Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

Not quite the coverage that the WC communications department seeks ...

The current issue of Private Eye carries an article in its Rotten Boroughs page about non-pensionable honoraria, Kennet District Council and WC (see my past web posts on the topic).

As Private Eye has brought the subject into the public domain, I can now quite happily quote from their article on page 16 without breeching any confidences!

The article is headed 'Under the Counter' and commences 'Strange goings-on at former Kennet council in Wiltshire, where nice little earners were hatched in secret for a select group of officers. The lucky recipients were told in a letter to keep quiet about under-the-counter 'non-pensionable honoraria' awarded either for doing additional work or 'acting up'.'

The article continues by saying that the issue came to light after a local council tax payer blew the whistle and put in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request. WC then called in external auditors KPMG who found that in 2007-08, such payments topped £60,000. They went on to say that there was 'little ... documentary evidence to show how or why decisions - on selecting recipients and the amount of their awards - was arrived at' and 'no evidence to show that any potential for conflict of interest ... was properly handled'.

The article further states that the confidentiality clause in the letters 'added an air of secrecy to a process that was subjective, and in so doing contributed to an appearance of impropriety'. KPMG also found that six people had already been paid a pensionable honorarium for acting-up and so may have been rewarded twice for the same thing.

The final two paragraphs of the article conclude 'So who let it happen? KPMG fingers Kennet's head of human resources, Anne Ewing, whose decisions were backed by an informal policy board that included council leader ... Cllr. Lionel Grundy.

Asked to name other board members, Wiltshire Council says the information is 'personal under the Data Protection Act 1998', and therefore exempt from disclosure under FoI. 'The public interest test does not need to be applied,' says WC resources director Carlton Brand. Really? Not even when public money was being doled out in secret?'

I will be pressing for the full details to be made public. In the mean time, you might be interested to know that Cllr. Grundy is now the WC cabinet member for Children's Services and so is one of the ruling 'top ten' elite at County Hall.