| Introduction The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how local authorities and the local government ombudsman (LGO) use smoke, mirrors and spin to manipulate reality so they can present the general public with a more palatable account of local authority maladministration. Unfortunately, the problem with that approach is that if they don't confront and resolve the underlying causes of maladministration the problem just gets worse. If there are no serious penalties for local authorities who commit acts of maladministration why should they bother changing their behaviour? Parallels can be drawn from all walks of life, go soft on knife culture and the problem gets worse (very topical at the moment), go soft on crime and crime increases. Its common sense not rocket science, a trait sadly lacking in many of our public servants these days.
To illustrate my argument I am using one of the hundreds of annual letters the LGO sends to councils together with the council's public response. The choice of council was purely arbitrary and was based on the first article I read about the recent batch of annual letters sent out by the LGO. The article was written by Amanda Smith and published on the 'This is Lancashire' news website and can be read in full by
clicking here. The LGO's annual letter to Bolton council can be read by
clicking here. (The LGO letter and attachments are in PDF format.)
Personally I have no axe to grind with Bolton Council. I accept that there may be Councils who commit more acts of maladministration just as I accept that there may be Councils who commit less acts of maladministration. Neither have I any axe to grind with Mrs Seex the current Local Government Ombudsman based in York who is responsible for Bolton council. Firstly all the flawed policies operated by the York office were introduced by her predecessors and secondly she has not been in the job long enough to make any significantly changes to the system.
The annual letter
As the news article states, 'the number of complaints about Bolton council which were referred to the local government watchdog increased by 20 per cent'. As can be seen from the statistics annexed to the LGO's annual letter to Bolton Council complaints against them have increased by a worrying 55% over the last two years alone. One would have thought that this would be ringing alarm bells with the council and the LGO but it doesn't appear to have done so far.
Even more alarming is the council's understanding of what the LGO states in their annual letter. In the letter Mrs Seex clearly states
'In total the Council agreed to pay over £11,500 in compensation to complainants arising from the 13 complaints which were locally settled on the basis that the Council's maladministration had caused injustice to those complainants.' [my emphasis]
However, a council spokesman stated to 'This is Lancashire'
'Of the 30 complaints which the Ombudsman looked at in detail last year none was deemed to involve maladministration.' [My emphasis]
If the council's statement is true then the question local taxpayers of Bolton should be asking why their council paid out £11,500 of taxpayer's money in compensation if they didn't commit any acts of maladministration. The reason that the Council paid out £11,500 in compensation is because they did in fact commit 13 acts of maladministration. Mrs Seex clearly states that in her annual letter to the council. So the question people in Bolton should be asking is why is Bolton council misrepresenting the truth? Ironically an act of maladministration in itself. The confusion stems from the smoke, mirrors and spin tactics that councils and the LGO are fond of using. At times they cloud the issues so much they start to believe their own spin.
The LGO and the council don't like formal reports for a number of reasons. Firstly, they have to be published in the press. That means that members of the public would be made aware of the alarming number of acts of maladministration carried out by their local council. (No chance of misleading the public like the spokesman for Bolton council did on this occasion.) Secondly, the LGO just doesn't have the resources or the inclination to produce formal reports for every act of maladministration. (They are after all ex council staff themselves.) Thirdly, and most importantly, if the LGO had to produce a formal report they would have no carrot to entice the council's to play ball. [Councils can ignore an LGO's formal report with impunity so the only way they can get the council to do anything is to use the carrots approach.] Can you imagine a judge needing the perpetrator's agreement to the sentence they wanted to impose? How farcical is that?
As can be seen there are benefits for the council and the LGO in not formally reporting maladministration. The problem is that there is no benefit for complainants or the general public. Even worse the LGO and the councils appear to disregarding the long term repercussions of their actions. A 55% increase in complaints should be telling them something! This is how the trick works. The 1974 local government act gives the LGO the discretion to terminate an investigation for any reason. However, if the investigation has been completed and maladministration has been identified then the LGO must produce a formal report saying so. The problem for the LGO is that the moment one of their investigators identifies maladministration then the investigation has come to an end. The only thing left for them to do is to produce a formal report. So what they do is tell the Council that they have found maladministration suggesting that council settle the matter. If the Council agree the LGO tells everyone else that the investigation was not in fact completed and that they have used their discretionary power to terminate the investigation. In reality the investigative part of their job came to an end as soon as they found maladministration so there was nothing to terminate.
This can be evidenced from the news article which states,
"The council's poor advice was compounded by its delay in completing the re-roofing programme and failing to provide accurate information about the delay".
What further investigation is necessary, it was a clear case of maladministration so why no formal report? The LGO even acknowledges that maladministration had taken place when she stated
'.... the Council's maladministration had caused injustice to those complainants.'
The reason there are no reports about these acts of maladministration is because the council agreed to buy off a reported finding of maladministration by settling the case. Nothing wrong with that you may think, many cases are settled out of court. However, in those cases it is always settled by agreement between the two parties involved, the judge has no part to play.
When a council settles a case it is settled by agreement between the themselves and the LGO, the complainant has no say in the matter and that's quite a different matter altogether. Yet more smoke and mirrors to fool the general public. In essence one of the parties to the dispute has no say in how the dispute is settled. That is an infringement of their human rights to justice. Can you imagine the public outrage if one side in a court case could settle the case with the judge without the other side's agreement? If you can, then imagine the publics response if they also found out that the judge used to work for the side he agreed to settle the case with?
In addition, the average compensation paid to a complainant every time the LGO finds maladministration; oops! sorry, may find maladministration if they continue to investigate, is just a few hundred pounds, usually a lot less than the costs incurred by the complainant in bringing the complaint in the first place. However, to maximise good publicity the council and the LGO always headline the few cases where the complainant has received much more. Obviously there's no mileage in telling the public that the normal levels of compensation for maladministration is just a paltry few pounds.
The newspaper article illustrates that tactic
'The council agreed to pay the complainant £7,583 in compensation.'..... 'The council settled the complaint by a payment of £3,450 the sum the tenant should have received.'
Even then the complainant gets nothing more than they should have received. The second example gives the game away. The Council only had to give the complainant the money they were entitled to in the first place. So why should the Council improve their services? If they continue their acts of maladministration what's the worse thing that can happen? The LGO brokers a deal to give the person what they were entitled to in the first place. Where is the penalty in that? That's why the LGO has to bury more and more maladministration year on year. councils have no incentive to stop maladministrating their way out of their problems. Hence the 55% increase in complaints over the last two years. The chance of a council having to make any sort of restitution to a complainant is less than one in three. That means the LGO has introduced a system that has indirectly created a financial incentive for councils to maladminister their way out of their problems.
Using one of the cases above as an example, suppose the council failed to give 100 such tenants the money due to them. That could initially save them some £345,000. Let's say for argument sake that all 100 tenants took their complaint to the LGO. [In reality very few people have the expertise, resources and tenacity to take a complaint to the LGO, so it is doubtful if more than 10% would pursue that course of action.] The odds of achieving any sort of compensation through the LGO is about 28%. As a result the LGO would on average ask the Council to put 28 complainants back into the position they were before the acts of maladministration. That means the Council will have to pay out £96,600 compensation in order to comply. As previously identified the council face no other penalties.
The benefit to the council due to their acts of maladministration; £345,000 less compensation of £96,600 = £248,400.
The council makes nearly quarter of a million pounds through maladministration.
The council can even gloat whilst responding to the annual letter "Of the complaints which the Ombudsman looked at in detail last year none was deemed to involve maladministration. Can you imagine the public outrage if judges started to use the same tactic. Implying to the criminal fraternity that, should they per chance get caught, as long as they recompense the injured party it will not be recorded as a crime and they would still have a clean record.
Summary
The LGO has had 32 years to get a grip of the problem and they have failed miserably. Local authorities are getting away with appalling behaviour towards citizens in their community and the LGO, rather than protecting them, just helps local authorities profit from it. Until the LGO stops using smoke, mirrors and spin and starts to introduce penalties for councils who commit acts of maladministration things are only going to go from bad to worse. No amount of spin can disguise the problem forever.
Trevor R Nunn
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