident councillor for Cripplegate ward, made a dispensation request to the Standards Committee. The text of his email is set out in the document pack for the sub-committee meeting today, but for convenience it is reproduced below. The terms of the general dispensation he was seeking reflected what City residents had called for in their petition two months ago. His request was therefore a perfect test of the current dispensations policy.</p>
<p>Three other resident councillors subsequently submitted dispensation requests in terms similar to Mark’s, reinforcing this test of the policy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>How was the test failed?</strong></p>
<p>The Dispensations Sub-Committee refused to grant any of the general dispensations sought.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the meeting, the City Solicitor advised the sub-committee that "policy is a relevant matter, but you can depart from it”. The sub-committee, though, showed no inclination to depart from the current dispensations policy. </p>
<p>Most of that policy goes far beyond what the law requires, and can be justified only on the basis that it “maintains public confidence in our decision making”. When the petition was presented two months ago, however, it was clear that the policy had the opposite effect, as Mark pointed out in his email (below). The petition contained a declaration of no confidence in the current standards regime, and indicated what dispensations policy would maintain public confidence. That indication was reflected in the four test dispensation requests.</p>
<p>The sub-committee refused these requests because they did not comply with a policy that had been shown to be fundamentally flawed two months earlier. That is as logical as it would have been for the owner of the Titanic to have taken bookings two months after the ship had sunk. </p>
<p>A member of the public sitting next to me observed at the end of the meeting that the sub-committee had not addressed most of the points made in the requests for general dispensations. Members of the sub-committee referred to these requests as having “no parameters” and being for a “blank cheque”, but that was plainly not so. None of the four councillors sought a dispensation for a matter that affected them uniquely or more than any of their constituents, but this fundamental point was not discussed by the sub-committee at all.</p>
<p>The chair of the sub-committee remarked twice that representing constituents was not a “sufficient” reason for a councillor to be granted a dispensation. That does not seem to accord with the statutory ground for a dispensation being granted “in the interest of persons living in the authority’s area”.</p>
<p>Another member was concerned about granting a general dispensations because that would involve a judgment being made by an individual councillor, and not by the Dispensation Sub-Committee. On this point I refer to the final paragraph of Mark’s email (below).</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What should happen next?</strong></p>
<p>The chair of the Standards Committee has refused to take any action in response to the petition until the scheduled meeting of that committee on 4 October, for two reasons:</p>
<p>(a) to allow time for the current dispensations policy to be “tested”; and</p>
<p> (b) to receive a report from officers at that meeting.</p>
<p>Regarding (a), the policy was tested even before it formally took effect on 1 March, and failed. The refusal to grant a dispensation to a resident councillor to vote on a planning matter concerning three trees owned by a local authority was ridiculed by several councillors at the relevant Planning Committee meeting. The policy was today comprehensively tested against what the public want, as expressed in the petition, and failed comprehensively. There is no point in repeating the pattern of test and failure over the next three months.</p>
<p>Regarding (b), what is relevant to the dispensations policy is public confidence, not officers’ confidence. In any case, the dispensations policy is - in the words of the City Solicitor - “a political issue to be determined by members within the legal framework” [which is permissive for the sake of democracy]. So there is no point in waiting three months for an officers’ report.</p>
<p>The obvious next step is one that should have been taken two months ago, namely, for the Standards Committee to meet and address the residents’ demands for “immediate and fundamental reform”.</p>
<p>Finally, it is worth considering how and why the Dispensations Sub-Committee that met today was composed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>How was the Dispensations Sub-Committee composed?</strong></p>
<p>A Dispensations Sub-Committee is convened to consider requests for dispensations, and is composed of:</p>
<p>- three of the twelve elected members of the Standards Committee; and</p>
<p>- one of the (currently) three co-opted (i.e. unelected) members of that committee.</p>
<p>The Dispensations Sub-Committee that was convened for the purposes of today’s meeting included two elected members, Caroline Addy and Jeremy Simons, and one co-opted member, Judith Barnes, who did not attend. All three had sat on the Standards Committee when the current dispensations policy was developed. They were part of a committee that saw nothing wrong with denying resident councillors the right even to speak on matters which affected their constituents and in which they might have a declared interest. The committee was compelled by the Court to change this aspect of the policy last December, but the rest of the policy remained largely in place, based on a misperception of "public confidence”.</p>
<p>The third elected member of the Dispensations Sub-Committee was Mary Durcan, a resident councillor for Cripplegate ward, who joined the Standards Committee after the current dispensations policy had been introduced. At the Cripplegate ward mote in March, when the petition was signed by all her constituents present, she signed it herself. At the meeting of the Dispensations Sub-Committee today, however, she voted to refuse the general dispensation requests, although they reflected precisely what the petition called for.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Why was the Dispensations Sub-Committee so composed?</strong></p>
<p>Three of the new members of the Standards Committee who have consistently supported standards reform - Randall Anderson, Barbara Newman and Henry Colthurst - were deemed not to be eligible to be members of the Dispensations Sub-Committee that met today, because:</p>
<p>(a) the terms of reference of the sub-committee (approved last October) exclude from its membership any member of the Standards Committee who sits on a committee that will consider matters to which the dispensation request relates; and</p>
<p>(b) they sit on the Planning Committee.</p>
<p>The rule in (a) goes beyond both law and reason. Why should a member of the Standards Committee be excluded from membership of the Dispensations Sub-Committee merely because he or she happens to sit on another committee, and the dispensation request happens to relate to a matter that will be considered by that other committee? </p>
<p>This rule operates mainly against resident members of the Standards Committee, because dispensation requests are invariably made by resident councillors, and resident councillors tend to sit on committees - like Community and Children’s Services and Barbican Residential - that are particularly relevant to their constituents. It is another example of anti-resident bias in the current standards regime.</p>
<p>Even if one accepts that this rule should be followed until it is abolished, it was not followed in this case. The three members mentioned do sit on the Planning Committee, but the dispensation requests were of a general nature, and not just for planning matters. The requests covered matters considered by any committee, including the Community and Children’s Services Committee and the Barbican Residential Committee. Mary Durcan sits on both of them, so if the rule had been followed, she too would have been excluded from membership of the Dispensations Sub-Committee. So also would its other two elected members, because they both sit on the Port Health and Environmental Services Committee, which regularly considers matters of particular relevance to residents (like noisy construction work on Saturdays, and air quality). </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A standards regime that has flawed dispensation rules which are followed selectively is in obvious need of “immediate and fundamental reform”, to quote the petition. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Graeme Harrower </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>TEXT OF AN EMAIL OF 7 JUNE FROM MARK BOSTOCK TO THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Introduction</strong></p>
<p>I am writing to request a dispensation, under section 33 of the Localism Act 2011 (the "Act”), to speak and vote on the matters in which I may have a "pecuniary interest" as described below.</p>
<p>I have chosen not to use the 10-page form produced by the Standards Committee for this purpose as the Act refers only to a "written request” being made, and does not require it to be in any prescribed form. The form produced by the Standards Committee, in my view, contains a fair amount of material that is not properly relevant to the consideration of my request. </p>
<p>For example, section A of the form asks for an explanation as to how granting a dispensation “would not risk damaging public confidence in the conduct of the City Corporation’s business.” Since the form was produced, it has been demonstrated, through a well supported residents’ petition and representations made by the City’s two largest residential associations, that: </p>
<p>(a) the policy of the Standards Committee which is reflected in the form has actually damaged public confidence; and</p>
<p>(b) the public expects their elected representatives to be free to speak and vote on their behalf, within the framework of the law.</p>
<p>I am advised that the law provides for a dispensation to be granted to speak and vote equally. It does not provide for a dispensation to vote to be granted “only in exceptional circumstances”, as the Standards Committee’s policy specifies in section B of their form. The law provides very broad grounds for a dispensation to be granted, including “the interest of persons living in the authority’s area” (section 33(2)(c)). A dispensation need only be granted to speak and vote on a matter in which a member has a “pecuniary interest”. The law, it seems, thus gives primacy to democratic representation over a member’s "pecuniary interest”. It is only when a member is not representing others, but is acting solely in his or her own interests, that the ground mentioned above for granting a dispensation would not apply, and a dispensation, therefore, should not be granted.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Disclosable Pecuniary interest</strong></p>
<p>I have the following "disclosable pecuniary interests” for the purpose of the Act:</p>
<p>(a) a long lease that my wife and I hold in a flat at 815 Frobisher Crescent in the Barbican Estate; and</p>
<p>(b) a lease of a store in the Barbican Estate.</p>
<p>These interests have been published in my register of interests.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Request for a dispensation</strong></p>
<p>I hereby request a dispensation for the remainder of my term of office (which ends in March 2021) to speak and vote on any matter which affects my constituents and in which I may have a “pecuniary interest”, except for a matter which:</p>
<p>(a) affects me uniquely or more than any of my constituents; and</p>
<p>(b) insofar as regards a dispensation to vote only, falls within the restriction imposed by section 618 of the Housing Act 1985 for as long as that provision remains on the statute book;</p>
<p>on the grounds that the grant of this dispensation is in “the interest of persons living in the authority’s area”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Urgency</strong></p>
<p>There is some urgency about this request, as I shall be attending meetings of the following committees at which matters will be decided in which, it may be argued, I have a “pecuniary interest”: </p>
<p>(a) the Barbican Residential Committee on Monday 17 June, at which a “charging policy for car parking and stores” will be decided (as noted above, I have a lease of a store in the Barbican Estate); and </p>
<p>(b) the Planning and Transportation Committee on Tuesday 18 June, at which a planning application (18/00335/LBC) will be considered for the installation of replacement illuminated signs in the upper level walkway at Defoe Place (close to the residential flats at the western end of Frobisher Crescent; my flat is in the middle of the Crescent).</p>
<p>Each of these matters falls squarely within the dispensation requested, as it affects a number of my constituents no less than myself. In the case of (a) above, I may speak but not vote, because of the restriction on voting in section 618 of the Housing Act 1985. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Comments</strong></p>
<p>In addition to the general comments made in the “Introduction” above, I wish to add the following:-</p>
<p>I am advised that the law provides that a dispensation may be granted for up to 4 years (the length of a councillor’s term of office). I am therefore requesting a dispensation for the remainder of my current term (21 months). This will achieve parity with many other local authorities.</p>
<p>If a matter arises in which I have a “pecuniary interest” and which is covered by any dispensation granted, it does not necessarily follow that I will actually speak or vote on it. In any particular case, I would use my judgment as a member as to what would be appropriate. Neither I, nor any other member, need to be directed by a small number of fellow members on the Standards Committee as to how to act as a Councillor. A majority of our members are elected in predominantly business wards. This may have caused the previous Standards Committee to have so misjudged “public perception” on which it claimed to have based most of the current policy. That committee seemed to think that the public would favour a heavily restrictive approach, whereas the opposite has now been proved to be true.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With regards,</p>
<p>Mark Bostock</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>