Potto New Year: Out With The Old

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I have been struggling for sometime with the dilemma of how best to draft an article summarising the 2024 management of Potto Parish Council, which I have described as “Arguably the WORST Parish Council in England” in my article dated 29th November 2022.

My problem was that, even if I reported upon only the very worst acts of lawlessness and maladministration during 2024 (each verified in turn by the Information Commissioner, External Audit Reports, or the Judges at the Upper and Lower Tribunals, etc), the article could easily have become one of the longest I have ever published.

However, it is (mercifully) now one of the shortest . . .

My dilemma was solved by a local source who, serendipitously (and anonymously), has passed a document to me that had been verifiably located via ‘open source’ media.

That document was a Complaint dated 17th December 2024, addressed to Potto Parish Council, replete with robust (I would say “compelling”) evidence of wrongdoing. It is published in full at the foot of this article. How it will appear on the Agenda of the January meeting of Potto Parish Council remains, at this time, a matter of conjecture. But forgive me for going out on a limb when I anticipate an incomprehensible gush of obscurantism arriving at the invariably unanimous Resolution that the Clerk/RFO’s performance has been exemplary and, beyond any shadow of doubt, devoid of even the most minuscule error.

I realise that some readers may not always click on links in articles, but this Complaint (actually, six small numbered complaints) is a gem of its kind. It has written my article for me – I have little to add.

I can only hope that the current ‘directing minds’ at Potto Parish Council – the unelected Chair Andrew WILDE and his daughter, the disinterested but statutorily responsible Clerk/RFO Mrs Joanne STOREY – can develop the capacity to realise that they are each beacons of absolute and damning failure. This duo are probably the most rotten and dysfunctional pair of Council leaders in my experience throughout the whole of England.

The long-suffering residents of Potto deserve so much better in 2025.