London Councils give a little - but not much

You may recall Mr Mustard's blog of October about London Councils and their heavily redacted minutes. Mr Mustard challenged the redactions and got the above set in their place and the following explanation.

The notes of the Parking Managers Seminar have now been amended and are attached to this email. Because the majority of the attendees are officers not employed by London Councils, their exemption from redaction is by their consent only, not necessarily because they are senior officers or because of their salary threshold.

Regarding the request for the document pack, I can confirm that this information is not held by London Councils.

Mr Mustard didn't understand about the document pack not being held by the creators of it but the number of other documents given out was only 2 or 3, it wasn't zero though. Mr Mustard put his cunning plan into action. If London Councils couldn't provide him with the documents then ask all the councils to do so which led to a surprising answer, more of which another day.

Parking managers have nothing to fear from Mr Mustard, the worst that will happen is that he gives their PCNs a drubbing, it isn't personal. The people who decide, in effect, parking policy (councillors do so in theory but none of them are invited to these cosy chats) should be known to the public & it would be much more transparent if they had to throw their meetings open to the public.

So well done to the staff who have allowed their names to be published.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Don't tell them your name Pike

Mr Mustard ( using his real name ) sent in five FOI questions during the Xmas/ New Year break.

Three of them have been acknowledged in the same way this morning, as follows:

Yours sincerely

Governance Officer Whom ?

Corporate Governance Directorate
London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
Tel: 020 8359 7757 this is the phone number of the department not the person.
Barnet Online: www.barnet.gov.uk

Please consider the environment - do you really need to print this email? that is Mr Mustard's decision not your's Barnet Council. He has to delete this line in order to save ink when he prints.

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I expect that you have all noticed the glaring omission. Who exactly is handling this request. It is not a department, it is a person, who answers on behalf of the council. If Mr Mustard should telephone to enquire as to progress of this request who does he ask for? This then means that Mr Mustard has to explain who he is and what the request was all about so that the correct officer can be identified from the council database of requests. All this assumes that the phone gets answered in the first place, not an area in which the council ever score very highly.

So if we don't put our name on FOI requests they can be ignored but if the council don't put a name on the reply that is OK?

Mr Mustard thinks it is a simple case of common courtesy for an "officer" (employee) to state their name and would lead to greater openness, transparency, accountability and efficiency.

Come on Barnet!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard