WTC: ‘OLD GUARD’ Recruits [Pt.2]

WTC: ‘OLD GUARD’ Recruits [Pt.2]

• – an “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD presenting the second in a brief series on the nefarious tactics of Whitby Town Council’s ‘Old Guard’.
• PLUS – the Whitby Town Mayor would appear to have lost his bottle [Official].
  

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Introduction

What will – and must – become abundantly clear, once I have set out a cornucopia of evidence from WTC’s own Public Record, is that Whitby Town Council is currently not a functioning arm of local government.

It is a closed shop in which petty ‘power’ games are being played out by a small côterie of talentless mediocrities whose principal objective seems to be convincing themselves (and each other) that they really are the hugest of fish in the tiniest of ponds. In the common parlance, they are right up themselves.

Their performance in meetings would be pure comedy, were it not, in fact, tragic. They seem to be supremely confident that their unsubtle hand-signals, ‘meaningful’ glances, hand-over-mouth whispers and the supposedly-casual slipping of hastily-scribbled ‘notes’ to one another in Chamber will pass unnoticed by the Whitby public – and, to a point, they are right, because there is scarcely ever more than three or four of us there to witness it.

Believe me, this is game-playing. Nothing else.

It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the wellbeing of Whitby – “the provision of services and amenities for the populace”. NOTHING!

At least since the onset of COVID, this lust for pursuing what amounts to a kind of small town ‘geriatric ego masturbation’ has stood as an immovable obstacle in the face of a handful of good Councillors who are passionately committed to helping the Council attain some relevance for the people of Whitby, to nurture – on merit – some mutual respect between the Council and  residents and, above all, to support residents and business people in their resistance to the relentless decline of the town.

Meanwhile, the devotion of the ‘Old Guard’ in attempting to rehabilitate a diminishing sense of self-esteem as they slide inexorably towards the fag-end of ho-hum lives – all the while apparently impervious to reasoned criticism or accountability – is balking any prospect of progress. In short, Whitby Town Council – whilst the ‘Old Guard’ continues to hold sway – is dead from the neck up.

Background

Readers will recall that I began this brief series on the recruiting tactics of the ‘Old Guard’ of Whitby Town Council with a comprehensive breakdown of the Co-Option Procedure, as pursued during March and November 2024:

• http://nyenquirer.uk/wtc-old-guard-recruits-pt1/

I am aware that steps are being taken to re-visit the November Co-Option Procedure because it was compromised by (a) Councillor Elizabeth MULHERAN’s hostile cross-examination of the Applicants and (b) the departure from due process by the Chair/Mayor, Councillor Bob DALRYMPLE, in neglecting to hold the vote for his own Proposal – a ‘Paper Ballot’ (i.e. a secret ballot).

I also covered the fact that Councillor MULHERAN’s own Co-Option enjoyed a far smoother passage, unhindered by snide aspersions regarding her previous acquaintance or association with members of the ‘Old Guard’, who may have entertained good reason to regard her as a future ‘friendly’ voter on Committees or Full Council. Certainly, nobody asked for (nor did Councillor MULHERAN volunteer) any of the kind of associations (for example, with Councillor Anne BROWN) that she was keen to impute to the two November Co-Option Applicants as compelling grounds for their rejection.

I should mention, in passing, that I can recall commenting on Councillor Anne BROWN on only one prior occasion, in an article entitled “WTC: The Return of the Backstabbers” (pub. 18/08/23), in which I commented:

Indeed.

Since Councillor MULHERAN’s Co-Option, she has lost not a moment in securing appointments onto a number of Committees, notably the Planning & Licensing Committee. Whitby Town Council is a statutory Planning Consultee. Seldom (if ever) does the real Planning Authority (now North Yorkshire Council) pay heed to WTC’s often irrelevant and inappropriate input. Nevertheless, membership of the Planning & Licensing Committee carries a certain degree of kudos (in the minds of those who are easily impressed by such shallow pretensions) and Councillor MULHERAN, having made a point (in her Co-Option interview) of being ‘experienced’ in Planning – she ‘loves’ it, she said – was made for the job.

A Strip Cartoon

Now please join me in a strip-cartoon made up of five Google Transcriptions ‘stills’ from Full Council’s consideration of the Whitby Town Deal Board (WTDB) proposal to erect a Maritime Training Hub (MTH) on Endeavour Wharf.

See how Councillor Anne BROWN attempts to manoeuvre the decision-making process into the stiller waters of the Planning & Licensing Committee, where her “bezzie”, Councillor Elizabeth MULHERAN (these two are big wheels, by the way, in the local Labour Party, where Councillor BROWN is Vice Chair), could promulgate her (predetermined?) support for the Maritime Training Hub (MTH) to a smaller classroom:

Councillor MULHERAN’s seat on the Planning & Licensing Committee was (of course) Proposed by Councillor Anne ‘Bezzie’ BROWN and Seconded by Councillor Heather COUGHLAN (the lady who, whilst Chair/Mayor in 2017, signed off on the DANFO toilets contract but seems unable to remember any relevant details at all (important when the original contract documents appear tohave been mislaid) – or so she claimed at the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) meeting, finally held (at the second attempt, having been inquorate for its original scheduling on 3rd December 2024) on Tuesday 10th December 2024:

This method of propelling ‘friendly’ or ‘tame’ votes into key Committee positions is standard practice on many Town & Parish Councils.

But is it fair? Is it democratic? Does it play in favour of representing public opinion?

Or does it simply prop up the predetermined opinions of the incumbent control-freaks – the ‘directing minds’?

In short, do we want vote-rigging in Whitby Town Council? Do we want a handful of poseurs shaping our town?

There are around ten thousand small Councils in the UK. A large proportion may be equally useless. But I live in Whitby . . .

Planning Training

So let us move on to examining whether or not there was ANY SUBSTANCE AT ALL to Councillor Anne BROWN’s cock-sure assertion that the members of the Planning & Licensing Committee (including, of course, Councillor “Bezzie” MULHERAN) were/are:

• “the people who are actually on the planning committee because they are the only people who actually understand and have been trained in planning matter(s)”

Unfortunately, Councillor Anne BROWN was spouting arrant rubbish. The proof follows.

Firstly, and without setting foot in the quagmire of Planning law, Councillors are expected to have familiarised themselves with the purpose and remit of the Council and its endless Committees. The  Planning & Licensing Committee, like each of its sisters, is bound by its ‘rules of engagement’, set out in a document entitled “Terms of Reference” (ToR). In theory (though seldom in practice), these ToRs should be reviewed annually (to encompass any change in law) and routinely re-adopted by Full Council.

In practice, there exist hundreds of pages of these regulations – Standing Orders, Financial Regulations, Terms of Reference (for each separate component of the Council), Procedures, Protocols, Policies – on and ever on – and NOBODY ever gets around to reading them all, much less COMPREHENDING them or grasping how to ABIDE by them.

Everyone but the Clerk/RFO is winging it.

Planning & Licensing at WTC

The opening passages of the Terms of Reference of the Planning & Licensing Committee suffice to demonstrate that Councilor Anne BROWN is a ‘lead parachute’:

These ToRs specify that members “should be trained”. They should be “holding meetings with residents”. They should “refer to Full Council” those Applications “with potentially significant effect or public interest”, etc. In short, nothing there authorises or justifies Councillor BROWN’s erroneous contention that Full Council should consign the matter to her “bezzie” and her colleagues on Planning.

And Councillor BROWN was not to know (or perhaps she was?) that the Planning Training has not been a feature of how WTC prepares its members to discharge their duties as statutory Planning Consultees, having invested a paltry £87.50 on just four sessions of YLCA Planning Training, spread over three-and-a-half years (three of which sessions were ‘remote’ – not even ‘in person’), and no doubt, by now largely forgotten by Councillors who may since have left the Planning & Licensing Committee or (for all we know) left the Council altogether.

But Councillor Anne BROWN recommended referring the Maritime Training Hub Application to:

• “the people who are actually on the planning committee because they are the only people who actually understand and have been trained in planning matter(s)”

Give me strength!

And it gets worse . . .

Perhaps Councillor BROWN was also not to know – as I knew – that, under a Freedom of Information request of mine, processed by that paragon of governance compliance, former-Clerk/RFO Michael KING, the Planning Training record of Whitby Town Councillors was actually already in the public domain (highlights in pink), available to Councillor BROWN for fact-checking (if facts matter to her):

My FOIA Request

Mr Michael KING, the former Clerk/RFO, provided the following Invoices for Planning Training from the Yorkshire Local Councils Associations (YLCA) for just FOUR training sessions for FOUR Councillors, as follows:

SUMMARY
25 May 2021 – WEBINAR ONLY ……… £25.00
22 March 2022 – WEBINAR ONLY …… £22.50
22 November 2022 – IN PERSON …… £15.00
29 May 2023 – WEBINAR ONLY ……… £25.00
                                                      TOTAL = £87.50

So the Council (actually, we – the people) have invested the princely sum of £87.50 (83% of that sum in online ‘webinars’ of dubious worth), over the past three-and-a-half years, on Planning ‘training’ for four Councillors, some of whom may no longer be on the Planning Committee – or even on the Council. And those who still are may not know much, if Councillor BROWN offers any benchmark.

Setting aside the fact that Mr KING’s images were small and blurry, it is noteworthy that it was unlawful (under the terms of the Act) for him to REDACT the names of the four Councillors who actually received the ‘training’. (The size of the black redaction blocks shows enough space for only one individually-named ‘trainee’ per Invoice).

Councillors names are required by law to appear on Council websites and invariably do so – within Agendas, Minutes and Reports, along with their Declarations of Interests. Mr KING had no lawful reason to redact them. Only his penchant for secrecy. I conclude that Mr KING considers the law an optional affair.

But when I picked Mr KING up on his ignorance of the law (or refusal to comply with it) he went to ground and became non-reponsive, the shifty little so-and-so (highlighted in pink):

In short, Mr KING sought to withhold the information that the bulk of the membership of the Planning & Licensing Committee was largely unfit for purpose. But the truth is, they haven’t a clue.

“Don’t be so hard on us”, they whine, “We’re only volunteers”. True enough. But they deploy their ignorance only to stymie those who want to do better – and to the lasting disadvantage of the vast majority of Whitby people who are strongly opposed to the Maritime Training Hub.

My Right to Comment/Criticise

Let readers – and Councillors – be absolutely clear:

My criticisms – exposées – are NOT about BLAME, SANCTIONS or PUNISHMENT.

No. We cannot change or re-write history.

These articles are about Councillors and Staff complying with THE LAW, STANDING ORDERS and the TERMS OF REFERENCE.

They are about doing the job PROPERLY – making LAWFUL DECISIONS for the RIGHT REASONS – i.e. representing the WILL of the PEOPLE of WHITBY.

The ‘Old Guard’ must STOP trying to ‘do down’ those who want to bring the Council up to snuff. Or get out of the Council. I am striving for a unified Council working together for the people of Whitby. I am aspiring to supporting the BEST TOWN COUNCIL in North Yorkshire.

Readers who entertain doubts about the fact that Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 grants me the right to express my opinions are directed to the authorisation handed down by the House of Lords, ruling on the landmark Case Law decision set out in s.38 of Heesom -v- Public Health Ombudsman [2014]:

So my parting message to Councillor Anne BROWN is this:

• “Henceforth, there will be no more Mr NICE GUY. Sue me. Please. From here on in, I will be seeking costs and damages. Come to Daddy.”

And my kindest advice to her (if she is listening) is to enroll with the Street Angels, far from the glare of justified criticism. As far as the Town Council is concerned, she has, in my view, nothing useful to offer; as far as Council performance is concerned, she is a lead parachute to complement Councillor MULHERAN’s chocolate teapot.

Finally – A ‘Staffing Lock’

I owe a debt of gratitude to the Very Reverend Spanleigh CROONER, Deacon to the College of Municipal Yorkshire Councils (who, it has to be said, has been known to phonetically flip-flop his facts) for the broadest of hints that the WTC Chair/Mayor, Councillor Bob ‘The Nob’ DALRYMPLE, has indicated his intention to boycott the forthcoming Town Meeting/Assembly to be held at 6:30pm on Monday 6th January 2025 at The Royal Hotel. The law states that if the Mayor attends, he must take the Chair and preside over the Meeting/Assembly. If absent, he can hide from the public.

In short, the Mayor is understood to have LOST HIS BOTTLE!

It must be ‘official’ – it is on the Whitby Town Council Notice Board.

This could be what the Reverend CROONER means when he opines:

“The Mayor has made himself a Staffing Lock!”

[Satire]