Below is an email I received from WCC Chief Executive, Mike More, insisting that our campaign is "disruptive" & "intimidating" and......."CANNOT CONTINUE"
Dear Mr Djanogly,
I refer to your emails to Leith Penny and myself, of 29th and 30th June.
The issue of motorcycle parking is currently being considered by the High Court and we await a decision in due course.
Your continued disruption at City Hall and around the city, and your publicly stated intention of disrupting the work of the council and targeting its members and officers, cannot continue.
At Westminster we have a big job to do in providing services to tens of thousands of residents and businesses every day.
While it's your right to protest against polices with which you may not agree, as a council we will not be intimidated from taking decisions which we think are in the public interest.
I would therefore call on you to refrain from disrupting the council, local residents and businesses, and the general life of the city, while we await the judge's decision.
Yours
Mike MoreAND HERE IS MY REPLY:-
Mr More,
You claim to "refer" to emails I sent to you & Leith Penny, yet strangely refrain from addressing any issues raised therein. Can I assume you meant to say that you merely "acknowledge receipt".
As to the main content of your email, I am encouraged by your desire to see and end to our disruption of "City Hall and around the city"; "the work of the council and targeting its members and officers"; and "the council, local residents and businesses, and the general life of the city" and therefore look forward to your imminent announcement that you are SUSPENDING THE MOTORCYCLE CHARGING SCHEME. Suffice to say, if you insist on enforcing an "imposition" on others, you have to expect similar in return, and thus, were there any genuine incentive on your side to do so, said suspension will be the only guaranteed way of securing these objectives.
Whilst you seem to think that you can dictate to me that I "cannot continue" imposing on you, others within our ranks seem equally adamant that our activities are not disruptive enough. Let us hope, for everyone's sake, that these other elements don't decide to split from the main opposition group to start applying their own forms of disruption.
As to your claim that we seek to "intimidate" the Council, judging by the deluge of ex- and current CEO's & Bailiffs wanting to nail their flag to our mast and expose the vicious, unscrupulous & in many cases, downright illegal regime of PCN enforcement they are being forced to administer by contractual obligation to you, it would appear that there could be no-one better to assess what "intimidation" truly is. That said, I can safely aver that, if you think we are being intimidating or disruptive now, then let me coin the old vaudeville phrase "you ain't seen nothing yet".
Finally, your claim that the decisions pertaining to the MCS were "in the public interest" initially threw me. It would be incredulous that a scheme, so universally opposed and reviled, and now, publicly declared by you to be costing the local tax-payers £430k per annum (being the combined salaries of Mssrs Gilchrist, Goad & Low) could ever be in the "public's interest".
However, upon reflection, you must actually be referring to the exposure by us, due entirely to our continuing interest in Council matters, of:-
1) The EU procurement & framework contract law violations re: the Verrus Pay-By-Phone contract, and now the 2006 Pay-and-Display contract (which, in typical WCC arrogance, you personally claim to be valid merely because you announced in your tender that you were going to violate the directives).
2) The failure by Colin Barrow to pay his business rates from Eiger Capital and now, the exposure that he has been claiming, whilst perfectly capable of personally covering the cost, over 63% more than the upper limit of SEN benefit for his son James.
Combined with:-
3) The impending examinations of all Councillor & Officer personal payments over above allowances & salaries
4) A fine-toothcomb examination in conjunction with Harrow Council as to how a communications contract, so small as to fall below the requirement to be put out for OJEU tender was merely "handed" to WCC, who then novated and extended it from 1 year to 5, with an annual value of £705k.
It certainly would appear that, in the "public's interest", the OGC & EU Commissioners are going to have the work cut out for several months to come.
Most prevalent of all though would be the prospect of having to re-imburse the public with the £m of unjust enrichment as a direct result of the illegitimate "novation" of the Parking Enforcement Contracts to NSL Ltd (formerly NCP Services Ltd) in 2007.
We still await your explanation as to how National Car Parks Ltd (Co No. 253240) can be party to a Deed that transferred their contractual rights & obligations under the original 2003 contract to newly-formed NCP Services Ltd (co no 06033060) in March 2008 when they had already transferred the same, a year earlier, to another company, NCP Topco Ltd (06033001). Furthermore, with a key element of the legal definition of the term "Novation" being "The substitution of a new contract for an old one.", we await your explanation as to how you circumvented the EU legislation which required the immediate re-tendering of these contracts.
It should be noted that you, in your capacity as Chief Executive have declined from instigating any investigation into how such an important decision was signed off by an Officer, and, more importantly, why any reference to this novation was not highlighted in the reports submitted to the Audit & Performance Committee meeting of Feb 2009.
Finally, as to the exoneration of any wrong-doing of your Officers by the Metropolitan Police, with our continued interest all WCC matters, a complaint will be filed with the IPCC into how a file, originally described to me as "being prepared for the Serious Fraud Office" should then be:-
a) cursorily dismissed as being "no crime", with all attempts to view the notes of the investigation denied
b) allegedly declared "Locked - Superintendent Access" only - most strange for a file publicly declared "no crime"
c) allegedly now "lost" from the Met Computer Records.
Let us all hope that, when this investigation is properly re-opened, either by the Met or an outside force, especially now that there would appear to be the need to examine the role played by Officers Bob Poston (ex NSL Employee) & Vic Bayliss (Retired), and Councillor Lindsay Hall into how NSL were allowed to assume responsibility for over £14m of local authority contract, there will not appear any undue influence being applied to the original Met Police investigation team by persons with business connections to senior WCC Councillors.
I look forward to your common-sense, and thus imminent decision to scrap this vile imposition,
Warren Djanogly
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, CHAPS
