Lobster Blogster

Some parts re-posted from MacDonalds Community Noticeboard, St Albans Road, Watford

A great eco-crime is about to be committed. On Tuesday, Barratts Homes intend to cut down over one hundred trees at the British Waterways Board site in Church Road, Watford. Mrs Sally Rose Ivins, also of Church Road, wanted to take the case to the High Court to get a proper environmental assessment made, but could not cover the £1.8M indemnity that was required. No local backers were found. It was therefore with the greatest reluctance that Mr Lobster Blogster felt it was necessary to take direct action in the form of criminal damage. An incident has been recorded by the local police. The Lobster now faces many years in a watery prison, because of his personal belief that to kill a mature tree is an eco-crime. To chop down 106 PROTECTED TREES is surely evidence of serious malpractice within Watford Borough Council's Planning Office (Councillor details are out of date here, but Sally aka Harkin Larkin' won't mind a call. She came to Mr & Mrs Lobster's nuptials at the town hall, and seemed to want to argue with everyone there. Just tell her I've still got the "after Lichtenstein" photo, and will publish it if pushed!)

When the Lobster made an enquiry as to whether the final Planning Application had been completed, the Lobster was told "it could not be found". Swampy, Merlin and Arthur Pendragon will not be pleased! Even the boy scouts will be upset about this one, as Lobster Blogster has learnt that the site is part of a Smoke Control Area.

Other news:

• Colloseum has a side room suitable for showing films - might be handy if Watford gets involved with this
• Julia Dave of the Customer Service desk wins the Lobster Blogster "Outstanding Customer Services in face of Adversity" award. Well done Julia, your prize will be with you before the close of play today
• Wrote letter to Tim Woolridge to let him know the scale on the Watford Cycling map is wonky - suggest he links up with London Cycling Campaign
• Apologised to Danielle Mcguire, also in Customer Services, and offered a small gift of baklava, obtained from "Try Me ... Saj". It's right next door to the Print Machine on the St Albans Road, and serves excellent Lebanese Street Cusine to the discerning residents of north Watford
• Had to make a complaint about the lavs in the subway by the Town Hall, but ended up complaining about the women who was meant to be dealing with myself and another chap - more on this later as it develops!
• Must dash now, to see if the Horns still does Pub Tapas

Live blog from WC Library (PC24), trialing the new Cirque Cruise Cat GDU500 available from www.keytools.com

Етикети: Environment Action Zone, FILTH, Watford

How strange! The Lobster has highlighted in bold praise from the Audit Commission for Watford Borough Council recorded in two sections of the council's Comprehensive Performance Assessment.

47 Partnerships are used effectively to increase the Council's capacity to deliver its ambitions and priorities. Partnership with the County Council has enabled the Council to improve the town centre environment. It is achieving housing priorities by effective partnership work with residents, tenants, voluntary organisations and Registered Social Landlords; and the planned transfer of its housing stock will improve capacity to achieve the decent homes standard. The transfer of management of community centres to community associations and agreement on a three-year funding programme for voluntary and community groups helps those bodies better support the Council's priorities. The Council is working with two neighbouring authorities to develop shared services on HR, finance, ICT and revenues and benefits. It has taken a lead role in the development of the county-wide pathfinder bid, which is planned to make savings of 3.5 per cent. Partnership working with a consortium including Watford Hospital and Watford Football Club is central to the health campus plan. The Council's good use of partnerships is successfully increasing its capacity to deliver its priorities.

68. Service users are actively involved in performance management. Scrutiny actively seeks to involve the public and stakeholders in the policy review process, leading to improved participation rates in a number of reviews including those on the future of the Colosseum and on transport (buses). In a stakeholder survey over 60 per cent of respondents agreed that the Council was involving service users, residents and partners in monitoring services. In particular, housing was cited as a service that was good at engaging with and involving tenants and residents. Over half of respondents thought that the Council reported in an open and transparent way about levels of performance. Service standards are not universally in place but are currently being developed in a number of services. The Council clearly engages well with its stakeholders.

Strange because the Local Government Ombudsman, Tony Redmond, has just said (Lobster's emphasis):

33. Hertfordshire County Council and Watford Borough Council should also consider their arrangements for partnerships with other bodies and may wish to consider the advice contained in the Ombudsman’s recently published Special Report on Partnerships.

This forms part of his official ruling on 24th October 2007 that Watford Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council were guilty of Maladministration causing injustice.

Why does it matter?
A finding of maladministration will affect the reputation of both councils. Watford has ambitious plans for partnership working with neighbouring authorities and a local health campus/road scheme. Should these still go ahead while there are questions about Watford's competence? Or should a proper investigation take place as to why the Audit Commission was told one version of events, but the Ombudsman found another? But Mr Redmond's report also contained this bombshell:

26. The Borough’s housing manager says that [the complainant] had received the same poor standard of service as other Borough tenants. A note in his tenancy file said that external decorations were done in 1987 and were not due again until 1992. She says that the Borough’s properties have not been externally decorated for years unless the tenants complained or officers identified particular problems.

(Again the Lobster's emphasis.) This means that the complainant, who has just successfully won an offer of compensation, might not be alone. There may be other equally dissatisfied former tenants who are eligible for compensation. It's time to do a quick sum. There were 4,468 dwellings under WBC's control at the time they were transferred to Watford Community Housing Trust on 10th September 2007. The complainant's home in this case was actually part of a small number of additional dwellings that were owned by Herts CC and managed by WBC. So let's assume a total of 4,500 dwellings were previously managed by WBC. Section 2.7 of this report prepared for Marion Harris, Head of Housing at WBC on 5 September 2006 indicates that 20.1% of tenants were not "very satisfied" with the service offered by the council’s Housing Department. This means there could be up to 900 former tenants who may be eligible for compensation payouts.

Cllr Andy Wylie, portfolio holder for Housing, recently tried to imply that the tenants in the Ombudsman's case had accepted £2,000 from the council. It wasn't true. The tenants appear to be reserving their legal rights, and may well receive a larger payout. In their case there had been deficiencies over a very long period of time. These fell outside the Ombudsman's time limits, so he exercised his discretion to limit his investigation to just the final two years of their tenancy. But even if we just take the £2,000 figure, then the council's potential exposure to compensation claims is of the order of £1.8 million.

Cllr Iain Sharpe, Leader of the Liberal Democrat group at WBC, was clearly very rattled when he made this comment on Lobster Blogster:

If we were trying to cover this up we have certainly gone a rather odd way about it.

The Ombudsman's report was reported to full council and the subject of a full debate, with the public present, as evidenced by the fact that you were there and able to report on it.

Cllr Wylie made it absolutely clear that compensation had been offered but not accepted.

The Ombudsman states that he had exercised his discretion to limit his formal investigation to events between 2005 and 2007, it is pretty clear from the tenor of his report that the failures go back much longer. Which makes Andy Wylie's comment pretty accurate.

In the circumstances, therefore, it seems to me that in using the term 'cover up' you are using emotive language to make a bogus point, in contrast to your leader Cllr Rackett last night.

Lobster Blogster now demands that Cllr Sharpe withdraws his comments above, and offers the Lobster a personal written apology.

There's quite a bit to follow up from this post. There's the matter of informing the Audit Commission and the Ombudsman of serious discrepancies between the reports they have independently produced, and there is the procedural issue of getting the matters raised here properly investigated at the council. The Lobster already has one outstanding urgent enquiry* to which the council has not even bothered to reply to, and so will continue to pursue these matters as and when time permits. As ever, watch this space for further developments.

* refers to a handcrafted LobsterGram, delivered to the front letter box of Watford Town Hall on Saturday morning

Notes:
Marion Harris was Head of Housing between 27th October 2003 and 9th September 2007 when she transferred to the Watford Community Housing Trust.

Update 21/12/07
WBC's Head of Legal and Democratic Services has written to Lobster Blogster to establish that it was Cllr Andy Wylie who was the portfolio holder for housing during the period of maladministration. Mrs Chen confirms that no compensation has been paid.

Етикети: HCC, Hertfordshire, Legal Ruling, Lib Dems, Maladministration, Watford, WBC

In a sensational new development at Watford Borough Council, Liberal Democrat Leader and Portfolio Holder for Financial Services, Revenues and Benefits and Planning and Development on the council cabinet, Councillor Iain Sharpe has been forced to admit, exclusively to this blog, that no compensation has been paid in the ongoing housing maladministration scandal.
He said:

"Cllr Wylie made it absolutely clear that compensation had been offered but not accepted."

Councillor Wylie, who is the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Human Resources, did indeed make it clear, but not until the council meeting on 21st November 2007. Lobster Blogster was the first to report the truth the following day. However the councillor did not make it clear to the readers of the Watford Observer on 5th November, when he commented on an inaccurate article published by the paper titled "Councils pay out £2,250 compensation". Despite the very first paragraph stating that an elderly couple

"...have received a £2,000 payout from Watford Borough Council."

Cllr Wylie failed to make the truth known. The Liberal Democrat cabinet member failed again on the 6th November to indicate that the newspaper article itself was untruthful. Cllr Wylie, who boasts:

"I am not one of those - if it goes wrong on my watch I front it and take the flack."

has made no effort to explain these glaring inaccuracies to either Lobster Blogster or the Watford Observer. Despite an unwarranted personal attack by Cllr Sharpe, Lobster Blogster will not be silenced, and says:

"Stop hiding behind the mayor's husband, come out in the open Councillor Wylie and explain yourself."

Oh, and to Councillor Sharpe I will say just this. It's not Lobster Blogster who has caused two years of misery to an elderly couple and cost the tax payers of Watford tens of thousands of pounds in failed a High Court action and Maladministration ruling. It is you and your incompetent Lib Dem administration. If you believe there's no cover up, why won't you let Wylie speak for himself?

Note:
The maladministration occurred between 2005 and 2007. Cllr Wylie has confirmed that he took on the Building Service portfolio only in 2006. This means that there is yet another member of the Liberal Democrat administration has failed to come clean about their role in this scandal. Lobster Blogster will of course bring you the name of the incompetent politician as soon as Watford Borough Council confirm the identity.

Update 21/12/07
Oh dear, it's not looking good for Iain Sharpe. Carol Chen, the Head of Legal & Democratic Services has now written to Lobster Blogster to establish that Andy Wylie was the portfolio holder for housing for both 2005 and 2006. So why didn't Sharpe correct this post from Lobster Blogster? It seems that cry-baby Sharpe is both a bully and a liar. The Borough Solicitor has also established that a the High Court Taxi fiasco cost the council £101,993 - you pay a high price for having a lying Liberal Democrat adminstration.

Етикети: Lib Dems, Maladministration, Scandal, Watford, WBC

Watford Borough Council's Liberal Democrat administration, who lost a Judicial Review case in the High Court in June 2006, are desperately trying to cover up a recent ruling of Maladministration by the Local Government Ombudsman.

Responding to an (inaccurate) article "Councils pay out £2,250 compensation" published by the Watford Observer on 4th November 2007, Cllr Andy Wylie said:

The article is a bit misleading so here is the full story. Back in the 60's Watford acquired some homes for knocking down to build roads. ...

What Wylie fails to make clear is that:

a) Compensation has not been paid, as the article mistakenly asserts
b) The Ombudsman's report refers to "Between 2005 and 2007..." and only those years.

The finding is that both Watford Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council were guilty of "Maladministration causing injustice", and the Ombudsman's report has now been agreed by the full council. Cllr Wylie, who proposed the report to the council, now has some difficult questions to answer:

1. Why did he not take the opportunity to correct the inaccuracies in the Watford Observer article when he commented on it on 5th November 2007?

2. Why did he try to mislead readers of the Watford Observer, and the full council on 21st November 2007, by stating that the problems had occurred over 25 years, when he knew that the Ombudsman's report covered just the period 2005 to 2007?

Notes:
Cllr Andy Wylie took over responsibility for the Building Services department in 2006
Local Government Ombudsman Housing Complaint Summaries
Full Report into complaints no 06/A/17783 and 07/A/00758 as adopted by Watford Borough Council
Watford Area Green Party on Council Fail to Acknowledge problems in Taxi de-limitation process

Етикети: Legal Ruling, Lib Dems, Watford

The Lobster has been tasked with finding a venue in
or around Watford to show Al Gore's film, "An
Inconvenient Truth". To make the exercise worthwhile,
the venue would be able to hold 200 or more people.

_____________________________________________________
Possible locations are:

Vue cinema in Garston

Lecture Theatre at Post-grad Centre, Watford General Hospital
  - seats 100

Meriden Centre
  - seats 200 at a push, £150 to hire + £150 deposit
    7pm - 11.30pm, no tickets on door

_____________________________________________________
Ruled out are:

The Colosseum
  - small hall is c.£800

West Herts College
  - completely unhelpful (as expected!)

The Pump House
  - too small, but could possibly work with
    two sittings

YMCA
  - no longer let out function rooms

Watford Palace Theatre
  - 650 seats, c.£1,000-£1,500 - out of our price range

_____________________________________________________
Need investigating are:

School halls
Church halls

All other suggestions will be gratefully received ;0)

Етикети: Al Gore, venues, Watford