| Topic: | The sustained assault on democracy and resiident participation in Hounslow | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 22/02/15 13:52:00 |
| The following is lengthy, but it is well worth reading. It was the response formulated by the Heston Residents' Association to Hounslow's Citizen Engagement Consultation in September 2014 and is probably the closest thing we have to a definitive summary of the growing democratic deficit which exists in Hounslow: Council policy over the last four years shows a constant erosion of community involvement in local government. It suggests that Senior Council Officers do not want borough residents to be involved in the way they are governed, and this conflicts with the Government’s concept of “Localism”. It also conflicts with the Council’s Corporate Governance Statement, its Constitution, the Local Government Act 2000, and the introduction to the Forward Plan. The changes made to the planning procedures mean that Members have very little, if any, influence over planning decisions. Call-in procedures only allow a decision to be referred to the Planning Committee. There is very little real influence over the actual decisions made. The changes to the complaints procedure to make all referrals to a Stage 3 Members Panel discretionary, has removed Members influence over the complaints procedure. Members’ influence over issues concerned with roads, pavements and street cleanliness is now very limited because these services have been outsourced. The service delivery is managed by the contents of the outsourcing contract. If Members have no influence over planning, the complaints procedure, roads, pavements and street cleaning – why exactly would borough residents want to talk to their ward Councillors? What issues could Members tackle on behalf of borough residents? Members have acquiesced in a process that has greatly reduced community engagement and has significantly reduced their own relevance. The generally accepted meaning of the term "community engagement" is the active involvement of citizens in the process of local authority decision-making. Every Councillor and every Senior Officer within the London Borough of Hounslow will say that they are fully committed to transparency and “community engagement”. In May 2012 the Council carried out a consultation on improving community engagement in Area Committees. A report was produced, the deputy Chair of each of the five Area Forums was appointed as the “community engagement champion” – with an extra responsibility allowance of £2,500 p.a. for each of the five deputy Chairs, and a council officer was appointed to attend each area forum to facilitate community engagement – at further cost to the council tax payer. Notwithstanding this expenditure, nothing has been done to improve community engagement but over the last four years, several actions have been taken by the Council to reduce transparency within the Council and to reduce public involvement in the Council’s decision-making processes. The Council’s Corporate Governance is based on six core principles which include: “taking informed and transparent decisions which are subject to effective scrutiny”, and “engaging with local people and other stakeholders to ensure robust public accountability”. The Council’s Constitution states that its purpose is: “to enable the Council to provide clear leadership to the community in partnership with citizens, businesses and other organisations”; “to support the active involvement of citizens in the process of local authority decision-making”; “to ensure that those responsible for decision-making are clearly identifiable to local people and that they explain the reasons for decisions”. The Constitution also states that Councillors “will actively encourage community participation and citizen involvement in decision-making”. The Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee exists to ensure that the Council’s decision making is open, transparent and accountable. It now ignores that responsibility. Recently the Council’s complaints procedure was changed by Council Officers to re-define it as “discretionary”, thus allowing Council Officers to decide not to respond to a complaint. This change took place without any public consultation or announcements. The changes did not go through the Council’s Cabinet or Borough Council. Even if there is sufficient wriggle room in Council procedures to allow changes to be made in this way, it should not be so done because it lacks transparency. Like MPs expenses, claims might be “within the rules”, but they lack integrity. Both the changes to the complaints procedure and the MP’s expense claims reflect an inappropriate culture. The Council’s culture should be based on transparency and public service. The Audit Commission was responsible for scrutinising the way that Local Authorities carried out their responsibilities. Its work was “outsourced” to private companies in 2011. The 2011 Localism Act assumed that local communities would play a leading role in holding their local authority to account using the Freedom of Information Act. In this post-Audit Commission world we have a “consumer democracy” which places more and more reliance on local people to hold local government to account. For members of the public who want to hold their local authority to account, the starting point is the complaints procedure. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to progress a complaint, at a time when it is increasingly more important for the public to be able to hold its local authority to account. A complaint to the Council is initially reviewed as a “stage 1 complaint” by the officer who took the original action or decision. If the complaint is not resolved, it is reviewed at stage 2 by the Officer’s head of department. There is no unbiased review of an Officer’s decision or action until it reaches Stage 3 of the procedure where it is reviewed by a panel of 3 Councillors. By making all stages of the procedure “discretionary”, the complaints procedure becomes unfit for purpose because officers can refuse to allow the complaint to go to a stage 3 independent review. In practice, complaints are often reviewed by those involved in the original decision or action. This directly conflicts with the requirements of the Council’s Constitution to “ensure that no one will review or scrutinise a decision in which they were directly involved”. The Council is supposed to comply with its own procedures, and those procedures should have democratic legitimacy. The introduction of the “discretionary” nature of the complaints procedure by Council Officers without reference to the public or their elected representatives has no democratic legitimacy, and that is incompatible with any democratic system of local government. Un-elected officers have changed council procedures in a way that prevents democratic oversight of their actions and decisions. It is essential that the public is able to understand the rules by which it is governed. It is not acceptable that un-elected Council Officers are able to change those rules by the simple expedient of making a few amendments to the Council’s website. This issue has significantly more serious consequences for those of us involved in the running of a residents' association because we cannot offer advice and support to our members if the rules can be changed at the whim of a Council Officer. Thus the absence of "the rule of law" can be seen as a threat to the existence of every residents' association. The Council’s standard strategy for dealing with negative comments and complaints from a borough resident is to isolate and ignore the individual. They are usually told that nobody else has that problem. This same strategy is used for comments and complaints from an individual residents’ association. This led to a number of residents associations (currently 22) working together to identify common issues and a common approach to resolving issues. The group is commonly referred to as “G15+”. The group met with the Chief Executive and other Senior Officers to review and develop solutions to our common issues. However when it became apparent to Senior Council Officers that G15+ members would not be satisfied with “tea and sympathy” but were looking for delivery of solutions, the Council decided to stop meeting with the group. The G15+ issues remain largely unresolved. The Council’s Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) defines when and how the public is involved in Council decisions. In essence it is a contract between the Council and borough residents. Until 1 July 2012 the SCI was a statutory document that the Council was obliged to comply with in its procedures. In May 2011 the Council changed its Constitution in a way that prevented the Council from complying with the statutory obligations contained in its SCI. The Council simply ignored its legal obligations in respect of Community Involvement. In agreeing to this change Councillors gave away the public right to effective participation in planning decisions. In May 2012 the Council decided to change the SCI to bring it into conformance with the amended Constitution. This required the Council to consult with the public on its proposed changes. Many submissions were made to request changes to the SCI to restore the public’s right to participate in planning decisions. All submissions requesting the restoration of public involvement in planning decisions were ruled inadmissible. In its response to the public consultation, the Council advised that anything that required changes to the Council’s constitution would not be accepted because “no changes could be made to the constitution”. The consultation ignored the public voice. Elected representatives again failed to protect the democratic rights of borough residents. The revised SCI – the “contract” between the Council and borough residents - is thus a document with no democratic legitimacy. It is now a charter to exclude public participation from planning decisions. It would be more appropriate to consider the document as a “Statement of Community Exclusion”. The revised SCI introduced changes to the planning procedures, with all planning decisions based on a system of delegated authority. Officers now take subjective decisions on planning applications behind closed doors and with no effective accountability. The 1990 Town and Country Planning Act requires an objective assessment of every planning application against the Council’s planning policies. Planning Officers, however, consider all planning policy to be “guidelines only” that they can ignore if they so wish. The public are entitled to question whether planning decisions are now taken for political or administrative convenience. Officers determine applications under the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO) in ways that conflict with the statutory requirements of the GPDO. Planning Officers effectively overrule statute law. They often take planning decisions which conflict with Technical Guidance provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government and planning appeal decisions taken by HM Planning Inspectorate. Planning decisions in the borough are now inconsistent and unaccountable. The result is that many areas within the borough are becoming over-developed slums. If the public disagrees with a planning decision they have 5 days from the date on which the Council places notice of the intended decision on its web site to persuade a Councillor to “call-in” the planning application for review by the Planning Committee. It is difficult for a borough resident to invoke the call-in procedure unless they have an existing relationship with a Member because Members do not have sufficient time to independently establish whether there is a valid case for call-in. They have to rely on the opinion of the person wanting the application to be called in. This system therefore discriminates against anyone who wishes to have a planning application called in but does not have an existing relationship with a Member. A serious problem for the public when trying to request a call-in is that some Councillors generally ignore all correspondence from borough residents. So public involvement in planning decisions often falls at the first hurdle. Council Officers, with very few exceptions, rarely respond to issues raised by the public. They normally re-interpret input from the public to issues that they are willing to address, and ignore any questions that they consider to be “challenging”. In response to concerns or complaints, the starting point of most officers in their response is that it is not their job. If the complainant establishes that it is their job, they then explain why, even if it is their job, nothing can be done about it. If the complainant persists with the issue, the Officers use their “isolate and ignore policy”. If the complainant still persists with their complaint then the “vexatious complainant” procedure is invoked. This allows Council Officers to ignore all correspondence from that person – and there is no right of appeal against the procedure. Freedom of Information requests are usually ignored. The policy within the Council seems to be that no response is sent to an FOI request until a complaint is made about the failure to provide a response within the 20 days allowed under the FOI Act. The Area Forum has become less relevant to the public for a number of reasons: • Agenda content is usually dominated by items of little or no interest to the public such as small grant applications. The main issue of importance to the public is still planning applications. Members rarely discuss planning applications, and the public have no opportunity to participate in any planning discussions at the Area Forum. • Other issues of significant interest to the public such as the Rogue Landlords project, wheeled bin collections, street cleanliness etc. get very little attention within the Area Forum: • Attendance by Members and Officers is very poor. • It is often difficult to hear what is being said, and sometimes it is difficult to understand what is being said. Members show very poor discipline in terms of using the microphone and making comments in a clear way. • Where borough residents raise issues in the public forum there is generally no response on the night and no follow-up action taken. • The public consultation in May 2012 on how to improve community engagement in Area Committees has been completely ignored. |