The meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee (P&RC) on 14 October has been well reported, and independent lawyer Claer Lloyd-Jones’s reports into mistakes in governance in Barnet have been extensively quoted and made available online. Now everyone should know that there are no lawyers in Barnet [Council] and ‘no one who understands local government law in depth’, and that Maryellen Salter, Barnet’s Monitoring Officer and Head of Governance until last week, has no legal qualifications. So far, so bad.

The first of Ms Lloyd-Jones’ reports, which identified these problems, was delivered to the council in August, yet it was published only a short time before the P&RC meeting. There were lots of questions at the meeting, but here are some that still need answering.

1 Why was the report not made available to every councillor on receipt rather than a week before the meeting, well over a month later?

2 Why, when her lack of legal qualification was shown to be a problem, was Ms Salter still allowed to run the panel investigating the complaints against Cllr Rayner?

The council says her ‘decision-making … was legally supported’ but Mr Travers  admitted that this meant only that someone from the shared legal service, HBPL, read her report. No lawyer attended the Group Leaders’ Panel nor saw the evidence. Therefore the second part of this question is, how can Ms Salter’s decision be allowed to stand without a review by an independent lawyer?

3 Ms Salter was not in the office after 12 September until she left on 9 October. It might be presumed that Ms Salter and the Council were negotiating her terms of departure during that time, so why was she allowed to sign the dispensation order, which has fine legal implications, on 22 September?

Do you know about this dispensation? It exempts councillors at meetings from having to announce their personal financial interests in proposals under discussion, and allows them to debate and vote on issues on which they might have a ‘conflict of interest’, that is, a personal interest. For example, you might think that a councillor who is a private landlord might have a conflict of interest on housing issues, and shouldn’t be allowed to vote on proposals that could benefit him personally.

4 Why is the Tory leadership unwilling to have Ms Salter’s decisions reviewed by someone with the appropriate legal qualification?

So far there have been no satisfactory answers. You might want to ask your local councillors if they can help.

 

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here