Please read the officers report and minutes of the standards hearing were he was partly let off!

http://www.greennuneaton.org.uk/wex/kkwp/?page_id=25

I have been told that I cannot reveal what the investigation found out until it is disclosed at the meeting. First the meeting will discuss if any evidence needs to be kept secret. The basic complaint had been based on facts obtained using the freedom of information act. I have also obtained details of expenses claimed using the Audit Commission act. I can legally put that the information on the Internet and cannot see any need for holding the main part of meeting in private.

I can disclose that I complained based on the councillors £8,672 of travel & Substance allowances claimed in 2008/9. Mt First information request was for travel expenses on a couple of selected dates. It seemed councillor had been claiming first class train travel above what was allowed. He also seemed to claim for far greater mileages than I expected. I followed this up with a more extensive request and used my rights under the audit commission act to get a full copy of his mileage claims for 2008/9.

The councillor makes around 200 return trips at the council taxpayers expense. In my view almost all of them are for excessive distance or first class rail travel in excess of that permitted. The most remarkable claims include

Every trip from is farm to Shire Hall is 52 miles round trip.
Every trip from is farm to Nuneaton is 10 miles round trip
16 May 2008 - Bermuda village 20 miles round trip
12th August 2008 – Coventry 40 miles round trip
15th September 2008 – Water Orton – 60 miles round trip
15th Jan 09 – George Eliot Hospital – 10 miles round trip

If effect Councillor Heatley steels a few extra pounds from the taxpayer every time he goes to a meeting. This is worrying as the councillor is in charge of the resources department at the county council that manages the council’s wealth.

It is vital that the standards committee meet in public given the background. The councillor has many powerful connections and manages a massive budget at the county council. The validity of his travel claims needs explaining in public, so that the public an judge if he is fit to govern a major department of our county council.”

My investigation also show many councillors claim very little in travel expenses and it is sad that one councillor seems to have let them down so badly. I am very keen that travel expense system does not encourage excessive mileage and will fight plans to introduce a mileage rate of around 82p/mi.le at Nuneaton & Bedworth borough Council.

His farm is 16 miles from Shire Hall, 2.5 miles from Nuneaton and just the other side of the A444 from Bermuda village

The link shows the mileage claims for 2008/9

http://www.greennuneaton.org.uk/ngp/heatley/heatley_expenses.pdf

The meeting is at 9:30AM at Shire Hall in Warwick

agenda

My comment for the press is:-

“To pay such an extreme mileage allowance to staff is not good for the council, the environment or the council taxpayer. It does not even do anything useful for the majority of staff who drive very little on council business. We need to spend the money smarter so that the quarter of a million pounds reduces staff mileage. It should also enable those who have to drive to use more economic cars.”

I attended the cabinet meeting at which I explained the proposed change and told them it would be unreasonable to pay more then the Inland Revenue rate of 40p/mile. This is also generally the rate paid by the more generous firms in industry. I proposed some of the money saved could be put helping staff when they need to replace cars to by ones that are greener and cheaper to run. I also proposed they had a few small pool cars to help those staff who only occasionally need use car for council work.

New 82p a mile staff travel allowance is an outrageously bad way to spend £242,000 of our money each year. It encourages staff to drive as much as possible. Paying a still generous 40p/mile would release around £124,000 per year.

It was shocking that the cabinet were unaware of the proposed rate as the papers to the cabinet gave no details for the proposal. They were told by the officers the rate would be 76p/mile and taken from the AA tables for a new Diesel car valued up to £16,000 driven 5,000 miles per year. This rate currently 81.88p per mile and is a stupid choice for what it costs our council staff. It is more typical for staff to have cheaper cars which do far more miles per year. The range age of the staffs cars is also far older than the AA survey which studied the cost of running a brand new car for 4 years.

http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_diesel_table.jsp

Nuneaton is working up the table but still needs to do better. Coventry is one of the worst in the country and behind every other council in the Wast Midlands region.

The case for a bigger incinerator in Coventry should now be dead.

Please join facebook group to keep up http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=149505951640

The chief fire officer is on loan from Bedfordshire to do cuts

They will save £1/2 million by cutting fire-fighters in Nuneaton & Bedworth

Some of this will be invested in small response unit, a next boat and better training. We will be a net loser and the total cost is the same so others will win.

Overall it did seem we have a loss in Nuneaton & Bedworth from 2 fire stations and 75 fire-fighters down to 1 station and 55 fire-fighters.

They will have to close Nuneaton fire station and build one half way between the towns.

WCC leader Alan Farnell refused to reply to the request from MP Mike O’Brian to see a copy of the independent risk assessment. The WCC cabinet community protection member, Richard Hobbs, told the MP and Government minister that the assessment may be too complex for him to understand!

This risk assessment will put a price on our heads and trade off the cost of providing two fire stations against lives lost. Absolutely key is what assumptions they put in about our fire engines being occupied.

Around half those who spoke were councillors. They all said they were against the cuts. People were allowed to speak twice but the chair of the meeting, Cllr Heatley, ignored my raised hand for half an hour. At 9:20 I was finally allowed to speak after many members of the public complained that I had been ignored. Before this many had left.

I told the meeting that more money needed to be found, as the fire service needs to do new things and more training.  I linked the £1/2 million needed to keep our service with £1/2 million cuts to staff travel expenses that had been dropped on the quite. Staff at WCC are paid an outrageous 55.6p for each mile they drive costing the county millions per year. The plan to cut this to 40p/mile was to save £500,000 each year. Instead of cutting staff expenses they are cutting Nuneaton & Bedworth fire-fighters.

This morning Alan Farnell came on the radio and said Nuneaton was losing nothing! The response time if his house was on fire will rise from 5 to 10 mins.

I would like to thank the public at the meeting who demanded that I should be allowed to speak after the Tory Cllr ignored my raised arm for half an hour and allowed other people to speak for a second time. This week I was also not allowed to speak at either the special council meeting or the Abbey ward forum.

On Tuesday, 19^th May, I lead at protest at the treasury in Whitehall against the approval of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding for an even bigger incinerator in Coventry.

The Treasury does not take letters or emails from the public when deciding to award over £100m to the private sector to run a billion pound 25-year waste contract. Unlike small matters of planning the public has no ability to object to the awarding of vast contracts. The projections used to model the Coventry incinerator are wildly inaccurate even for the amount of waste produced in the past two years. The error between reality for the total waste produced and the business plan for 2008/9 will be between 50,000 and 100,000 tonnes of waste produced. For every 10,000 tonnes of waste that does not need burning £1million a year could be saved.

I feel we have not had a fair hearing, which is not surprising. The anti-recycling officer at Coventry city council has been awarded a new £63-£70K job in the days before they went to the treasury panel. Such a lucrative post only exists because of the incinerator PFI. The Treasury panel is also unlikely to be against a PFI as it is chaired by Charles Lloyd. He works for PricewaterhouseCoopers as head of PFI and has been lent out to push PFI at the Treasury.  PricewaterhouseCoopers also were paid by Coventry and Warwickshire councils to do the early work on the PFI. I obtained this report under the freedom of information act only after appealing to the information commissioner.

In order to protest at Westminster I had to apply for permission under the serious and organised crime act. This did mean it was legal to shout very loudly about the corruption going on inside.

This PFI will go badly wrong as it is based on flawed business case and reality will come back and bite. I just hope a billion pound contract is not signed before they find out its all wrong. I would have thought that the mess of the Coventry Hospital PFI would have been a lesson.

see full story at http://ukwin.org.uk/2009/05/20/pfi-protest-at-treasury/

and  http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=240&listitemid=7220

Three months before last years elections the labour councillors were aware of the planned hazardous waste plant at Judkins. I know, as, using the Freedom of Information act, I have obtained the emails sent to the planning officer. During last years election some in the Labour party chose to keep quiet about what was being planned at Judkins as they did not want it to be an election issue. The Tories can be just as bad and we will have to wait for details of Alan Farnell’s agreement with WRG (owners of the Judkins site) to block the hazardous waste plant. I wait to see what new bad news we get after the elections when we will be stuck with the councillors for another 4 years.

Keith Kondakor
Green Party County Council Election Candidate for Abbey Ward & environmental campaigner

c/o 19 Gloucester Close, Nuneaton
024 76 344 079

Peter Mandelson should have no place in running our government. He is so close to the lobbyist for airports, Russian “business men” and the rest that he should not be allowed even in the House of Lords. I expect many of the few honourable people left in the labour party must find it hard to stay.

Today a very brave woman applied some green custard to Mr Mandelson.  She did it to show how there was nothing else green about him. Watch and enjoy.

http://www.planestupid.com/content/plane-stupid-slimes-peter-mandelson

In February 2008 I warned the cabinet at the time not the increase borrowing and investments. The council then increased borrowing and invested £3 million into an Icelandic bank in 3 lumps. That money and the interest may be lost. I have repeated my warning the current cabinet as we still have money at risk in Irish banks.

At this weeks full council meeting I again questioned the council.  In my view the council is risking more money that it needs to.

link to cuts at WCC