Cover up at the Town Hall

http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2008/013108/gulliver013108.html
Camden New Journal - One Week with JOHN GULLIVER

Published: 31 January 2008

Clearing out old folks’ homes is a lot easier than clearing up the scandal
WHY is the Town Hall so desperate to keep a report secret that officials have used the law three times to stop elected councillors and this newspaper from discussing it?

At a late-night meeting on Tuesday, councillors were about to discuss a heavily censored copy of a report behind closed doors when one of my colleagues protested. The ‘Part Two’ exemption – used when councillors have to discuss legally or commercially sensitive material – was invalid and the facts should be heard in the open, he argued.Councillors, including the committee chairman, agreed.

But they were stopped in their tracks by a furious reaction from a senior official in the chief executive’s office, backed up by the duty lawyer.

When the official refused to allow the item to be heard, chairman Chris Philp muttered “We shall not be part of a cover up” and adjourned the hearing.

To understand the full story you need to go back a year, when the New Journal revealed how valuable furniture removed from the council flat of dying 92-year-old Dorothy Robinson ended up on sale in nearby antique shops.

Our investigation showed that out of 1,200 ‘clearances’ carried out on council homes each year, not a penny, not an earring, not a single heirloom, had been recovered from the homes of tenants who had died or been moved into care. Our story prompted a ‘review’, then an ‘investigation’, then a report in August in which the Special Investigations Team – an in-house team – said no crime had been detected. But the August report referred to a second, internal, report “made available to senior managers” – but never seen by councillors.

We applied to see the secret report using the Freedom of Information Act, but were denied. After three months of argument, the cross-party housing and adult social care scrutiny committee won the right to see a heavily censored version of it. So what is in the report?

My sources tell me it reveals that a blind eye was turned at the Town Hall to a suspected racket, and that the internal investigators conclude that because staff were not acting against written rules and no one reported anything as a crime, they can take no action.

Officials would like all this to go away. But it won’t.

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http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2008/022108/news022108_02.html
CNJ 21 Feb 2008

Flat clearances 'systematic theft from dead residents'

Town Hall staff were cleared by bosses to take from ‘void’ homes
THE removal of valuable possessions from the homes of council tenants was branded “systematic theft from dead Camden residents” when a secret Town Hall report was finally disclosed on Tuesday following months of campaigning by councillors and the New Journal.

A year after this newspaper’s investigation into the clearance of the Gospel Oak flat of dying Dorothy Robinson, 92, prompted allegations that her home had been “looted” by council clearance teams and re­vealed that nothing of value had been recovered from the 1,200 council houses similarly cleared every year, councillors called for “heads to roll”.

The report by the council’s internal audit team revealed for the first time that items were routinely taken by members of the Building and Maintenance Division during clearances of properties that became “void” through the abandonment, death, eviction or relocation of tenants, and that this practice was authorised by managers.

It included evidence that 60 staff may have been involved, and that managers obstructed the investigation of the council’s internal team.It went on to claim the New Journal probe into the abuses had “damaged” and “undermined” the council’s own clandestine investigation, an accusation supported by officers and social care chief Cllr Martin Davies.

Other councillors attacked the claims. “This would never have seen the light had it not been published in the CNJ,” said Cllr Keith Sedgwick.

Although two members of BMD staff face disciplinary charges, the evidence that the practice was widespread and condoned was described as “scandalous” by committee chairman Chris Philp, who forced the disclosure of the report after Town Hall lawyers repeatedly blocked its discussion since he first requested it in September last year.

He said: “This report shows that council staff had been systematically stealing property from dead Camden residents for years. It is totally outrageous. I think that it is good my committee has brought this investigation into the public domain to show that these practices will not be tolerated by Camden Council today.”

In a meeting where tension between the council’s staff and elected councillors frequently threatened to bubble over, assistant chief executive Philip Colligan acknowledged that the conduct of house clearances had been deeply flawed and that wide-ranging changes had been put in place.

Pressed on whether the clearances amounted to stealing, he answered: “I am not saying it is not theft.”

He added that discuss­ing the report in public was dangerous and unprecedented and could jeopardise ongoing disciplinary proceedings. He said: “There have been suggestions that officers wanted to cover up elements of that report. That is not true. We now have an unprec­edented release of internal audit material to you, way beyond what we have considered as normal and way beyond what we have advised to you.”

But his comments were questioned by Cllr Sedgwick, who referred to the first, highly selective, report shown to the committee last year. He said: “When we had this report before us originally there was nothing in it which said managers had told their staff they could take things from dead people’s homes – it only comes out in a report that we had to squeeze out of officers. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, it’s theft. This is to do with the culture of management of housing. This is shocking. Quite frankly someone’s head should be rolling – someone very high up.”

Cllr Philp asked: “Is there any evidence that a director or assistant director knew about these practices or authorised it?”

Mr Colligan replied: “I can’t answer your question about who knew about what.”

The questioning promp­ted protest from several committee members and led the elected chiefs of both housing and adult social care to make highly unusual formal statements of confidence in the council’s highest managers. Social care chief Cllr Martin Davies said: “I am confident that none of the directors or assistant directors had knowledge of or condoned in any way the particular issues here.”

Update
- London Tonight 21 Feb 2008 "Camden staff 'raid' homes of the dead" http://www.itvlocal.com/london/ type in 'Camden Council'

- council meeting 5 March 2008
AGENDA ITEM NO. 14
LONDON BOROUGH OF CAMDENCOUNCIL MEETING – 5 MARCH 2008

NOTICE OF MOTIONS
3. To consider the following Motion, notice of which was given by Councillor Theo Blackwell and seconded by Councillor Roger Robinson. This Council notes the unprecedented impasse between the Executive and the Housing and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee over the issue of removal of dead tenants belongings. In the light of this, it calls for an independent and external enquiry into this distressing issue so lessons can be learnt.

Update: this motion was not heard due to time restraints but was later dismissed by the executive.