When I asked Tower Hamlets council’s press office last week to justify the £855 spent by children’s services director Isobel Cattermole and her deputy on two first class rial tickets to Manchester for a conference, the reply was: “We don’t comment on individual travel arrangements.”
The same officer then said that “open tickets are sometimes purchased to allow greater flexibility with travel times”. I then asked for the council’s staff travel policy, but was told I would need to request that under the Freedom of Information Act.
Of course, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and I got it via other means. As you’ll remember from the last post, it stated that standard class would only be reimbursed.
And then I broke the story. And then there was the outrage and embarrassment. Cllr Oliur Rahman, the council’s cabinet member for children’s services looked into what had happened, and today I received the following email from the council’s press office.
Hi Ted
Please see the below statement.
A council spokesperson said: “The council policy on travel expenses for its staff to attend work related events is set out clearly on page 50 of our employee handbook. Such expenses are reimbursed at ‘the available cheap rate or ordinary return fare, whichever is the lower.’
In instances where officers incur expenses in excess of the lowest available fare, they are duty bound to reimburse the council the outstanding balance. This is exactly what has happened in the instance of the two officers cited in the Sunday Express report.
Mayor Lutfur Rahman added: “If Brandon Lewis is really concerned about protecting council budgets in order to help poorer communities he could use his opportunity at the Tory conference to oppose its plans for a further £10 billion of welfare cuts.”
So the council is now commenting on an individual’s travel arrangements, and it seems Isobel Cattermole and her deputy have been told to reimburse the difference. But when? I’ve asked the council to state the date, but I’ve heard nothing.
You see, the thing is, these tickets were bought not by Ms Cattermole, but by an official in the chief executive’s office on a corporate credit card. That spending would have been signed off by either Ms Cattermole herself, or by someone under her, and then paid by the town hall’s finance team – a team headed up by the director of finance, Chris Naylor….who I’m told has just landed a job as the top officer at Barnet Council.
Through this one transaction, we see the incompetence throughout the council.
1. Officers think it’s OK to spend £855 of our money on two luxury rail tickets.
2. They think no one will notice.
3. The press office thinks it can bury its head in the sand by telling journalists it won’t comment, but then U-turning.
4. And then they think they can play with words to imply the money had always been reimbursed…(contrary to the original FoI answer).
They really do think we’re fools, these people who run our council.
Trial by Jeory 
Great work Ted. I think there are so many other leeches in the council, we are yet to discover. It makes my blood boil, as so many cuts in service for children and elderly are hurting vulnerable people.
Well they have a good reason to think we are fools. After so much evidence for their incompetence, corruption and greed have been discovered we still have not managed to get rid of them.
They still have their beautiful offices, get driven by a well paid driver, can see their faces on the streets, publish East End Life, help their mates – easy life for our money.
If we were not fools some of the councillors and council staff would have been behind the bars years ago. It is quite impressive all these dirty tricks get discovered and well documented but lack of consequences and general lack of interest in the community just make the council more confident they can get away with anything.
This is becoming more and more “in your face”…
The council is virtually leaderless…it is in crisis and it is failing to serve the people. What, I ask, has the mayor achieved in office? He’s put some logs in Altab Ali Park (costing half a million) and that, so far as I can tell, is it.
At the end of the day Lutfur Rahman is the boss. He was sold to the electorate (part of them, at least) as being “left of Labour” and thus should take personal responsibility for the way OUR money is spent and publicly pledge that this sort of needless frittering will immediately cease.
No employee of LBTH (however senior*) should travel first class anywhere for anything. Full stop. Period. There should be no taxis – only buses or standard fare trains like the rest of us. Also, the presumption should be that if travel can be avoided (e.g. via an objective assessment as to whether travel to the meeting is absolutely necessary) then it should be; teleconference, buy the tape, borrow someone’s notes; these sort of trips are what business call “Jollies” and are usually quite unnecessary. How much did they spend in the hotel? How expensive was the meal they dined out on at our expense? Wine?
We are all tightening our belts. As for me, I am on the top hole, I physically resemble an egg-timer and I supplement my meagre diet with moss and woodlice.
What we need is a council (and by which I mean the whole organisation) that is not led by champagne socialists but by self-sacrificing examples of humility whose aim must be to reduce our council tax bill and by so doing actually help us get through this recession. They must lead the way in doing that by cutting out all unnecessary expenditure.
You can get to Manchester for £10 on Megabus (return) via Victoria coach station. This is how they should travel. If they refuse then perhaps this meeting was not so important after all? The difference should be deducted from their next wages. That will serve as a warning to others not to do the same thing.
* The Mayor and the Speaker should share the official car.
Ted, can you FOI the receipts for Room Service?
Chris Naylor would have not signed off this expense. In fact, Corporate Finance does not see expense claims for Corporate Directors for sign off. These go to the CEX. As Tower Hamlets does not have a CEX and the Head of Paid Services (Steve Halsey) is not set up in the electronic system as an approver, these expenses are not signed off by Corporate Finance.
Having known Isobel for many years (I have worked with her on the board of directors), this claim does not come as a surprise to me. She is known in the council as a Diva, wearing excessive jewellery, taking along her PA to take minutes at every meeting and ordering sandwiches for most internal meetings, this behaviour does not come as a surprise. Typical Isobel!!!!!
Chris Naylor would not have known about this – in fact, she hates him and would never ask for his sign off on anything …… good Chris is moving on ….. Barnet will benefit from his experience and hopefully they will appreciate his business like approach …..
So basically, Isobel signs off her own expense claim? Is that what we can deduce from this? Is this not “smoking gun” material that demonstrates the council as an organisation is systemically failing and we need Eric Pickles to step in and protect public services and control the spending of public money?
Ted – first of all well done for “outing” the inappropriate behaviour on the part of all those parties initiating and dealing with this expense claim.
It’s very evident to me that nothing would have been done and nothing would have been said if you hadn’t asked the questions and highlighted these expense claims.
Surely an expense claim which fails to comply with the Council’s stated policy and which fails to be signed off by an appropriate third party in effect constitutes an attempt to defraud the Council. Last time I looked FRAUD is a CRIMINAL offence.
Are you reporting this incident to the Police as well as the external auditor?
Maybe you should now ask to see all the expense claims made by Ms Cattermole for the last three years?
If you like I can quote you the details of the case of a local government Chief Officer who behaved inappropriately in terms of expense claims. That officer went to prison and was also drummed out of their professional association for bringing it into disrepute and behaving in a manner incompatible with the responsibilities of and the trust placed in a local authority Chief Officer. The Director of Public Prosecutions and the bodies responsible for the conduct of Chief Officers had no doubt that the Chief Officer knowingly sought to defraud the public purse.
Also you seemed to have missed an important point re the Council’s Travel Policy. It also applies to Councillors – and Mayors – unless there is another Council approved policy which says something different.
Or maybe that is the topic of your next post?
One further comment with respect to the statement “I then asked for the council’s staff travel policy, but was told I would need to request that under the Freedom of Information Act.”
That’s a bit like asking the Police to investigate a fraud and having to quote all the relevant fraud legislation.
So far as I am aware ALL requests to the Council for information are automatically covered by the Freedom of Information Act. There’s no requirement to identify the Act when making the request. Of course, the Council may well want to cite the act if they wanted to refuse the information requested – although they have very few reasons for doing so and certainly would not be able to deny your request for a copy of the travel policy.
Here’s a quote from the Office of the Information Commissioner (http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/act.aspx) which you might want to use next time a Council Official comes up with that line
The main principle behind freedom of information legislation is that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities, unless there is a good reason for them not to. This is sometimes described as a presumption or assumption in favour of disclosure. The Act is also sometimes described as purpose and applicant blind.
This means that:
* everybody has a right to access official information. Disclosure of information should be the default – in other words, information should be kept private only when there is a good reason and it is permitted by the Act;
* an applicant (requester) does not need to give you a reason for wanting the information. On the contrary, you must justify refusing them information;
* you must treat all requests for information equally, except under some circumstances relating to vexatious requests and personal data (see When can we refuse a request? for details on these). The information someone can get under the Act should not be affected by who they are. You should treat all requesters equally, whether they are journalists, local residents, public authority employees, or foreign researchers; and
Maybe somebody could bring the Council and all its officers up to speed on the proper operation of the Freedom of Information Act?
Excellent point
Of course your detailed knowledge of the FoI Act would include awareness that FoI requests have to be made in writing http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/official_information/how_access.aspx
“For your request to be dealt with according to the Freedom of Information Act, you must:
* contact the relevant authority directly;
* make the request in writing, for example in a letter or an email. You can make a verbal or written request for environmental information;
* give your real name; and
* give an address to which the authority can reply. This can be a postal or email address.”
I suppose it’s possible that the conversation Ted refers to took place via e-mail but it sounds more like it was a phone conversation (as most press office calls are) in which case the press officer was entirely correct to say that an FoI request would have to be made.
No, the conversation was by email. Tower Hamlets press officers rarely do anything unless it’s in writing.
I was always under the impression that you had to cite the Act, so this is all v enlightening. I’ll check it with the ICO.
It’s not as though ‘she’s worth it’ either – with TH schools converting to Academies against parents’ wishes (and with her benevolent and guiding hand?) and school buildings being sold off to developers.
Headteachers when gathered by Ms Cattermole last year, were asked to applaud one such Academy conversion – allegedly. As for the school estate, Central Foundation Girls School on Tredegar Square – historic school building by a leafy green square – was emptied of children who were decanted into an old dog biscuit factory, with a playground on the roof, on the most polluted road in Tower Hamlets. Meanwhile, on leafy Tredegar Square, the developers have a listed building for pricey heritage flats. Now it seems the historic Raine’s school building (now part of Tower Hamlets College) on Arbour Square – listed again – is similarly being lined up for sale to developers.
Ms Cattermole must have got us to pay for an awful lot of sandwiches for those meetings around the Monopoly board of TH education.