In January 2018, 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.

In December 2018, two motions were…

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. 

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…

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.

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…

QUESTIONS WITH NO ANSWERS

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.

For the background, see:…

A previous post The Last Word…Standards Committee Climb Down and Spin 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: …

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.

The fact that in a period of more than a…

This is the text of an email that I sent to all members of the Court of Common Council on 27 January:

SUMMARY

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…

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…

TEXT OF AN EMAIL FROM COUNCILLOR HARROWER TO THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL ON 8 OCTOBER 2019 

The Standards Committee fails again….

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…

Dear Resident

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.

For example, in the Dispensations Sub-Committee meeting on 4 June, a "co-opted" (meaning…

For more background information:

Wording of the petition: Disenfranchisement of local residents

Response to the petition from Chair of the Standards Committee

Subsequent…