Don’t forget to rate/vote for your favourite!

The complainant’s response to the LGO’s  letter of clarification. The response from the Council was received by the LGO and he confirmed this in writing to the complainant on 14 July 2010. Nothing further was heard so the complainant put in two Freedom of Information requests to obtain the response from the Council – One FOI request to the LGO and one FOI request to the Council.

The LGO then responded by email on the 13th Aug 2010 at 13.04 stating that he had not replied because some of the information was marked ‘confidential.’ The complainant repllied to the LGO’s email stating that all information should be released.

Further email sent to LGO from complainant 13 August 2010 18:46:18 GMT enclosing an article in the Local Newspaper with a comment underneath about the Chief Executive Portsmouth City Council being a Freemason.

The LGO responded by email on the 20th August 2010 at 18.06 stating that he had arranged for the Council’s comments and enclosures that he was able to send to the complainant to be forwarded to them.

The complainant received a letter dated the 19th August from the LGO together with the Council’s comments. The complainant sent the LGO an email on the 23rd August 2010 and received an acknowledgement on the 24th August 2010.

Further information on this investigation will be added as it goes along.

An unfortunate spin off detriment is that Eric Pickles also thinks that strengthening the powers of Local Government Ombudsmen,  to give residents greater rights when local services go wrong, is the way forward. Read more here

Obviously, other than LGO spin,  Eric knows sod all about Local Government Ombudsmen because they too have become a creature of local government who no longer champion the interests of (local) taxpayers.

An email was sent around by the council saying there were allegations of sexual abuse not yet proven when there were in fact none as evidenced by the LGO letters and replies from the county council legal services department: lies about police advice: several false recordings on chronologies: one sided recording on a social services report where my concerns and answers were dismissed merely as issues yet my ex wife’s allegations were recorded in full and no efort was made to corroborate these: i was lied to about stage 3 complaints process; stage 2 was not completed as staff relevant to the enquiry were not interviewed and when i read the report my concerns and comments were ignored; disclosure was made of third party comments to the court detrimental to my character which were not requested by the court and the council have refused to disclose the reasons for such disclosure merely saying they had a duty to do so under statute and guidance notes but have failed to provide these; briefings were held by council staff and councillors where they discussed allegations of domestic violence and yet I have never been questioned about this by the police nor by the council. All this and I get a sum of £250 no wonder the councils are a law unto themselves.

I now would like the name of a decent solicitor to take the council to court for the defamatory comments made which I have already proven and then to take them on with regards to other matters but having been off work with stress and depression I cannot afford to pay so it would need to be on a no win no fee basis but the main defamatory comment has been proven already.

http://epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=400

http://epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=401

http://epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=402

Mick Gorrill, Head of Enforcement at the ICO, said: “Organisations that take FOIA seriously will have advice and support from the ICO. The public bodies that continually fail to meet their legal obligations will face regulatory action. Using FOIA can take too long and is sometimes overly cumbersome for members of the public. After monitoring authorities’ compliance with the Act, we will take action against those that abuse the system.”

The ICO will be making more use of regulatory powers including Enforcement Notices, Undertakings and Practice Recommendations to improve compliance. Where there is evidence that a public authority is regularly or seriously failing to meet its obligations, the ICO will not hesitate to take regulatory action, particularly where organisations fail to respond to requests in a timely manner. The ICO has identified timeliness as a key target for action, in recognition that a quarter (between 20–25%) of FOIA complaints to the ICO relate, at least in part, to the time taken for public bodies to respond to requests.