WTC Precept Now Under 5%

WTC Precept Now Under 5%

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Introduction

After sixteen years of attending and reporting on Council meetings in North Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Cleveland & Redcar and County Durham – at Unitary, County, District/Borough and Town/Parish levels – I can honestly state that I have never witnessed such a rudderless pretense of “local government” as took place at the WTC Full Council (Budget) meeting at the Pannett Gallery in Whitby on Tuesday 14th January 2025.

In keeping with his absence from the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (Budget) meeting of 10th December 2024 (re-scheduled from 3rd December, due to “unavailability” of members) and the Town Meeting/Assembly of 6th January 2025, the Town Mayor – Councillor Bob ‘The Nob’ DALRYMPLE – once again failed to attend. 

The Deputy Mayor, Councillor Jonathan HARSTON, also failed to attend.

In the absence of volunteers, an attempted Proposal as pro tem (i.e. temporary) Chair of Councillor Chris RIDDOLLS (by Councillor John NOCK – about whom, more presently) fell by the wayside for want of a Seconder. Eventually, Councillor Steve SMITH was elected pro tem to the Chair.

Before the start of the meeting, I presented the Clerk with the Public Petitions raised at (and after) the Town Meeting/Assembly demanding an external Forensic Audit of the Council’s finances, along with an external legal investigation into the Council’s contractual position with DANFO. (These documents have yet to appear on the WTC website, likewise the Notes/Minutes of that event. I still hope to report, as and when the material becomes publicly available).

From that moment on, however, pantomime season fell upon us with a vengeance.

But before moving on from the absence of Town Mayor DALRYMPLE, permit me a brief reminder (so that new readers have a broader sense of the leadership prowess of ‘the man in charge’) of the following report in the Scarborough News at the time of Councillor DALRYMPLE‘s election to the position of Town Mayor (the ‘Open Letter’ referred to in the report was first published on the North Yorks Enquirer on 10th May 2023):

Readers will have to ask Councillor DALRYMPLE how he reconciles “working together”, “connecting with the community”and “sharing ideas” with his series of absences from three of the most important meetings of the year, all normally open to public attendance.

Explanations as to how the Mayor (a past Chair of the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee – FP&GP – and therefore intimately involved in the DANFO scandal) reconciles his vision of a “bright and prosperous future” with an estimated £68,000 of unreceived revenue from the Council’s public conveniences provision, along with the absence of something in the order of £220,000 in Reserves having mysteriously vanished from the Public Record, lies beyond the bounds of imagination.

The Meeting

When the meeting finally addressed the toilets deficit, the press and public were excluded from the meeting. Nearly £300K adrift in a Budget of just over half-a-million pounds in any scenario – most of all when the present deficit applies to the Public Purse – is apparently none of the Precept-payers’ business!

It seems to me that the only idea rattling around in the Mayor’s self-besotted consciousness at present is getting to the bottom of the mystery of who it was who was responsible for inserting the comical “THE MAYOR done lost his BOTTLE” poster of him in the official Council Noticeboard (for which there are only two keys – one in the possession of the Council handyman and the other in the possession of the Mayor himself – prompting speculation that it was he who inserted the poster – looking for a vote, at last – the sympathy vote!). One can but laugh. Twice.

But as if it matters. It was obviously a storke of flippancy – a joke – albeit at the Mayor’s fully-merited expense. The brunt of the joke is that case law has long determined that so-called “pictorial political lampoon” has been a legitimate component of satirical commentary for at least three hundred years – at least, that is, since the time of William HOGARTH (b. 10th November 1697 – d. 26th October 1764). If it is the Mayor’s preference not to be the subject of ribald derision, I can only advise him that the remedy is ready to hand: stop behaving like a timorous noncompoop.

It is a simple fact of Public Life that lofty ambition can lead to a wide spectrum of consequences. A job well done rightly results in recognition and accolades – plaques on public buildings; statues even – who knows, maybe even a ‘gong’. Fantasmagorical aspirations know no bounds.

Equally, a litany of failure may occasion justifiable criticism – even instances of people ‘extracting the Michael’. Only the shameless are impervious to the latter.

Returning to the 14th January 2025 Budget meeting, the Agenda for which is reproduced here.

The Budget/Precept

Once the routine ‘housekeeping’ Agenda Items (1-6) had been addressed (including an interminable update from North Yorkshire Councillor Neil SWANNICK [Lab.]), we came at long last to Item 7:

Readers may recall that Councillor Sandra TURNER (whilst acting as pro tem Chair of the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) back on 10th December 2024) had declared that she could not support an increase in the Precept exceeding 10%. 

Meanwhile, other Councillors had submitted their suggestions for reducing the Clerk/RFO’s initially proposed increase of 31.6% (justified on the grounds of the urgent need to replenish the missing Reserves).

It is the duty of the Clerk/RFO to advise Council; it is the Council’s prerogative to make the decisions – be they good, bad or indifferent. In the present case, leaving the Council with hopelessly inadeqaute Reserves is not merely a bad decision – it is rash and foolhardy.

After a considerable round of back-and-forth, a revised figure of 4.81% increase in the Precept was adopted (marginally undercutting the capped limit for principal Councils (4.99%) – albeit at the expense of leaving the recommended £250K Reserves balance hopelessly underfunded and the toilets losses still up in the air).

Planning & Licensing

Next came Agenda Item 8. NOTICES OF MOTION:

Councillor Jacqui LAYMAN‘s Motion merits a word of explanation.

WTC is a statutory Planning Consultant. This means that the Planning Authority – North Yorkshire Council (NYC) – has a legal duty to consult WTC on Planning Applications within the Civic Parish of Whitby.

The WTC Planning & Licensing Committee (P&LC), though allocated a membership of seven Councillors, is presently under-subscribed and comprises only four members. The quorum is set at four (the minimum number of members who must be present in order to lawfully conduct business). Planning law is complex and needs considerable training (i.e. time invested). In short, only four members volunteered – the bare quorum.

Whether or not any of these ever underwent training is not known because, following an Internal Review of a FOIA request to which former-Clerk/RFO, Mr Michael KING, did disclose that a minimal amount of training had been undertaken by just four members, the Council refused to disclose which Councillors had benefitted. For all we know, they could have been members no longer sitting on the P&LC.

In the event that a P&LC meeting is quorate and it should so happen that the four members present disagree, on an equal 2:2 split, then it is the duty of the Chair to consider using a second (or casting) vote, thus Resolving the outcome on a 3:2 basis.

But this permits the absurd possibility that the Council’s official response to its statutory duty to provide the Planning Authority (NYC) with a local submission on any given Planning Application could be determined by the opinion of just one person – the Chair of the P&LC.

Unfortunately, the identity of the holder of the Chairship of the P&LC is not disclosed on recent Agendas – so the public is deprived even of the knowledge of just who is that one person authorised, in the event of a split vote, to determine the response of the Full Council’s to NYC. A one-man arbitrary decision is about as far from democratic representation as could possibly be returned.

Hopefully, the above explanation makes clear why Councillor Jacqui LAYMAN‘s Motion under Agenda Item 8 is absolutely necessary to the notion that WTC is a democratic institution. A child of five could be expected to grasp that it is fairer and more democratic to set a decision before the deliberations of Full Council than to one unidentified individual – which was exactly Councillor LAYMAN‘s intent.

Yet, appallingly, when it came to the vote on Agenda Item 8 (it was, of course, deferred), one member (and not for the first time) asked; “Can someone please explain to me what we are voting on?”.

I will not name that Councillor, lest I inadvertently disclose personal data – a mental health issue – but that does not prevent me from expressing the view that any member who cannot grasp the purpose and significance of this fundamentally democratic Motion should really give serious consideration as to whether or not the burden of responsibility of holding public offoce has terminally exceeded their mental capacity. One cannot (as others have suggested) educate pork.

Retirement surely beckons.

And speaking of retirement – and here I must stand open to correction, since the acoustics in the Pannett Gallery are so poor as to render accurate reporting impossible (despite three Resolutions in recent years NOT to conduct meetings there until adequate acoustic improvements have been instigated) – I feel sure I heard Councillor John NOCK declare his intention to “retire” in May 2025, on the attainment of his eightieth birthday. Councillor John NOCK, not so long ago, stood down from the P&LC to make way for others – who never materialised.

From that point on, the meeting returned to mundane “housekeeping” matters until press and public were ejected to allow for in camera consideration of the invisible Item 15 – which, I was afterwards informed – was not pursued to a conclusion as the meeting timed-out at 9:00pm (meetings are not permitted to exceed 3 hours in duration).

So the DANFO can-of-worms appeared to have been kicked down the road yet again. But progress (however limited) appears imminent.

A previously-unscheduled Meeting of Full Council has been convened for Tuesday 28th January 2025, in which Agenda Item 5 is intended to move things along, albeit incrementally:

(“CONVEINIENCES” mis-spelt in the original)

[Draft Terms of Reference available here]

A ‘Bombshell’

From an irrefutable source, I can now reveal that WTC’s External Auditor (PKF LITTLEJOHN LLP – well-known to readers who have followed the Enquirer’s coverage of Potto Parish Council, arguably the worst small Council in the country) has now moved on to the Investigation/Consideration stage in respect of a host of irregularities in WTC’s AGS/AGAR returns (i.e. both finances and governance compliance) for the financial year 2023/24, as prepared by former Clerk/RFO, Mr Michael KING.

Furthermore, I can confirm that Objections to the 2024/25 AGS/AGAR during the period 1st April to 30th September 2024 – the day preceding the start of the tenure of the new Clerk/RFO, Mr Adam CHUGG (but including 1st April 2024 until 18th August 2024 – i.e. when Mr Michael KING was still in post) – look set to far exceed the 2023/24 total. The ‘old guard’ will find it impossible to wriggle out of that official verdict.

In simple language, WTC’s on-going leadership failures look set to be confirmed by the professionals for the third year in succession – yet the ‘old guard’ remains in steadfast denial of all responsibility.

Dear, oh, dear! I ask again:

“What kind of event could WTC organise in a brewery?”