W(T)C: Toilet Water?
- – an “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD, investigating one of the sources of the infamous ‘leaks’ from Whitby Town Council – INCLUDING the purported “Exemption of Press & Pubic (i.e. ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ – i.e. ‘secret’ – Report on the yet-to-be-unaccounted-for missing Public Conveniences revenue).
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Readers who have been following the Enquirer coverage of the forthcoming 2025/26 Budget for Whitby Town Council (WTC) – and the Precept burden it will impose on local taxpayers – may already be aware that an intial proposal of a 31.6% increase in the Precept was not well-received by the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) when it last met in early December 2024. (Report here: “WTC: Budget/Precept ‘Deferred”). It now seems certain that the increase is now likely to be 9.18% – provided that Councillors accept the (twice) revised draft.
Also, on a closely-related topic, the Enquirer was pleased to publish a very pertinent letter to WTC, via the new Clerk/RFO, Mr Adam CHUGG, from a former Whitby resident now living in Whitby, Perth, Western Australia. (Available here: “HNY, Whitby Town Council!”).
Since the ‘unofficial’ Town Meeting/Assemby (held on Monday 6th January 2025 – a full report of which will hopefully follow in a few days), further information has come to light concerning the losses incurred in connection with WTC’s mysterious contract with DANFO (UK) Ltd, the company that has been maintaining/servicing Whitby’s public conveniences since July 2017.
It now seems certain that, in addition to the huge shortfall incurred via a malfunctioning wi-fi connection between the credit-card reader at the Bandstand public conveniences and the associated banks, there has also been an unbudgeted loss of around £15K contingent upon an apparently unforeseen (and possibly erroneous) increase in Water Rate charges.
The following table – prepared by researchers at the Whitby Community Network (WCN) – shows where and when the Water Rate charges spiralled out of control from mid-2022 until mid-2024:
The red line represents anticipated (i.e budgeted) increases, roughly in line with inflation. The blue line represents the actual billed charges, rising (somewhat more rapidly than logarithmically) over a 17/18-month period – running throughout the first half of 2023 to that Himalayan peak at the turn of the year, coinciding with the Full Council (Budget) Meeting on 9th January 2024, followed by a welcome return to anticipated inflation-linked levels coincidental with the sudden resignation, in June 2024, of the former Clerk/RFO, Mr Michael KING.
Readers may recall that Mr KING’s last draft Budget for WTC (for 2024/25, initially published in December 2023 – i.e. before his August 2024 departure) proposed an increase in the Precept of 46%. (See this Scarborough News report).
Had it not been for the forceful intervention of Councillor Sandra TURNER, this outrageous attempt to paper over the many deficits arising from the mismanagement of the toilets contract would, in all probability, have passed ‘on the nod’ at the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) meeting back in December 2023 and, likewise, through the Full Council (Budget) Meeting on 9th January 2024 – but for the following . . .
It is lamentable that the Report to Full Council at Item 14 TOILET CONTRACTOR on next Tuesday’s Agenda (p.3) is to be considered under the exclusion of press and public:
If ever a matter qualified for transparent disclosure, surely the loss of scores of thousands of pounds (contingent upon the stupidity, laziness or blasé indifference of the Councillors responsible for these losses) falls squarely into the category of “In the Public Interest”, since it is the Precept-paying public who must ultimately bear the cost, now is the time.
The common law has long recognised that information of this nature cannot be subject to “confidentiality”. For example, in Gartside -v- Outram [1857] 26 LJ Ch (NS) 113, it was ruled:
“The true doctrine is, that there is no confidence as to the disclosure of an iniquity. You cannot make me the confident of a crime or fraud and be entitled to close up my lips upon any secret which you have the audacity to disclose to me relating to any fraudulent intention on your part.”
Which is why I have no hesitation in disclosing that the ‘secret’ Report, reputedly researched/drafted by Locum ‘Temporary’ Proper Officer Ms Dianne RICKABY, identifies eight so-called “discrepancies” in the 2017 DANFO contract (published on the Enquirer here).
And yet the FP&GP claims to “review” contracts on a ‘normal procedure’ basis – confirmed in a Resolution of Full Council (see below):
This confirms that thirty to forty FP&GP meetings passed under the bridge, over seven-and-a-half years, and no member has ever noticed that there were “a considerable number of discrepancies” in the contract.
Yet these people are entrusted with the safeguarding of the Public Purse – and now they are scheduled to discuss the realities behind their bungling ineptitude ‘behind closed doors’?
At the Full Council (Budget) Meeting on 8th January 2024, a very interesting statement was made by Councillor TURNER – and, having known Sandra personally for some twenty years, I have no doubt whatsoever that it was made in the very epitome of good faith – which is why it struck me at the time as highly significant (and why it has been drawn to the attention of the External Auditor, PKF LITTLEJOHN LLP).
Readers may check my transcript for themselves by reviewing the official WTC video of that meeting, still available on the Council’s website (and since safely downloaded by researchers). The audio is linked, above, and here.
Call me cynical; call me suspicious. But I can arrive at only one genuinely plausible interpretation of Sandra’s statement.
Surely it can only mean that the huge hump in the graph (shaded pink in the graphic reproduced above) was information never made available to the members of the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) – since, had they been aware and adequately alerted to it, Councillor TURNER’s statement would have been nonsensical (and, knowing her as I do, I would stake a great deal on such never being the case)?
There remains, of course, the remotest possibility that the then-Clerk/RFO was simply ‘asleep at the wheel’ and was himself oblivious to the runaway Water Charge invoices – either way, the External Auditor may well wish to investigate (at £355 per hour) and could likely return a finding of “inadequate internal control”.
In either event, any pretence of adequate local governance is reduced to farce. Either the one hand knows not what the other hand has been doing, or the other hand has been ‘dissembling’ – perhaps to conceal incompetence or laziness?
There is also the matter of the stupendous stupidity of disregarding the Public Lavatories (Turnstiles) Act 1963 Act 1963, (unamended), which abolished the use of turnstiles in public conveniences sixty-one years ago (unbeknownst to former-Clerks/RFOs Mrs Pam DOBSON and Mr Michael KING (paid to inform Councillors of legal constraints) – and apparently equally unbeknownst to national toilets specialist DANFO, too.
TURNstyles rotate; PaddleGATES swing.
It is a matter of regret that the new Clerk/RFO. Mr CHUGG (who has had no hand in the toilets scandal) will have his burdens increased by all the additional workload engendered accommodating the External Auditor’s requirements.
But it begs this question:
Why did the membership of the FP&GP never, in seven-and-a-half years, perform the necessary in-depth scrutiny of the entire public conveniences fiasco with the same degree of due diligence as the researchers at the Whitby Community Network (WCN) and/or the North Yorks Enquirer (NYE) – and a handful of dedicated Councillors who are also ‘unpaid volunteers’ but have been treated appallingly by the ‘old guard’?
What other purpose can the FP&GP members claim to serve?
The prime distinction is, of course, that we do not turn up for a couple of half-hearted hours once every two months.
Certainly, this appalling absence of meaningful scrutiny sheds light on how it was ever possible for the wi-fi/credit-card catastophe (when an anticipated – i.e. budgeted – revenue of £55k actually returned the pitiful sum of £13.47) to go completely unnoticed for so many months. Breath-taking incompetence!
Surely, a high degree of oversight of the then-Clerk/RFO’s standard of work in the financial arena was the personal responsibility of the then-Chair of the FP&GP at that time (since-resigned) and – though for different reasons – the then-Chair of the Human Resources Committee (HR), the then-Clerk/RFO’s line-manager – who is presently the Chair of the FP&GP Committee? These positions of greatest responsibility at WTC seem to be passed around amongst the least-competent like the parcel at a children’s game – ‘Musical Chairs’, no less!
And where was the Chair/Mayor of the Council, Councillor Bob DALRYMPLE (please see my Open Letter to him of 12th January 2024), who now sits as a (non-voting) ex officio member of both of those Committees and was, in fact, Chair of the Finance, Policy & General Purposes Committee (FP&GP) throughout the 2022/23 financial year and surely should have monitored the colossal upsurge in the Water Rate charges, from foothills to towering peak? Has he, too, been ‘asleep at the wheel’?
Apparently so, because – and I repeat it – when Councillor Chris RIDDOLLS raised a Motion, at Full Council on 7th May 2024, to set up a Working Party to look at the DANFO contract (Motion 496/23) it was duly swept aside:
So the majority of Councillors present were happy to kick Councillor RIDDOLLS’ attempt to establish a Working Party into the DANFO arrangements into the long grass.
Judging by the following Scarborough News report, in which the Chair/Mayor, Councillor Bob DALRYMPLE is directly reported as commenting (at the Town Meeting/Assembly held a year ago, on Monday 8th January 2024), as follows:
- “Coun Dalrymple agreed with a point made that the toilets issue should be “top of the pile” and said the council had met with Danfo to express concern.”
[my emphasis in red type or underlined]
I would contend that, contrary to Councillor DALRYMPLE’s quoted remarks, it is more than fair to say that the seeking of any degree of clarity or transparency over the DANFO contract was a long way from being “top of the pile” in the eyes of the ‘old guard’ – more than a year away. Almost as though someone has something to hide . . .
And please note that Councillor DALRYMPLE’s use of the past tense – “had met” – indicates that, a year ago, matters of concern had (allegedly) already been raised with DANFO (UK) Ltd – or so he claimed. And yet here we are, another year older, and there seems to have been no publicly recorded steps taken towards achieving any clarity over this diabolical mess – and the members of the FP&GP (as well as Full Council) seem to have no idea where our money has gone – other than down the plug-hole with the excess Water Rate charges.
If the (unsigned, as far as we know) contract is anything to go by, DANFO had no obligation to act upon any matters raised by the Council for 120 days – and we find no record of such concerns ever having been communicated to DANFO. More than three times that period has since elapsed and no action seems to have taken place.
Returning to the Agenda for the Full Council (Budget) Meeting scheduled for Tuesday 14th January 2025 (reproduced in its entirety, below), it is true to state that, over the years, it has been commonly the case that Agendas have been prepared by Deputy Clerk Mrs Anne COWEY (though most frequently ‘signed off’ by the incumbent Clerk/RFO).
This one (like so many) contains a glaring error:
It is almost impossible to conceive of a more comprehensive catalogue of errors. It is not merely the case – as I have stated in the past – that the people of Whitby are lions led by donkeys. No. We appear to be led by imbeciles.
The Agenda for the Full Council (Budget) Meeting at 6:00pm on Tuesday 14th January 2025 (archived here) is reproduced at the foot of this page, immediately followed by my email to the Clerk/RFO seeking the possibility of an extension of Agenda Item 3 PUBLIC PARTICIPATION – for which I will no doubt be castigated by the ‘Old Guard’ for my openness and transparency. Thereafter, readers will find the most recent DANFO Companies House returns, followed by the so-called “Confidential” Report.
I find it more than a little intriguing that DANFO’s filing history at Companies House (prepared exactly one week after former-Clerk/RFO Mr KING’s resignation) shows an almost doubling of assets and equity from 2022 to 2023 (£258,360 to £445,553), which is, no doubt, very gratifying – for its directors/shareholders. To suggest that anyone else has directly benefitted would be pure speculation . . .
Whitby Town Council
Full Council (Budget) Meeting
6:00pm Tuesday 14th January 2025
My EMAIL to the Clerk seeking extended PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (12/01/25)
That “Confidential” Report
“Asleep at the Wheel?”
