Boston Borough Council are attempting to get their 'Persistent and Vexatious Customer Policy' passed fairly soon.
Councillors have voted unanimously to recommend the policy for cabinet approval.
If adopted, this policy will stop you from making an effective complaint about any failure in service you encounter in the borough.
If you make a complaint, and are not happy with the way it is dealt with, this new policy will prevent you from taking it any further. If you contest a decision you will be deemed to be 'persistent ' and ,depending on how you word your complaint, 'vexatious'.
You will then find yourself on a 'no personal contact list' which means your only chance of getting anything done is to contact the Local Government Ombudsman.
Unfortunately the LGO exists purely as a default mechanism for local authorities to refer you to when you have been through their existing complaints procedure - you fill in loads of paperwork, if you get to the investigation stage, they 'investigate ' and then do absolutely nothing no matter what the evidence shows.
Unfortunately the sentence above is a statement of fact.
They want to get this through for several reasons.
The reason they give is that the present complaints system is costing too much, and on the surface this would appear to be reasonable as one particular complainant has cost thousands over the past few years, but why change the whole system because of one person?
There are some extremely serious planning issues coming up, the flood barrier, the Triton Knoll link, and the Viking Interconnector, all of which will massively impact on this borough.
To take the flood barrier as an example. There have been serious questions raised regarding the design, and the positioning, and not just by local residents. Engineers have questioned it's effectiveness, and the County Highways department have already signposted escape routes in case of flooding.
There have been calls for a public inquiry, but the council don't want this and are keen to press on with the present plans.
This new policy will effectively give the council the power to do what it likes. They will have discretionary powers to deem anybody who contacts them more than once as being persistent, and put them on the ' no personal contact' list.
Anybody wishing to pursue a complaint will no longer be able to do so because persistency will no longer be tolerated.
According to your local council persistency is bad, blind acceptance is good.
The legality of the policy is also questionable as it will potentially restrict access to the Freedom of Information Act.
The local papers never print anything too critical of the council which is why I've posted this here, but if you want to preserve your right to complain you need to contact your local councillor as soon as possible as they will hope to get this through with minimum publicity at the next cabinet meeting, possibly as early as next week.
If you read this far thanks!
Show Posts
