Open letter to Councillors Anthony Okereke and Averil Lekau
This is an open letter to the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council. Because many of us are signing it, please do not change it. Just put your own name and email and/or street address at the bottom, paste it into an email (or print and post) and send to: [email protected] and [email protected] . The postal address of the Royal Borough of Greenwich is 35 Wellington Street, London SE18 6HQ
Copy to local councillors if you wish, and please either let us know you wrote, or copy to us, at [email protected]
Dear Councillors,
Congratulations on becoming leader and deputy leader of the council. The pledge in Cllr Okereke’s press release, that you aim to put “residents at the heart of every decision we make”, offers a truly welcome starting point to your leadership. Based on our experience of dealing with the council, however, it will not happen simply because you believe it should.
Greenwichgonetoofar was formed to press for transparency and fairness following the imposition of the West Greenwich traffic management scheme in August 2020. Our purpose in writing is not to revisit the merits or otherwise of the scheme. Enough to say that by the time it was abandoned, the council’s handling of the issue seems to have offended supporters, opponents and those neutral to the changes in equal measure. The Council has declared that it is now committed to a holistic Borough-wide approach to traffic management through a process which is transparent and inclusive. We welcome this and trust this pledge will be honoured.
We want you to understand how the Council reacted when we sought to engage with it. It leaves us feeling that your ambition to put residents at the heart of decision-making will require substantial cultural and organisational change.
The West Greenwich scheme was developed, introduced and promoted by the Council with false and misleading information. This included misrepresenting the position of the Metropolitan Police Service and the results of a 2019 public engagement exercise. Formal complaints about these and other aspects of the issue were in some instances ignored completely, and in others handled contrary to the requirements of the council’s complaints procedure. A Freedom of Information request in which the council eventually recognised that it had not been forthright in its claims about the police did not receive a response for almost a year. Correspondence from residents to officers went unanswered. Misleading information appeared not only in letters to residents and on the Royal Greenwich website but in formal reports to elected members. (We can supply you with references and a background dossier).
This all constitutes apparent maladministration and breach of the Nolan Principles of Public Life. The principles include requirements that all holders of public office must be truthful, must not withhold information, and must submit themselves to scrutiny to ensure they are accountable to the public. The council’s conduct did not meet those standards. Yet, so far as we are aware, no specific concerns brought to the council’s attention have been investigated.
By a particular irony, the West Greenwich traffic management scheme and associated plans for changes to the town centre were supposed to be the launching pad for a new approach to public engagement - the council said it wanted to become more transparent to overcome mistrust stemming from residents’ poor experiences with the Royal Borough of Greenwich in the past.
We are writing to you now because new approaches to public engagement or hopes like yours of putting residents at the heart of decision-making, have no chance of surviving contact with the day-to-day reality of the way the council is run – with its endemic and deliberate lack of transparency, hoarding of information and cover-up culture.
You may be aware that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has, over a number of years, expressed concerns about Greenwich Council’s approach to complaints referred by the public to him. In 2020 the Ombudsman revealed that he twice took the relatively unusual step of considering using witness summonses to elicit information from the council. Last year he had to threaten to publish a public interest report simply to get information. You might recall that last November majority party members of one of the council’s own scrutiny panels complained of secrecy and difficulty in obtaining information about the financing of the Woolwich Works project, with a suggestion that the panel might have to take independent legal advice.
Such examples do not convey the impression of an organisation where openness and the free flow of information is encouraged or even tolerated. Earlier this year Michael King, the Ombudsman, told a parliamentary select committee of his feeling that there was a very strong correlation between local authorities that “aren’t keen to listen to the public” and “those that have problems with corporate governance.” Based on our experience, the Ombudsman’s comment could well be a description of Greenwich.
As a relatively new councillor and an entirely new leader you have no personal responsibility for any of the matters we have raised. We urge you to take the opportunity offered by such a fresh start to involve Greenwich residents and businesses in a wide-ranging public review of the council’s governance with all ideas up for consideration - from replacing cabinet decision-making with a more transparent committee system, to delegating decisions affecting specific communities to local committees in the style of the existing area planning committees.
Continuing pressure on local government finance makes it imperative for the council to get public opinion and the energies of community organisations on its side. A more transparent, public-facing council would help achieve that. It is also a timely moment for action. With the number of opposition councillors now reduced to three, exchanges between the political parties in the council chamber are even more unreliable as a mechanism for shining light on the working of the council.
We request, therefore, that you prepare and present practical proposals for changing the past culture of the Council and make them widely available, to encourage broad engagement. Please treat this as an open letter which we will publish on 23 June. We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Copy to local councillors if you wish, and please either let us know you wrote, or copy to us, at [email protected]
Dear Councillors,
Congratulations on becoming leader and deputy leader of the council. The pledge in Cllr Okereke’s press release, that you aim to put “residents at the heart of every decision we make”, offers a truly welcome starting point to your leadership. Based on our experience of dealing with the council, however, it will not happen simply because you believe it should.
Greenwichgonetoofar was formed to press for transparency and fairness following the imposition of the West Greenwich traffic management scheme in August 2020. Our purpose in writing is not to revisit the merits or otherwise of the scheme. Enough to say that by the time it was abandoned, the council’s handling of the issue seems to have offended supporters, opponents and those neutral to the changes in equal measure. The Council has declared that it is now committed to a holistic Borough-wide approach to traffic management through a process which is transparent and inclusive. We welcome this and trust this pledge will be honoured.
We want you to understand how the Council reacted when we sought to engage with it. It leaves us feeling that your ambition to put residents at the heart of decision-making will require substantial cultural and organisational change.
The West Greenwich scheme was developed, introduced and promoted by the Council with false and misleading information. This included misrepresenting the position of the Metropolitan Police Service and the results of a 2019 public engagement exercise. Formal complaints about these and other aspects of the issue were in some instances ignored completely, and in others handled contrary to the requirements of the council’s complaints procedure. A Freedom of Information request in which the council eventually recognised that it had not been forthright in its claims about the police did not receive a response for almost a year. Correspondence from residents to officers went unanswered. Misleading information appeared not only in letters to residents and on the Royal Greenwich website but in formal reports to elected members. (We can supply you with references and a background dossier).
This all constitutes apparent maladministration and breach of the Nolan Principles of Public Life. The principles include requirements that all holders of public office must be truthful, must not withhold information, and must submit themselves to scrutiny to ensure they are accountable to the public. The council’s conduct did not meet those standards. Yet, so far as we are aware, no specific concerns brought to the council’s attention have been investigated.
By a particular irony, the West Greenwich traffic management scheme and associated plans for changes to the town centre were supposed to be the launching pad for a new approach to public engagement - the council said it wanted to become more transparent to overcome mistrust stemming from residents’ poor experiences with the Royal Borough of Greenwich in the past.
We are writing to you now because new approaches to public engagement or hopes like yours of putting residents at the heart of decision-making, have no chance of surviving contact with the day-to-day reality of the way the council is run – with its endemic and deliberate lack of transparency, hoarding of information and cover-up culture.
You may be aware that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has, over a number of years, expressed concerns about Greenwich Council’s approach to complaints referred by the public to him. In 2020 the Ombudsman revealed that he twice took the relatively unusual step of considering using witness summonses to elicit information from the council. Last year he had to threaten to publish a public interest report simply to get information. You might recall that last November majority party members of one of the council’s own scrutiny panels complained of secrecy and difficulty in obtaining information about the financing of the Woolwich Works project, with a suggestion that the panel might have to take independent legal advice.
Such examples do not convey the impression of an organisation where openness and the free flow of information is encouraged or even tolerated. Earlier this year Michael King, the Ombudsman, told a parliamentary select committee of his feeling that there was a very strong correlation between local authorities that “aren’t keen to listen to the public” and “those that have problems with corporate governance.” Based on our experience, the Ombudsman’s comment could well be a description of Greenwich.
As a relatively new councillor and an entirely new leader you have no personal responsibility for any of the matters we have raised. We urge you to take the opportunity offered by such a fresh start to involve Greenwich residents and businesses in a wide-ranging public review of the council’s governance with all ideas up for consideration - from replacing cabinet decision-making with a more transparent committee system, to delegating decisions affecting specific communities to local committees in the style of the existing area planning committees.
Continuing pressure on local government finance makes it imperative for the council to get public opinion and the energies of community organisations on its side. A more transparent, public-facing council would help achieve that. It is also a timely moment for action. With the number of opposition councillors now reduced to three, exchanges between the political parties in the council chamber are even more unreliable as a mechanism for shining light on the working of the council.
We request, therefore, that you prepare and present practical proposals for changing the past culture of the Council and make them widely available, to encourage broad engagement. Please treat this as an open letter which we will publish on 23 June. We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
