Dacorum - A Rotten Borough Council
People often laugh when they hear the name "Dacorum" for the first time, as it sounds so similar to a virtue sadly lacking in these parts. There is not much decorum in Dacorum. The word is allegedly derived from the name of the locality in Anglo-Saxon times. Modern residents could think of a few other Anglo-Saxon words to describe its Local Authority.
Local Government
Local Government is done extremely badly in this country. Corruption and incompetence flourish in councils all over Britain. Yet in a 1995 survey in the Independent newspaper comparing the standards of service given by all the borough and district councils in Britain to their council tax payers, Dacorum was rated as the worst council in Hertfordshire, and was not far from bottom in the entire country. Reasons for this are not hard to find.
As you may know, a council is run by a combination of councillors and officers. The councillors are volunteers who are elected by the local residents to serve for four years. They are paid expenses but no salary. They are supposed to decide the policy of the council by democratic vote.
Council officers are paid employees. They are supposed to put the policy determined by the councillors into action. They also provide specialist advice to the councillors.
Unfortunately, most Dacorum Borough Councillors have little idea of what is really going on at the council, never mind in Dacorum Borough. Instead of using their own judgement, they vote the way that their party political leaders tell them to. This usually involves "Rubber-stamping" the recommendations made by the officers.
Therefore it is the officers who are really deciding the policy of the council, for whatever reasons they see fit. As the councillors fail to make them accountable to the electorate, they are free to maximise their pay and perks, minimise their workload and build their little empires. Staff numbers have risen steadily over recent years and continue to do so. Standards of service have not.
Officers have little incentive to see that taxpayers' money is well spent, or that staff or contractors do their jobs properly. Poor workmanship is rewarded by full pay.
Cronyism
Cronyism flourishes in Dacorum Borough Council. Former Chief Executive Keith Hunt and former Director of Planning Colin Barnard are both Freemasons. As you may know, the Freemasons are a secret society of men dedicated to helping each other and, by definition, putting the interests of members before those of non-members - the general public. A number of councillors are also Freemasons, including the Conservative council leader prior to 1995, Julian Taunton, who is still a Dacorum Borough and Hertfordshire County Councillor.
Councillor Taunton was the chief proponent of Berkhamsted's new Waitrose store. Stuart Hampson, Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership - the parent company of Waitrose - has admitted on television that he is a Freemason. (Modern Times, BBC2). Councillor Taunton failed to declare his Masonic interest when the issue was decided. This was a breach of the National Code of Local Government Conduct.
Many local property development companies are also run by Freemasons. This may help explain why so many unsuitable developments receive planning permission when there are good grounds in planning law for permission to be refused.
Mr. Hunt is also a member of the Rotary Club, as is Chief Environmental Health Officer Peter Ablett. John Francis, the editor of the local newspaper, "The Gazette", is also a Rotarian and is suspected of being a Freemason.
Reporting of Dacorum's malpractice in the press is either tame or absent.
Unlawful conduct
Mr. Hunt has taken early retirement and gone to Australia. It is unfortunate that he has gone to a former penal colony and not to a current one. He has been replaced by Paul Walker, former Chief Executive of Kettering Borough Council. One of Mr. Walker's first acts was to make all five Directors redundant, and create three new directorships in their place. The official reason was to save money. Mr. Walker may also have been aware that a group of local residents had discovered rather a lot about the directors' activities. They were rumbled.
Dacorum Borough Council's former Director of Law and Administration, Keith Pugsley, was supposed to act as monitoring officer. It was his job to deal with allegations of unlawful conduct by the council. He claimed a doctorate in law and received a salary commensurate with this. Unfortunately, his doctorate was a correspondence course which he bought from an educational establishment in the United States. How much this institution knows about English local authority law is open to question. Mr. Pugsley's thesis, on how councils can prevent members of the public from speaking at licensing sub-committee hearings, is legally incorrect.
In addition to being a Freemason, former Director of Planning Colin Barnard and his wife, a Planning Officer in the neighbouring district of St. Albans, owned four houses and six cars, and had three children at expensive private schools. Their annual salaries totalled approximately £70,000. When challenged about apparently living beyond his means, Mr. Barnard said that he had received an inheritance when his father died.
Offences
The leader of Dacorum Borough Council from 1995 to 1999 was Labour Councillor Julia Coleman. She is employed as an official of Unison, the trade union which represents the majority of council staff. This is an illegal conflict of interest. Every time she chaired a meeting of Dacorum's Policy Committee, she committed an indictable offence (reference R. v Dytham).
Unfortunately, the Police were reluctant to act on this and other offences committed by Dacorum. This may have something to do with the fact that Ms. Coleman is co-habiting with county councillor Ian Laidlaw-Dixon, who is deputy chairman of the Hertfordshire Police Authority, and is also the local Labour Party election agent.
Ms. Coleman, better known for her political correctness as Ms. Coleperson, also chaired the Dacorum Crime Reduction Group.
Four Labour Councillors, former Mayor Mick Young, Bill Killen, Paul Hinson and David Clark, voted with the opposition against the Labour group and caused its attempts to force the closure of Pond Close, an Elderly Persons' Dwelling in Tring, to be defeated. They were punished for this by being de-selected as Labour candidates for the 1999 elections. They resigned the Labour whip and sat as independents for the remainder of the council.
The Labour Party obtained promotion for Julia Coleman within Unison in return for her not standing for re-election in 1999.
Following the 1999 local elections, the number of Conservative councillors equalled the combined number of Labour and Liberal Democrats. All the independents were defeated. For a while, the Conservatives were able to exercise overall control through the mayor's casting vote. Councillor Lois Blythe, who is either a Blythe spirit or Lois of the Low, depending upon your political leaning, then defected from the Conservatives to Labour. Councillor Tony Mc.Laughlin resigned the Labour whip and now sits as an independent. I hope the reasons for this will shortly be made public. The council was then under no overall control, though the Conservatives were still the largest political group, and Conservative Councillor Andrew Williams remained as council leader.
Two by-elections were caused in November 2000 by the resignation of Councillors John Brooks and Stanley Sharpe, the two Liberal Democrats who represented Berkhamsted West ward. They were replaced by two Conservatives, Carol Green and Ian Reay. Thus the Conservatives now have a small overall majority.
Corruption
The real power remains where it always has - with the senior officers and their wealthy cronies. They run the borough for their own financial benefit, largely unchallenged.
The Government claims that it wants to clean up local authorities, but it passed the Audit Commission Act 1998 which makes it more difficult for people to expose local authority corruption. It prefers to cover up wrongdoing which would be embarrassing for the Labour Party.
Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats will break the conspiracy of silence. They must know that there are also rotten councils under their control.
Complainants who fail to get satisfaction from the council are advised to complain to the Local Government Ombudsman. In fact there are six ombudsmen covering the entire country. They are hopelessly under-funded and inadequately equipped to deal with all the complaints about corrupt and incompetent councils all over Britain. They are under no obligation to investigate any of the complaints brought to them, so they investigate only a small proportion, rumoured to be about 6%, and dismiss the rest, either by claiming that the complainant has not suffered sufficient injustice or by finding in the council's favour without investigation.
Even when the ombudsman finds against a council, the council is under no obligation to do as he directs. Both local authorities and the Local Government Ombudsmen are effectively above the law.
It is only through public pressure that the Police, the Government and the political parties will be forced to clean up Dacorum Borough Council. I hope that, by bringing the facts to members of the public, this web site will help to generate such pressure.
Ian Johnston 2000
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