26 September 2021
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I have to say things are getting really weird at Hughenden Parish Council.
At the Council meeting on 14 September, one of my fellow parish councillors, Cllr Gieler, alleged, out of the blue, that I had breached confidentiality. Now I am very committed to openness and transparency but I am also very careful about respecting confidentially. So, I was surprised and concerned.
It all started at the meeting when we came to Council recommendation 10.3 which said:-
“The [Services] Committee ask that actions from Committees are noted as confidential by Full Council, until all engaged parties have been notified as resolved.”
Now I didn’t understand what this means.
How could an action be agreed in a Committee meeting which is open to the public - but then Council has to note it as confidential? If members of the public attend a Committee meeting, how can Council stop them disclosing any actions agreed at the meeting? And what then is the point of Council noting the actions as confidential?
There were no background papers so I asked for an explanation.
Well, I never got an explanation of the resolution. What I was told instead by Cllr Gieler was that the resolution was all my fault. It was only needed because I had breached confidentiality. Well, that came as a bit of a surprise.
In between interruptions from Cllr Nicholls, the Chairman, I gathered that Cllr Gieler thought I had released confidential information on this blogsite. The information he thought was confidential was the decision by Council at its meeting on 13 July to make Hughenden Valley Village Hall a final offer of £8400 “for the benefit of the playground multi-play unit replacement.” He added that the release of this information had caused some problems to the “lead negotiator”.
I wasn’t able to say much to this because I too was repeatedly interrupted by the Chairman.
So I wrote to Cllr Gieler after the meeting. I did indeed blog about this decision. This what I put in my blog of 17 July:-
“Council agreed to make a full and final settlement of £8400 to Hughenden Valley Village Hall. I voted against as I had no idea what this settlement for. There was no information in the background papers. Moreover, the original resolution proposed a settlement of £7000. One of the Hughenden Valley councillors proposed an increase to £8400 at Council and I could not understand why.”
I explained to Cllr Gieler in my e-mail that what I wrote was no more than a short, factual report of information already in the public domain. The matter was discussed and decided at a Council meeting open to the public and there had been no suggestion in the papers nor at the meeting that the issue was sensitive let alone confidential.
I was also unaware that Council had a “lead negotiator”; indeed, I would not have understood what negotiations could have taken place because Council had agreed a final settlement.
I pointed out that this was a serious allegation to make at a public meeting and damaging to my reputation. I added that not only was it untrue but it was also inappropriate for him to make these allegations in public without giving me any advance warning or provide me with the opportunity to respond beforehand.
I acknowledged that I might have misunderstood what Cllr Gieler said. In this case, I asked if he could clarify what he said.
On the other hand, if I had understood correctly, I said I would be grateful if he could withdraw his allegations and apologise.
I have had no substantive response.
In the meantime, I have written to the Chairman of the Hughenden Valley Village Hall Committee to ensure that its members did not think I had breached confidentiality.
Finally, I am no wiser now as to why Council decided to approve a final settlement of £8400 to HV Village Hall. I have still not been given an explanation by other councillors or the Clerk.
So I have now asked the Clerk for copies of all the correspondence and all other papers relevant to this resolution. The statutory deadline for providing this information is 25 October.
I am determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
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