You’ll remember that back in November, I wrote this post which revealed that one of the first edicts of new Mayor Lutfur Rahman was to order town hall minions traipse over to the Apple Store in Covent Garden to buy a top of the range iPhone4.
You’ll also remember in that post, I detailed the helpful response of the council’s expensively assembled press office to my query asking for confirmation of the purchase. It was this: “We aren’t going to be issuing any information about phones for members.” I’d heard that this decision had been made by Takki Sulaiman, the council’s £100,000 a year head of communications who was hired last March by moonlighting Lutfur Ali.
Well, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now have proof. In this series of emails, chief press officer Kelly Powell tells senior officers in the democratic services department: “Takki’s advised me to let Ted know we won’t be responding to the enquiry re: the phones so to alert you, this may come through as an FoI in due course.” Bingo. So they deliberately withheld information from a simple press query in the full knowledge that they would have to disclose it under FoI.
Now, as that FoI cost the council money to collate and investigate, is it not a touch irresponsible for a £100,000 a year bureaucrat to be so cavalier with public cash? Not only that, it’s just simply bad PR for the Mayor. It makes him look evasive and deceitful. It also undermines the work of his press officers who are currently going through a redundancy process: if they’re not allowed to do their jobs by answering simple press queries, what are they actually doing. Our money is being used to pay Mr Sulaiman’s hefty salary. He is nowhere near worth it.
I also urge you to read this series of emails surrounding the iPhone order; you’ll see that Lutfur considered the iPhone 4 so essential to his work that he couldn’t wait a week for one to be ordered under the council’s procurement contract and that’s why one was bought from Covent Garden.
And for those who need the proof of its £599 cost, here’s the receipt. Private Eye has also discovered the FoI responses: all the above, and my post here about Mr Sulaiman’s decision to remove the press desk from the council chamber, is in the current edition. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Takki becomes an Eye regular.
Trial by Jeory 
So pleased to hear Private Eye have taken up the cause!
How about a new FOI request Ted?
“How many legitimate requests for information has the Head of Communications refused to handle since taking uo his post?
How many of these have subsequently had to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act and at what additional cost to the Council (ie the cost of the time of the officers involved who need not have been involved if the question had been answered in the first place)?”
To be followed up with a further FOI…..
“In the Council budget for 2011/12 how much has the budget controlled by the Head of Communications been reduced?
Specifically, what are the proposed actions to be taken by the Head of Communications in 2011/12 to realise the required cost savings and increased efficiencies in back office operations?”
This is so much like Newham it’s spooky.
Hardly Wikileaks, is it Ted?
Keep on digging, I’m sure you’ll uncover something of national importance – or perhaps even interesting – sometime soon.
No, it’s not, but it is scrutiny. Would you rather no one did that? And cheer up – you’re giving lefties a bad name.
Mm, perhaps he’ll find that Rahman pays or otherwise encourages minions to sniff out blogs and news reports criticising him – and make shirty, yet insubstantial remarks about them.
Disappointing to find that some of the comments found here are virtually indistinguishable from football fans pointlessly arguing about to which degree their team is better.
What happened to keeping an eye on ALL our representatives?
He loves that £599 ipod …
Time for a complaint to the Information Commissioner methinks. There are sometimes good reasons to deny FOI requests. The whim if an officer is not one of them. Am surprised it’s not a serious disciplinary offence.
Oh – but it is! Hence my suggestion for the follow-up FOI questions relating to the activities of the Head of Communications.
An explicit or implicit requirement of every officer is that they always act in a way which is compliant with all relevant law and regulation. For an officer to do otherwise is to invite an investigation of their working practices.
Causing or risking the authority being brough into disrepute is another usual reason why an officer can be investigated using the disciplinary machinery.
As somebody who works in PR and comms (and has done so for local councils before) Takki is not doing a very professional job and his achievements would cause raised eyebrows elsewhere.
Sometimes there are stories that you don’t want to issue a comment or response on but they should be very limited as it’s a worst case scenario, will cause further questions, and should be limited to stories that you’re fairly confident will be next day’s fish and chip wrapper. This story is not (and was not) one of those.
Any good press officer will find some anodyne basic reason that can be given for a decision or course of action and will call off at least some of the pack of wolves wanting the information.
To choose to ignore the request for info in the full knowledge that it would be subject to an FOI request with attendant costs for the council is a really bad judgement.
Thanks for the comment – that was exactly my reading of the situation – and it’s good to have confirmation from a real-life PR /comms professional.
Takki may have done comms jobs before but his profile indicates that he apparently has no professional qualifications in this area http://www.linkedin.com/pub/takki-sulaiman/4/600/4bb and and apparently either doesn’t know how to act professionally or believes (erroneously) that the rules do not apply to him.
In my view he’s a would-be politician playing at being a profssional which is the very worst type of officer you can have in a senior position.
(BTW – for those readers who are wondering re respective “nom de plumes” of TESCMIU and me – we’re not related!!! Just two minds with but one thought re LBTH and its politicians – and,it would seem, some of its officers too!)
Good time to revisit this great post from Labourman in the last article? (with notes)
“How could you make the assumption that he has a perfectly working phone?”
> Because the council issues its big shots Blackberry phones to be getting on with. Also, as a reasonably weathy, gainfully employed individual, it would be strange if Rahman didn’t have a phone of his own even if he hadn’t been provided one.
“The Blackberry is also an expensive phone and is only slightly less in price then the iphone.”
> There are actually several flavours of Blackberry – none of which to my knowledge cost the £600 the new mayor spent on his iPhone.
“The iphone is a better smartphone hence the price! It also does not cost £600.”
> Except that if you’ll refer to the receipt, it clearly does.
“The Mayor deserves to have the best tools to work with and there is nothing wrong with that!”
> There is quite a lot wrong with spending public money on flashier versions of equipment you’ve already been provided – especially if you’re rich enough to fund the purchase your own self.
“Please lets stop making personal attack on people’s integrity, also lets stop the scare mongering about cost cutting and redundancy. It’s about time the council had a review of the huge sums it pays its staff and reduce excess staffing levels.”
> Agreed. Nothing to see here, let’s move along folks…
Well done to Tacky, he certainly knows how to rub people the wrong way, i take it he is employed for none other than Galloway’s Lutfur!
But isn’t it also strange that Ted has so far been selectively critical of Muslim officers and councillors only, as if the likes of C.Gilbert and E.Peters have never committed greater corporate sins…
Now I think you’re trying to wind me up deliberately. I suggest you do some homework. Have a look through the archives for the ELA and search out my criticisms of the likes of Christine, Lorraine Langham, Kevan Collins, Isabella Freeman, Ian Wilson etc etc.