O/T - New Council Policy - very important!

[Ed Kandi]

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! 

[Old Pilgrim]

Story on page 3 of Standard this week

[howmanynames2pick]

Thanks Ed...I don't buy a local rag so wouldn't be aware .
Sounds a bit 1984 doesn't it

[Ed Kandi]

The 'local rag' gives you the story as the council would want you to read it ~ despite what is written in the Observer column, the paper is effectively a mouthpiece for the local council.
The Observer often moans about some aspect of the council, which then tees-up a full unedited response from a council member the following week.

If a member of the public writes in giving detailed evidence of a failure of service, a waste of taxpayers money etc, it is either ignored completely,  or printed in an edited form which dilutes and often changes the meaning into something more acceptable to the council.

Another, more serious, example of how this new policy could impact on local people.
If you suspected that there was child exploitation and abuse occurring in the borough,  and you reported it to the authorities hoping that social services would do something. If the situation continued unchanged and you complained, you would enter the complaints procedure system, and your complaint would be logged.  At this stage you would like to think that something would be done, but in the unlikely event that nothing was done (completely ignore the events in Rotherham of course ), you would complain again.
Once this new policy is in force you could, in theory, then be categorised as a persistent complainant and put on the ' no personal contact' list allowing the failure in service, and therefore the abuse, to continue unabated, perhaps for years.

We need to retain our rights to complain and change things .  Local authorities don't always get things right...even governments get things wrong as was evidenced recently in the budget u-turn over PIP payments to the disabled

[Ed Kandi]

The next cabinet meeting is on the 6th April and the new policy is item 3 on the agenda.
It was unanimously passed by the corporate and communities committee on the 10th  March, so it's being rushed through with undue haste and minimum publicity for something that will enable council officials to just cut complainants off whenever they decide their time is up. This is left to their discretionary powers presumably, as it is incredibly  vague in the policy itself which is on the website now.

The document has been hurriedly cobbled together with very little thought or detail.
For example, if you find yourself put on the "no contact " list because a failure in council service has continued, despite your complaint, and you've committed the crime of continuing to complain, i.e. you've been caught in the act of "persistency ", the only way you can get yourself removed from the list is when the council are satisfied that you have modified your behaviour.

So how would they decide that?
Presumably by checking how many times you've contacted the council since you were added to the no contact list, which will always be zero as, once you are on the list, you are unable to contact them.
If you have managed to break the embargo, and made contact in some way, it is hardly likely to convince them that you no longer suffer from persistency.

You really couldn't make this stuff up (even on April Fool's Day ), and if its passed, which seems quite likely due to the underhand way they've gone about it, it will seriously impact on the way council services are carried out in this borough, and will enable the council to basically do whatever it likes with your local services without fear of censure.

If anyone feels opposed to this new policy you can write/email the council, but it  has to arrive before the 4th April,  and don't send more than one otherwise you could be the first name on the no contact list