A Letter to the Editor from a Mr BROWN – a Whitby resident – who is clearly concerned about the prevailing “seige mentality” at Whitby Town Council, where members are seemingly afraid to cross the Swingbridge without fear of being harangued by disgruntled townspeople – so much so that they have manipulated the Council into purchasing “personal panic alarms”, via the public purse – but have since never bothered to pick them up to carry around with them for their personal protection.

They are reportedly gathering dust in the back of the top drawer of the new Clerk’s desk.

(The “personal panic alarms”, that is . . . not the Councillors).

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Dear editor,

“Worrying – if not alarming…”

Whitby parishioners who follow the slow and sluggish course of their town council, may have noticed an entry in the minutes of the full council meeting for Tuesday 10th Sept 2024. These included a motion to accept the minutes for a meeting of the Finance Policy and General Purposes (FP&GP) committee held on 6th August. This had a note attached at the request of Cllr. Layman saying ‘with reference to agenda item 133/24 I contend that the purchase of personal attack alarms for councillors represents an unwarranted and inexcusable misuse of public funds. I further contend the emails by Cllr. Wild and Dalrymple in response to my requests for the reasons and justifications of this purchase are contrary to the values enshrined in the Nolan Principles.’

The Nolan Principles are the ethical guidelines that form the basis of public service. Anyone who serves the public pledges to do so with selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

But I digress…. What had happened was that Cllr. Linda Wild had used unspecified ‘safety concerns’ as a justification for raising a motion at that meeting to get the ratepayers to supply personal attack alarms. For Councillors. In Whitby. Really? Whitby is hardly a hotbed of civil unrest.

Cllr. Layman, who is not on the committee and only heard about the affair when the draft minutes were published, wrote an open letter to all Councillors asking Councillor Wild, as the person raising the motion and Chair of the committee that carried the motion, if she could explain just what were the safety concerns, were there any incidents of actual or attempted attacks and if so, how many councillors have experienced them and how many times had they happened? Could it be shown the attacks were a direct result of being a councillor and not for some other reason and were any of the incidents reported to the police and, if so, what was the outcome? She also suggested it was a waste of ratepayers’ money and perhaps the idea should be dropped.

Reasonable questions you would think, but not according to our Mayor, Cllr. Bob Dalrymple. Drawing on his skills of leadership, openness and accountability he immediately attacked Cllr. Layman and demanded to know why she was openly asking these questions. Cllr. Wild responded in a similar vein claiming that an issue, once resolved by committee, was no longer a matter for discussion. By anyone. Cllr. Wild also asserted that to suggest otherwise was facile and antidemocratic.

In the end, none of Cllr Layman’s questions were answered. So much for the Nolan Principles then.

It turns out, the whole brouhaha seems to revolve around one incident when Cllr. Linda Wild had been accosted in town by an unknown person demanding if she was “that **** from the Council?”. She had used that, presumably in the spirit of integrity and selflessness decreed by the Nolan Principles, as justification for raising and pushing though a motion to supply Councillors with personal attack alarms.

The Council has so far purchased 5 alarms. They were paid for by the ratepayers, by the public, by you the reader and, despite ‘safety concerns’ about ‘physical intimidation and harassment’, at the time of writing, nearly 3 months later, neither Cllr. Wild, nor indeed any other Councillor has asked for one.

Yours, faithfully,

Mr Brown of Whitby

[Name & Address Supplied]

[NOTE: On Saturday 16th November 2024, Councillors Wild and Dalrymple were invited to provide ‘Right of Reply’ comments in response to the Letter. The North Yorks Enquirer has since been successful in obtaining the email correspondence record to/from the Councillorsconcerned in the ‘personal panic alarm’ contention and can thereby confirm that Mr Brown’s information is factually accurate (barring possible forgeries).

In the event that incoming submissions from Councillors Wild and/or Dalrymple in any way deviate from their respective contemporaneous email assertions, the Enquirer will publish that correspondence record, on a open and transparent ‘Name & Shame’ basis.]

Right of Reply

Unfortunately, and disappointingly . . . Councillors Wild and Dalrymple, who between them in their roles as successive Mayors of Whitby, have ‘led’ the town since lockdown, seem to have ducked back into a private lockdown of their own. Despite a magnanimous extension of the Enquirer’s press deadline, neither one of them has come forward with any explanation or rationale for their conduct. It is almost as though they see themselves – leading custodians of the public purse – as being somehow above and beyond accountability at all.

It will be interesting to see which of their fellow Councillors will be prepared publicly to support them through the coming Budget crisis, when the Precept (local council tax) is expected to rise again – following an attempted 46% rise last year (in the end constrained to 33% by the ‘new guard’) which itself followed a rise of 14.5% for the previous year. Up and up – and nothing for it.

The talk now is of a 2025/26 Precept of around half a million pounds. For what?

Perhaps it is in this context in that Councillors Wild and Dalrymple are struggling to come up with any sort of justification for spending the townspeoples’ money on silly gewgaws?