WTC: Money, Mistakes & . . . Malice?
~~~~~
Dear Sir,
They say Trouble comes in threes. Sometimes they’re delivered by Fate, and sometimes they are of our own making.
>https://www.whitbytowncouncil.gov.uk/documents/2015874
Near the bottom of page 4, dated 27/06/25, is Transaction 85, for a payment of £925 to Wellers Hedleys Solicitors.
The Clerk quite rightly brought it to the attention of the Council and assured everyone that “the scheme of delegation and the financial regulations of the council” were followed.
Item 5.15 of those regulations states “Individual purchases within an agreed budget for that type of expenditure may be authorised by … the Clerk, in consultation with the Chair of the Council or Chair of the appropriate committee, for any items below £2,000 excluding VAT“.
So, everything’s OK there then?
Well actually, No.
We don’t know when Messrs Wellers Hedleys were instructed, but the current Mayor said it was during the chairmanship of the previous Mayor, Cllr. Bob Dalrymple, so it must have happened sometime during the Council year 2024/25.
The allowance for Legal Costs in the 2024/25 budget was £600. The allowance for Legal Costs in the 2025/26 budget is also £600.
Problem No.1 then, is irrespective of whichever year’s accounts the payment should come from, can the Clerk explain how a single payment of over 50% more than the entire budgeted amount be ‘within an agreed budget’?
Problem No.2 comes when we look at what the payment was for. The Council have helpfully, and very, very wrongfully, added the note “Legal Fees NW Articels[sic] NYE”:
Spelling mistake aside, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out the payment relates to advice on the online news magazine, the North Yorks Enquirer, and in particular, articles by ‘NW’. Since there is not – nor ever has been – any other ‘NW’ at the North Yorks Enquirer, other than one of its regular reporters, Mr. Nigel Ward*, then it is clear he has been unlawfully identified – which is a breach of the General Data Protection Regulations, the GDPR. Oops!
(Having been made aware of this, the Clerk has, by law, just 72 hrs to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office of the breach being brought to his attention. Perhaps the Council could post confirmation on their website or Facebook page when he has done so?)
2 down, 1 to go – and so far it looks like between them, the Clerk and Cllr. Dalrymple have blown 150% of Whitby Town Council’s legal budget for an entire year on a single question to the solicitors and made an embarrassing blunder under the GDPR. What, we then ask, did they get for their, I mean our, money?
In his preamble, the Clerk said the ‘fantastic‘ news was that ‘no further action was needed by the Council at this point‘. What he didn’t say was, if the truth be known, no action was needed by the Council at any point. Mr Ward is too long in the tooth to make any mistake, in any of his ‘articels’, to allow any solicitor to get a hook on him. The money was almost certainly wasted.
What is also almost certain is that the root of this affair is the second of Mr Ward’s features on Whitby Town Council’s ‘Old Guard’ dated 24 Dec 2024, and in particular the satirical ‘photoon’ of Cllr. Dalrymple under the heading ‘the mayor done lost his bottle’. If, instead of retaining some very expensive, and arguably very unnecessary ‘legal opinion’, they had just read the article, they would have seen the following:
“Readers who entertain doubts about the fact that Article 10 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]:
Human Rights Act 1998, Article 10, protects the substance of what is said. Therefore (s38 Heesom v PSO), in the political context [such as an elector raising concerns to a parish council], a degree of the immoderate, offensive, shocking, disturbing, exaggerated, provocative, polemical, colourful, emotive, non-rational and aggressive, that would not be acceptable outside this context, is tolerated.“
Had they checked the ruling themselves, they would have seen a subsequent paragraph stating:
“Public servants are expected and required to have thicker skins and have more tolerance to comments than ordinary citizens.”
Which brings us to…
Problem No.3. Can the Clerk explain how, as the Responsible Financial Officer, he allowed our (now ex-) Mayor, Bob ‘the nob’ Dalrymple, to talk him into blowing the best part of a grand of ratepayers money on a pointless, and possibly personally vindictive, exercise, especially when a phone call to the legal team at the Yorkshire Local Councils Associations (YLCA) could have told you for nothing?
When pressed for details at the meeting, the Clerk eventually agreed to “Give all the information I can“.
Yours, with bated breath,
Mel Eshayan
[* Editor’s Note: Mr Ward has given his consent for the use of his name solely in this reader’s letter.]
