Tag: sharp practice

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Evading Scrutiny – West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s problem with the truth

You will be advantaged by learning four things from this blog entry:

  1. The means by which police force’s skew complaint investigations in their own favour. 
  2. How local Mayor’s office’s deliberately mishandle appeals regarding how police have handlined a complaint. 
  3. How the Mayor’s office then themselves avoid accountability for their behaviour. 
  4. The degree of contempt with which all of the above hold the public.

The issue concerns a mishandled complaint to West Yorkshire Police, then subject to an appeal to West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office. The appeal to WYCA was actioned so poorly as to amount to an unacceptable breach of standards and so a complaint was made about this. That office’s Jane Owen then arguably commits misconduct in public office with a misleading response designed to avoid any accountability for West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Prior to reading this blog entry you may wish to look at the other post regarding how West Yorkshire Combined Authority deflects complaints made about itself and minimises complaints made about West Yorkshire Police. This can be found at:

Turning a Blind Eye. How West Yorkshire Combined Authority Helps Local Police to Evade Accountability.
My prior blog post on how West Yorkshire Combined Authority assists police to evade accountability.

Well it appears that little has been learned from that prior matter and appeals to the Combined Authority that West Yorkshire Police have mishandled a complaint made are still subject to evasion and avoidance by the office of Deputy Mayor Alison Lowe, who has ultimate responsibility for the mishandling of the appeal.

Alison Lowe, Deputy Mayor and the person responsible for policing issues at West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Here’s how this happened in this specific instance… 

A complaint was made to West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards Department (PSD). The result of this was the usual lazy evidence-free shonking off of the complaint. The matter was referred to the Deputy Mayor’s Office at West Yorkshire Combined Authority who deliberately or accidentally failed to spot where PSD skewed their complaint investigation. 

There are a number of investigative criteria for the Deputy Mayor’s office to follow.

These are:

[Whether due regard was given to relevant guidance]

In this matter reference was made in the PSD or Deputy Mayor’s responses to College of Policing guidelines and how these were supposed to have been followed. The Deputy Mayor’s Office failed to locate the College of Policing Guidance to compare the outline of how police should have behaved in the incident subject to the complaint with objective standards.

The response of PSD was not set out in a format that showed a correct formal investigation had taken place. This was ignored by the investigator for the Deputy Mayor, Karen Gray. 

The next line of investigation missed by Karen Gray was:

[Whether reasonable lines of enquiries were undertaken to be able to provide a reasonable and proportionate outcome] [Where any aspects of your complaint were not addressed, or any lines of enquiry were not pursued, whether there were sound reasons given for this]

Neither the Mayor’s Office nor West Yorkshire Police made any enquiries with third party witnesses to establish what happened. 

In similar prior incidents it is known that and attempt has been made to contact witnesses by PSD, but not in this matter.

Again this shows that the standards outlined above in regards to the following of reasonable lines of inquiry have not been undertaken by PSD. The Deputy Mayor’s Office failed to consider this matter. 

[Whether enough information was given to the complainant to address the complaint and support the outcome]

PSD failed to respond to a request for information in their complaint response. Again the Deputy Mayor’s Office fail to spot this. Here a potentially significant breach of established protocol at the incident complained of has not been addressed by PSD & the matter has been ignored in the appeal to the Combined Authority.

[Where any aspects of your complaint were not addressed, or any lines of enquiry were not pursued, whether there were sound reasons given for this] 

The initial response of PSD failed to reply to the issues raised in the original complaint. This was again not addressed or spotted by Karen Gray in her appeal investigation. And the format for a formal, structured complaint response from PSD was not used.

[Whether reasonable lines of enquiries were undertaken to be able to provide a reasonable and proportionate outcome] 

The Deputy Mayor’s office failed to consider that the actions of the officers complained of forms a pattern of behaviour from West Yorkshire Police. 

In short then the appeal investigation by West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Karen Gray was the usual mix of evasion of issues that she would have to find against police. Combined with a total failure so spot the ways in which police had skewed their own investigation to favour themselves.

A complaint was made about the exceptionally poor service provided in the appeal investigation by Karen Gray. 

This was responded to by Jane Owen, Casework Officer at West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office.

The response was:

Having carefully considered all your complaint points, I have concluded that this is not about the service this office has provided but rather is about how West Yorkshire Police handled your complaints CO-1490-22, CO-3251-20 and CO-2771-21 and is also about the outcome of the review of CO-1490-22 which was provided to you by Karen Grey on 20 October 2022. 

This is clearly outright mendacity. The complaint was clearly directed at Karen Gray’s seeming inability to be able to conduct a proper investigation and avoidance of consideration of key issues within the single complaint raised of poor service in this matter.

It is also an outrageous attempt to deflect any investigation into the very poor service standards at West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office. This is the kind of response provided when an organisation knows full well that their behaviour would not stand up to any form of scrutiny. 

Jane Owen goes on to state: 

As you are aware, the statutory guidance does not make provision for review outcomes to be challenged through the complaints process and consequently, if you wish to challenge the outcome of Karen’s review of CO-1490-22, you should consider seeking independent legal advice. 

This is also clear misdirection and also untrue. The link seen above details the complaint investigation into a prior mishandled appeal to WYCA carried but by Jane Owen’s colleague Julie Reid.

There is an offence in law of misconduct in public office. Attorney General’s Reference No 3 of 2003[2004] EWCA Crim 868. 

The offence is committed when: 

  • a public officer acting as such; 
  • wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself; 
  • to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder; 
  • without reasonable excuse or justification. 

Let’s pause a moment and consider the overall picture.

The police failed to investigate a complaint made correctly and in line with their own prior procedures for so doing. When this was referred to West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office as an appeal to their Karen Gray, Gray lets police off the hook by failing to investigate several issues that show police failed to act correctly and in line with The Police Reform Act 2022. When these are pointed out in a complaint her colleague Jane Owen intervenes and outrageously claims that the issues raised as complaints about West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office are not in fact about that office as a means of deflecting any investigation into the suboptimal nature of their appeal investigation.

If you can think of a more blatant effort to conceal a public body’s failings performed in such contemptible way then please let me know. The actions of both Karen Gray in failing to conduct an appeal investigation correctly (not for the first time, it must be said) and those of Jane Owen in attempting to conceal or deny the failure of Gray by refusing to action a complaint amount to misconduct in public office.

You can see a video below of the hot air West Yorkshire Combined Authority spouts about their Police and Crime Plan. None of this concerns efforts to hold Plod to account for misdemeanours.

Outside of the Met West Yorkshire Police is regarded as the most corrupt and incompetent force in the UK.

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A Culture of Concealment: National Probation Service and Complaint Mishandling

National probation service has a history of apathy, obfuscation of truth, lack of accountability and an unwillingness to learn from its failings.

One of the easiest ways to see this is in the way complaints about NPS services are handled. This is a three stage process.

The initial stage is communication with a person’s probation officer, who will attempt to settle the issue informally. The next step is what is known as a stage one escalation. This is where a formal response is received and the matter investigated by a local office. In this case this is Yorkshire and The Humber Regional Hub which can be found based at West Offices, Station Rise, York.

If issues are still unresolved following this matter moves to a stage two escalation. At this stage, the complaint is examined by a panel made up of people who work for National Probation Service and the results reported back to the complainant.

This procedure for dealing with complaints is outlined in a document in public circulation. This is Probation Service Instruction (PI) 51/2014.

Here is a link to that document:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/handling-complaints-pi-512014

I mentioned earlier that NPS has a tendency towards unaccountability, and willingness to learn from its failings.

One of the of the most pernicious aspects of this organisation is the degree to which it will attempt to protect probation officers, and their supervisory staff from the effect of their own misconduct.

Pauline Forbes Williams works for National Probation Service based in York. Her job title is Head of Complaints Team for NPS Yorkshire and the Humber.  

She is effectively the first line of defence for NPS when a stage one complaint is raised. The purpose of her intervention very often is seen in early-stage attempts to get a complaint dismissed without any form of examination and more often on questionable grounds.

It would appear from evidence obtained that the means of her doing this include misrepresenting Probation Service Instructions on handling complaints. For example, she may say that a complaint is time barred from being examined when in fact, no such time bar exists. She may say that a complaint is has already been dealt with in other matter when in fact this is not the case.

All of these are ways and means by which NPS – often with knowing and deliberate dishonesty – seeks to evade proper examination of complaints brought to it.

As a consequence lessons regarding poor service are never learned and the service fails to improve.

It appears NPS don’t like complaints much and this relates back to the matter of lack of accountability and willingness to learn from failings. It may also be the case that NPS is aware that the service provided is in many ways wholly inadequate to the point being on the verge of collapse.

Consequently, there is a massive incentive on the part of NPS to minimise, trivialise, diffuse and fragment any complaints put to it and to do so via any means at its disposal. Even if it means the methods for discontinuance of a complaint are contrary to the duty of care and PI 54/2014 instructions for handling complaints.

Or contrary to the truth, as in this matter.

This brings us back to Paulette Forbes-Williams.

A complainant who we will call Mr X for the purpose of this article made a complaint which was dealt with at stage two. The complainant requested details of the appeal panel, and who sat upon it.

This is not an unreasonable request for information!

The fact that the information was not provided by NPS at the conclusion of the second stage of the complaint response suggests that they were seeking to hide details of who was sat upon the appeal panel, possibly, because there was some conflict of interest or prior knowledge of Mr X by one of the persons sat on the panel that may have prejudiced their opinion and the way they approached the complaint.

The response of Paulette Forbes-Williams is seen below.

So in short the reasons Mr X was not provided with a copy of the names of the appeal panel – according to Forbes-Williams – was because Mr X posed a medium risk to staff.

This is clearly wrong because Mr X obtained a copy of information from National Probation Service around a month prior to the letter seen above from Paulette Forbes-Williams.

Two extracts from this are seen below.

These clearly state that Mr X was not in fact a risk to NPS personnel as stated by Forbes-Williams. That he was classified in fact as a low-risk offender. That the risk presented to probation staff was low and a risk presented to the public was low.

Therefore, in her grounds for refusal to provide the information requested, Forbes-Williams wholly misrepresented the situation in order to deny access to the information.

It’s reasonable to imagine that prior to issuing this complaint response Paulette Forbes-Williams would have checked the records of Mr X and the level of risk he supposing presented before making such broad comments as appear in the letter.

Or maybe not!

When the facts were put to Forbes-Williams from NPS’ own documents this response was received:

As stated there are clear grounds for why NPS might have sought to withhold information on the composition of the appeal panel from Mr X and it would appear on past form based on evidence seen that Forbes-Williams will utilise any means to avoid either progressing a complaint or providing information.

In any case, it is beholden upon someone whose job title is Head of Complaints to be able to provide the correct information in complaint responses and data access requests and not to act in bad faith to unfairly disadvantage Mr X in the pursuit of information he has requested.

Some hope of that here!

Given Paulette Forbes-Williams, history of malfeasance, misfeasance, and purposeful misconduct in public office in relation to complaint handling I favour, the explanation that the data was knowingly & deliberately withheld forming a breach of Section 77 of The Freedom of Information Act as well as misconduct in public office on the part of Forbes-Williams. S.77 of FOI makes it a criminal offence for a person to do anything with the intention of preventing the disclosure of information pursuant to an FOI request. You can read more about this Act here:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/77

All quite predictable so far. You’ll recall the opening lines of this article discussed apathy, obfuscation of truth & lack of accountability.

Here’s where these factors come into play in relation to this matter.

Lynda Marginson CBE. Presume that stands for Can’t be Bothered Explaining!

Paulette Forbes-Williams’ supervisor for the purpose of such matters as this is Lynda Marginson CBE. She is the Regional Director for the Probation Service in Yorkshire and the Humber. You can find her on Twitter @lyndamarginson where she relentlessly bangs the drum that all is good in the world of NPS.

The matter of Forbes-Williams misconduct in relation to this and other matters was put to Lynda Marginson. The response as seen below.

Bland assurances that a proper investigation was carried out fall somewhat short of the Probation Service Instructions for how a complaint should be actioned. You will recall that PI 54/2014 for dealing with complaints specify a three stage process. Mr X wrote back to state:

…and expressed concerns regarding the rigor of the investigation into Forbes-Williams for what clearly amounts to misconduct to try to retain data. A stage one complaint is supposed to provide some explanation of the means by which a matter has been investigated. In this case it looks likely that with a senior member of NPS being caught out the proper procedure and process has been skipped.

What Marginson has sought to do is to stop the matter proceeding on to being a stage two complaint response by herself deciding that there is no further aspect of this complaint that needs to be examined. You can see for yourself, the paucity of a response given by Marginson and the lack of rigor by which the matter was investigated.

It is clear that the process by which investigations are conducted into complaints about NPS is designed to block any reasonable investigation into a complaint made by such as Mr X by any means possible. Paulette Forbes-Williams being the first stage gatekeeper in that.

However when she is found out for misconduct don’t count on the likes of Lynda Marginson offering appropriate oversight: organisations such as NPS need people like Forbes-Williams to limit, restrict and deny legitimate and reasonable complaints by all means possible. This means someone like Forbes-Williams – because they are prepared to bend the rules to protect NPS – must themselves be protected by their immediate superiors when they do so.

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Unfit for Public Office?

The Labour Party has just finished having its annual conference by the seaside.

Amidst all of the in-fighting, lunatic fringe groups and hapless idealism there’s a purpose the Party is trying to work towards. It is trying to give the impression it is a party that is electable to Government. The party’s own website states that its aim is “To build a future that everyone in Britain can be proud of.” The party considers itself as a democratic fair-minded social movement as well as a political party.



Let’s take a look at the kind of future that The Labour Party would have us live in by examining the behaviour of one of their MP’s today, and the party’s response overall to the MP’s repeated failures to act on behalf of a constituent. It’s clear that The Labour Party does not like dissenting voices: this can be seen in the way significant numbers of members and their views have been marginalised within the party in the last few years.

I am unfortunate enough to live in the constituency of Yvette Cooper MP. Elected originally in the Labour landslide of 1997 she has been MP for Castleford, Pontefract and Normanton since then. She is married to former MP Ed Balls.

Early warning signs regarding the quality of the representation the constituency was saddled with came in 1998 when The Daily Mail revealed that in her wedding to fellow MP Ed Balls local party members who wished to go to the reception were charged an additional fee on top of their overnight accommodation for their attendance at the wedding. This additional fee was used to pay off the costs of the venue hire. In 2014 it was reported that Balls and Cooper used the unreformed expenses schemes to pay £655,000 for a house in Stoke Newington. The pair were subject to various claims during the expenses scandal, the most notorious of which was the fact they ‘flipped’ the designation of their second homes THREE times within two years. More details on this can be seen here: Microsoft Word – CRC 4th ver Balls-Cooper _Rev_ _4_.doc (parliament.uk)
The pair were also found to have claimed for 375 journeys taken by their children between Yorkshire and London over a three year period, totalling more than £14,000. This exceeded the allowance, which stood at a maximum of 30 journeys per year per child (or 90 journeys as they have three children). They were not sanctioned for this either.
In 2007/08 Yvette Cooper claimed £152,659 in expenses and allowances alone on top of her MP salary.

Now fast-forward to today. If you have a complaint regarding some public services such as the NHS the final destination for the complaint is The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, or PHSO. In order to use the PHSO one has to firstly get a form from the PHSO signed by your MP, who then sends this in to the Ombudsman.

On several occasions in the last few years I have requested Cooper do this. On each of those occasions there has been a very considerable delay, sometimes of several months, before the forms are signed and sent to PHSO. On one occasion lack of communication on the matter this prompted me to attend at her offices where Labour Party members (clearly trained in shouting down complaints of poor service) took a bullish and aggressive attitude. It was amusing to see how they’d been trained in standing one to either side of a complaining constituent to add an element of physical intimidation to the utter nonsense they were spouting justifying delays of several months.

This MP’s is happy to profit from her Parliamentary position but not so keen to assist in the day-to-day business of being an MP. Lethargy towards getting things done for her constituents has become so familiar to PHSO that in May 2021 they forwarded a form to her themselves and requested she sign it rather than the other way around! I note of course that Cooper is also not shy at garnering publicity for extravagant gestures around the constituency, particularly if it means getting her face in the newspaper or on television. And why not indeed as such things greatly assist in re-election? Quiet, patient endeavour on behalf of individual constituents generally does not.

However going back a little further in time; in January 2021 a form for signing and forwarding to PHSO was emailed to Cooper by me. Nothing was heard in relation to this and so the matter was chased in March and more intensively from July onwards. At no point was any response back received from Cooper or her office to either phone calls or emails, which invariably went to answer-phone.

One of the reasons Cooper’s husband Ed Balls was ejected from his seat of Morley and Outwood in 2015 is colloquially said to be because of his deficiency as a constituency MP. Balls used his time in Parliament to strut on the national stage and build his own profile but did little to assist his electors, hence his losing in 2015. Cooper’s present strategy appears broadly similar: to swan around as chair on Select Committees in Parliament and write books on women’s history. Neither of these directly benefit her constituents and if my own experience is anything to go by she’ll shortly be joining her husband on TV dancing shows, only without Ed Balls looks and ability to gyrate unconvincingly.

And so on we went into August with no word from Cooper’s constituency office regarding its intentions in respect of a matter put before them in January 2021. Could this be because the office was unmanned due to lack of funds? The Register of Member’s Interests show Cooper’s constituency office has been the recipient of considerable donations from various persons over the last few years to enable its upkeep and running. These include such as Peter Hearn who backed Cooper in the last but one Labour Party leadership election, but also backed the Tories at the same time. This is called hedging your bets. Some very substantial donations to the running of Cooper’s constituency office total tens of thousands of pounds over the last three years. Is all of this being spent in looking after the needs of constituents? I would suggest not. Clearly however there is enough funding going into the constituency office to make it a viable concern.

Once again in August 2021 I visited the constituency office to ask what on earth was going on. By intercom I was asked to leave before they even knew the purpose of my visit. That’s some customer service!

Consequently I made a formal complaint to The Labour Party of poor service this included a complaint of all the prior occasions I’ve communicated with Cooper’s office when service has been exceptionally poor.

A response came back from The Labour Party on 10.8.21.

Your complaint about Yvette Cooper MP has been assessed and we will be taking no further action at this time. This is because what you have complained about does not fall within what we can accept for investigation under our Complaints Policy, outlined in Appendix 1. Exclusions from the Complaints Policy, iv. Complaints about elected representatives that specifically relate to the way in which they carry out their duties as an elected representative.

To which my reply was:I appreciate your focus is to drop this complaint as quickly as possible without investigation. I refer to the points raised in the complaint, seen again below. Your grounds for non-investigation are that the complaint should refer to the way an elected representative carries out their duties.

Points 1-3, 5 and 8-9 deal specifically with the ability of Ms. Cooper to carry out her duties as an elected representative. Specifically these relate to the requirement for an MP to complete and return complaints for the attention of The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which cannot be put to PHSO by any other means.

Therefore the complaint falls within the remit of appendix 1, sub para. iv of your complaints policy.

The Complaints Team The Labour Party is based at Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London. They wrote back to claim their own internal rules did not apply to the complaint made.


I wrote back again on 12.8.21 and stated:


“Please produce for me a complete copy of the relevant rules you refer to. This can be sent via PDF or you may wish to provide a link to an online document.”

I kept chasing a copy of this document over the next week. The suddenly… guess what? They wrote back to me again on 20.8.21 and stated:

“Your complaint about Jo Cole has been assigned for investigation.  This entails ensuring that all relevant information is gathered to allow a full consideration to be made” 


“As we understand it, your complaint(s) is about Bullying, Intimidation and harassment.  Please let us know as soon as possible if our understanding is incorrect.  It will not be possible to add further complaints once the investigation has commenced.   

Once as much evidence as possible has been gathered, it will be passed to a panel of the National Executive Committee (NEC) for their consideration.  Based on the evidence, the Panel will make a decision as to whether the complaint is upheld and then what the appropriate sanction should be.”  
“The process of investigating and deciding a complaint can take some time but we will update you at relevant points throughout.”

This seems pretty conclusive. Rather that providing a written copy of the articles and memoranda detailing how a complaint is investigated, the relevant rules for so doing and the grounds of acceptable behaviour for party members, MP’s and workers they simply decided to investigate the complaint. Fair enough. Presume Jo Coles is the employee at Cooper’s office who I spoke to on my visit in August. 

Not so fast though! This came in a few days later:

“Your complaint about Yvette Cooper MP/ Jo Coles that you raised on 1st March 2021 has been assessed and we will be taking no further action at this time. This is because what you have complained about does not constitute a breach of the Labour Party rules.”

Ignoring the fact that the complaint was actually in August, not in March I requested a copy of those same rules, as I had requested in mid-August. I’m still awaiting a copy. They reverted to the position held in mid-August 2021 that the matter subject to a complaint had not breached their rules but refused to prove a copy of what those rules were. Democratic movement much? Hmmm…
The party has failed to answer numerous emails requesting this data or a more comprehensive explanation as to why they have refused to investigate the complaint. 

Why should all this matter?

Presently The Labour Party is attempting to present itself as a party fit to make the next Government. The experience I have had of Cooper is that the normal running of her office is lethargic and indifferent. That matters brought to her which amount to simple requests are delayed for several months and require much chasing before any effort is made on her part. That there should be a wait of the best part of a year on a matter put to her in January 2021 is wholly unacceptable. Yet in a short while Cooper will be again presenting herself to the local electorate as an MP capable of forwarding their interests in Westminster. Much of the clear evidence from the last twenty five years suggests otherwise, however. 
My own experience is that Cooper is happy to take part in any event which will bring positive publicity or a photo opportunity but is uninterested in the needs of individual constituents. Since August 2021 Cooper has refused to sign the forms for PHSO sent in January 2021 and has clearly decided in relation to myself that I am not a constituent “worth” helping. The end result of this is that the ability to use the PHSO to resolve a complaint has been lost to me. 

The party’s mechanism for dealing with complaints suggests an organisation which is untrustworthy and slippery. Clearly this enables MP’s like Cooper to get away with exceptionally poor service towards constituents and the kind of financial sleight-of-hand described above. Taken together the performance of Cooper and The Labour Party when given the chance to act and put the matter right suggests that neither are remotely reliable or electable.

We Cooper presently has a majority of only around 1,200 enabling her to remain in office and must surely realise that the game is up for her at the next election. Perhaps this is why she is focused on writing books and appearing on Select Committees. Her majority has been whittled down over the years to this very slender margin. This suggests that constituents are indeed waking up to the level of poor service received. She has obtained a very nice living from her position since 1997 and it may well be that the constituents of Pontefract, Castleford and Normanton are now waking to the fact that that they need an MP who is prepared to act on their behalf occasionally

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One Day With The NHS

My mother is a geriatric and has a series of medical issues. Therefore I need to organise her appointments etc. for her.

Without any political axe to grind here’s what’s happened over one day in my involvement with either the NHS itself or organisations it subcontracts to.

Expensive, incompetently managed and the cause of endless inconvenience.

One.

Continence nurse arrives 20mins late. Actually about four months late we requested a referral in May but the GP surgery failed to pass the referral on.

Consequently we’ve struggled on since May managing the condition on our own with occasional non-effective chase-ups of the practice.

Two.

Letter arrives from subcontracted provider. They want to do an ophthalmologist appointment by telephone. How they’ll be able to spot anything wrong with her eyes by hearing her voice is a mystery.

The letter also insufficiently explains the reason for the appointment and why it’s been requested. Half an hour on hold waiting to speak to the provider to establish need and purpose of appointment.

Three.

Her medication is delivered from the pharmacy.

This is after calling yesterday and being told they don’t accept repeat prescription orders on a Sunday. Guess what? That’s right. Not all medication has been delivered.

Call to pharmacy. Surgery has stopped the repeats on a vital tablet she takes three times a day.

Call to surgery. 40th in queue. They can’t understand why the tablet has been taken off repeat prescription but should be able to get her some more. By Wednesday.

Four.

She’s due a hospital out patient appointment tomorrow but this has been cancelled around 3.30 today. Have to then also cancel patient transport booked one week ago, which was a 45min call on its own.

Ring the hospital as the message was left with my mother who didn’t get all the details needed.

First few times it rings for a while then cuts off. This is standard for the hospital we deal with. Then get through to the wrong person who transfers me back to switchboard.

Finally get transferred to the right department. They clearly don’t like speaking to the public as there’s a voice message encouraging you to email them on an address no pensioner would be able to take down in time or likely spell correctly. Therefore still none the wiser about why the appointment has been cancelled or what happens next. No call back received.

Time taken overall: 3hrs

Cock-up’s occurred: Arguably 3-4

Patience: Exhausted

It’s the poor or non-existent communication that I find most irritating. That the patient’s representative or carer is left to chase up everything as nothing is explained in advance nor are the reasons for things happening. The experience of the NHS is therefore that you suffer the error first, then need to chase it up long before you gain the benefit of any service provided.

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Judicial Bias on Legal Loans Issue?

The link to an excellent article from Byline Times regarding exorbitant and manipulative legal loans which catch people at their most emotionally vulnerable and go on to exploit them financially.

Divorced From Reality: How Legal Loans Racked Up Half a Million Debt for a Standard Divorce

The article contains the following, amidst criticism of a company called RafeSetter:

In a recent remote court hearing, RateSetter’s chief commerical officer Peter Behrens acknowledged that Sophia being more than £600,000 in debt may be an example of “mismanaged litigation”. Asked what action the company had taken to ensure Sophia was not vulnerable, Behrens said that the lender had done “enough to make ourselves comfortable”.

Mr Judge Raeside, presiding over this hearing, ruled as “fair” her debt from two high interest divorce loans. But Sophia said: “I just know that a lot of people will be coming out of lockdown and divorcing. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

The real story here is that RateSetter’s Peter Behrens is the son of former District Judge John Behrens, now retired. Behrens senior and Judge Raeside were close colleagues at the bar.

How odd then that Judge Raeside did not recuse himself from dealing with a case involving his old friend’s son and found in the favour of the company at which Peter Behrens is chief commercial officer!

Would be curious to know how many other claims involving RateSetter have come before Judge Raeside and what the result of those were.

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What is a Dismissal List Manager responsible For? Substandard Case Administration?

Was going to write a length diatribe on how badly served we are by Civil Appeals Office at The Royal Courts of Justice but a short explanation, a couple of screenshots and a reproduced email do the job just as well.

This is a blog entry about how a civil appeal matter has received suboptimal service by HMCTS staff, how it’s taken some five months to identify claimed issues with documents supposedly not being sent, but in fact these documents were supplied. How is this related to the shady post of Dismissal List Manager which HMCTS dislike revealing the details of?

To start with here are the screenshots. I’ve been waiting for a response from Civil Appeals Office on this matter since November 2020, their last communication to me prior to this taking some two months to be sent.

Joseph Goswell states his position is in the Case Management Section at Civil Appeals office. He writes:

What is stated to be wrong with the application…
Rather a tight time limit for a letter sent to an Applicant on 11.2.21!

In actual fact none of the stated errors with the application exist. All the documents required in the matter were supplied in September 2020. See the reproduced email below.

One thing Joseph Goswell doesn’t tend to advertise is his other job at HMCTS – Dismissal List Manager. This is certainly not the post he mentions in the above letter.

It is noted that HMCTS are very shifty and refuse to answer reasonable data access requests for what a Dismissal List Manager actually does. For more on this bizarre refusal to address a perfectly legitimate question see the link below:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/duties_of_dismissal_list_manager

Ludicrously it is claimed no data exists on the role and the responses given to the data access request above are so vague as to be meaningless. In a position paid for out of the public purse why such coyness unless there’s a vested interest in keeping the data secret.

However we can theorise that this role may be someone within HMCTS whose purpose is to frustrate claims at an administrative level for the purpose of enabling them to be dismissed. This seems to tally with the letter content written above in which non-existent issues are identified with a bundle. Of course if HMCTS would like to explain what this role actually is then I’d be happy to include the data here.

My email in response to the letter from Civil Appeals Office states:

I refer to your email below.

I note the delay in response to any issue arising out of this matter and that there has been no communication from your office since November last year. I note that the email prior to that took some two months to receive a response.

The core bundle was filed and served on 2.9.20. Since that point CA have not identified any issue with the bundle which would make it non-compliant.

You state that there is no index. A copy of the index was supplied (index.doc). This shows the reference number for each of the following documents which corresponds to the number starting each document. As was a copy of the sealed order being appealed against (4). The Judicial Review claim form is at (12) and the grounds for JR both follow on from this. In other words all of the grounds you give for the bundle being in error are in fact present and correct and have been with your office since September 2020.

I note further that there has been no communication from CA since September 2020 in relation to the bundle supplied. We are now some five months gone from September 2020. Perhaps you could explain why this is so if there are thought to be errors? For your convenience I have attached a copy of all correspondence so far with CA office.

To go from September 2020 to February 2021 without identifying errors in a bundle and reverting to the Claimant five months later and only at the point at which the Claimant chases the matter up represents an unacceptable service level failure for which I now make a formal complaint to The Court Manager. The errors you state exist with the bundle are not present, as I have shown.

It is further poor service that the attached letter of 11.2.21 states you require these errors correcting by 18.2.21 when you have been sat on these issues for so long. However as stated above each of the documents you claim not to be present is in fact present within the bundle. 

A further copy of the bundle is attached to this email.

Please inform me of the progress of this matter, and the progress of the complaint alongside the name of the Court Manager to whom the matter has been referred.

Email of 12.2.21 ends.

So there are the following issues arising here:

  • Let’s assume there WERE errors in the bundle supplied to The Court of Appeal… why does it take five months for these to be identified?
  • More to the point why wait until an Applicant emails the court five months later before informing of these?
  • ..and then give a total of seven days in a pandemic (five if we discount the weekend) for these to be corrected when these matters have been left to lay on file for five months now?
  • Admin staff can see that all of the documents they claim were not supplied were in fact attached with the original bundle. So why do they claim they were not?
  • Why has there been no communication on this claim for some three months?
  • Why is there seemingly no data on the post of Dismissal List Manager which can be made public?
  • Why does Joseph Goswell not use his correct title in the letter to me of 11.2.21?

Suspect the answer to the above questions can be found in the shady and little-stated other position of Joseph Goswell as “Dismissal List Manager”!

Is the handling of this matter standard HMCTS incompetence or is the role of Dismissal List Manager a shadier one than we can imagine and one in which civil claims are subject to interdiction and mishandling to frustrate them?

As always anyone or any organisation cited in this blog post has a right to corrections which I will be happy to make on receipt of relevant evidence.

UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: 19.9.21.

I have today been contacted by email by another person who has had a very similar experience with the same people in the same department as I have.

The experience relayed by this person is interesting. Goswell’s position as “Dismissal List Manager” suggests a specific purpose: does HMCTS have a policy of purposefully frustrating and delaying certain types of claim which might prove embarrassing or politically sensitive to the organisation? More data needed but at least three persons to my knowledge have had experiences which suggest so.

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The Mendacity of HMCTS

This post details the extent to which HMCTS will seek to lie and mislead in order to avoid admitting a clear service level error made by court staff, particularly when such an error is serious enough to amount to a breach of a person’s right of access to justice or human rights.

Below is a copy of an email sent earlier today to Customer Investigations at HMCTS. They are the final stage of appeal in the event that court staff make serious errors in the handling of civil claims. 

It follows two separate instances of the Court Manager at Leeds Combined Court, Joanne Town, seeking to deliberately mislead in her replies to a complaint. The original complaint was that court staff failed to notify me of a hearing taking place into two claims – they only informed me of a third taking place on the same date in November.

Joanne Town states that these two claims were not heard on the relevant date. All available evidence including an Order from the hearing proves her wrong but she maintains her position twice over.

This behaviour and the original error of the court failing to inform me of dates for two claims to be heard represents sufficiently shocking behaviour that I share the email I have sent to Customer Investigations in its entirety below. 

The email begins… 

I refer to the issue below as a formal complaint to Customer Investigations. 

On 11.11.20 a hearing took place at Leeds Combined Court in [REDACTED]. I was unable to attend this hearing. Also in the same hearing two other claims were heard. These being [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. I was not notified that these claims were to be heard on that date at the same time as [REDACTED]. A formal complaint was therefore made to Leeds Combined Court. It is a fundamental aspect of access to justice that a Claimant should be able to attend hearings in relation to claims he has brought. Indeed CPR enshrines such rights. Article 6 of The Human Rights Act states the right to be a fair and public trial or hearing at which I am allowed representation if a public authority is making a decision that has a impact upon my civil rights or obligations. The failure to notify in respect of two claims in which I was Claimant taking place on 11.11.20 thus activates my Article 6 rights. By failure to inform of hearings taking place on 11.11.20 HMCTS has breached my Article 6 rights. 

Firstly as can be seen from the email below no communication was received as sent on 7.12.20 by Leeds Combined Court. A copy of a letter dated 7.12.20 has been sent to me by email today in relation to my query regarding a level two response. 

The onus of the complaint to Customer Investigations is as follows: 

The response provided on 23.11.20 and that dated 7.12.20 both state: 

The court did not receive any applications or fees on [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] to set aside, vary or discharge the order of Mr. Justice Lavender dated 27th February 2020 and as such these cases were not listed on the 11th November 2020 these files were not forwarded to the Judge

Further that the position as outlined above is the same argument outlined by the Court in its defence in the 23.11.20 email. There has therefore been no review of the appeal to the first stage complaint response. It would additionally appear that no further investigations into the matter have taken place by Leeds. A simple check of the Order of 11.11.20 would have shown Joanne Town that the statements she has made are wholly factually wrong. 

I attach further a copy of an Order made on 11.11.20 in the matters of [REDACTED], [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. This clearly shows that the matters of G00LS437 & [REDACTED] WERE heard on 11.11.20. I attach also a Notice of Hearing in respect of the 11.11.20 which is the only Notice of Hearing received in relation to any proceedings on this date. 
I was therefore not informed of the hearing of two other claims on 11.11.20. 

As a consequence of this both the email seen in the attached Word document from Joanne Town of November and the PDF of 7.12.20 also attached have deliberately and purposefully set out to misrepresent the facts, mislead and are a clear breach of the duty of care of the Court Manager to act with good faith in relation to service users. 
When you have a Court Manager who is prepared to mislead in such a way but is so easily caught out I would suggest that it’s pretty much the beginning of the end for HMCTS as an organisation. If you are incapable of honesty and integrity in your dealings with the public then any confidence in the organisation will vanish. The errors seen in the original complaint are compounded by the mendacity of the Court. 

I have additionally noted that Joanne Town has acted to respond to both the first and second stage of the complaints and as such there has been no actual second-stage review of the issues raised: the PDF of 7.12.20 simply repeats the response put in the original of 23.11.20. 

Consequently I appeal the second stage response on the basis that both that and the first stage response are wholly mendacious and fail to accept that a serious service level failure amounting to a breach of my Article 6 rights has occurred. The situation is no different to that of [REDACTED] in which the same Court Manager was aware that no action was taken in a claim for over a year but failed to respond to complaints in respect of that service level failure. 

As a consequence of the error by court staff I have had to make an application in respect of [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] which has also cost me money. 

In respect of this matter I seek a financial settlement appropriate to the breach of my rights by Leeds Combined Court in failing to notify of the hearings into [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] and the mendacious response of Court Manager Joanne Town. I have also lost time and amenity chasing this matter and have been vexed and harassed by the behaviour of the Court in respect of the original failure and the mendacious responses provided. I seek compensation in relation to these matters also. 

The behaviour of the Court Manager is sufficiently shocking that I believe others should be aware of this and as such the content of communications in this matter thus far – including this email – will be published online. 

I await your urgent response.

Letter ends.

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Compensation for Poor Service by HMCTS

A quick follow-up post from yesterday.

A Freedom of Information Act request to The Ministry of Justice produced the following data.

Payments made for poor service from HMCTS increasing year on year.

The data largely speaks for itself. Payments made to court users for poor service increase year on year as HMCTS falls apart.

Poor customer service by HMCTS is costing at least £292k per year in payments made to disgruntled court users. This is of course not counting the time taken to correct errors they have made which also counts as a loss to the public purse and creates delay overall in the system.

Most importantly if you’ve been in receipt of poor service from a court make sure you complain. And don’t be fobbed off: they’re experts at dissembling and denying. Of course at every stage also request to be compensated. It’s only when the budget for payment of compensation exceeds what The Ministry of Justice is prepared to pay out that service standards will improve.

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Everyday HMCTS – A Cautionary Tale

Being an example of how HMCTS commit critical errors in handling civil claims and how they then evade responding properly to complaints.

Street of Shame: HMCTS are currently based in the old Home Office building in St. James’, London.

The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) are a company noted for the provision of dodgy software to the NHS. Errors in systems provided by TPP resulted in the biggest data loss in NHS history. In that incident in 2017 / 2018 hundreds of thousands of people had their medical history sold to US companies, despite having signed to confirm they did not wish their data to be shared, breaching every conceivable data protection principal.

A claim was started by myself into this significant data breach as my own data was amongst that shared against my express written wishes that it should not.

Here’s where the fun begins.

Because the standards of service at Leeds Combined Court are uniformly awful a claimant has to struggle against both the ineptness of the court’s handling of a claim as much as they have to fight to prove their case. Like many other areas of modern Britain the State by a combination of ineptness and avoidance makes everyday tasks significantly more complex and difficult than they need to be.

The results of an investigation into the errors made by the court by HMCTS Customer Investigations speak for themselves. An extract from the letter is below but to summarise (and include detail HMCTS failed to, you’ll not be surprised to learn), the errors made in the claim include – but are not limited to:

1. Fourteen months to action a Directions Questionnaire put in by the Defendant TPP. This failure by court staff to manage the claim in the most simple and basic way effectively brought the claim to a grinding halt.

2. Despite emails from myself chasing the progress of the claim within those fourteen months no action was taken by the court. In effect emails chasing progress of the claim and requesting updates on what was happening were simply ignored.

3. The court should have referred the matter of the Directions Questionnaire to a judge within a matter of a few weeks of it being received. They failed to do this. No other system in their offices alerted staff to the fact that an ongoing claim was stuck in stasis and no-one seemed to both to check on its progress.

4. Consequently this delay breached one of the Overriding Objectives in the Civil Procedure Rules to deal with cases justly and swiftly.

5. Naturally this generated a complaint from myself.

The first stage response of this was mendacious, evasive and effectively sought to deny any errors had been made. The excuses offered by the court were barefaced and failed to fit the facts such that a child could have picked holes in their logic.

6. I appealed and requested a second stage complaint response from the Court Manager at Leeds Combined Court, the reliably slippery Joanne Town.

7. And reliably slippery is what she proved to be. Or maybe she was embarrassed to have to answer for the significant error made by staff. No communication came back from her as a second stage complaint response. This was chased several times over the course of some months. See the footnote at the bottom of this blog entry.

By this failure to respond HMCTS sought to kill the complaint and I presume they believed I would walk away and forget the thing.

8. But I didn’t. Consequently the matter was referred to The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) as a complaint along with several other matters that HMCTS refused to address through their own complaints process. These other matters are presently ongoing.

9. When PHSO requested a response and data from HMCTS on this matter and the several others before the Ombudsman HMCTS decided to settle this matter immediately via a cash offer to myself. Likely they didn’t want PHSO poking around to discover some of the things that go wrong in court offices. Or maybe they simply knew that the game was up as the errors made were too great to ignore.

10. This cash offer and admittance of fault came from HMCTS’ Customer Investigations head Richard Redgrave. Normally Redgrave and his team deploy complex tautology to evade response, avoid admitting fault and avoid paying compensation.

An extract from the letter admitting fault. Edited to remove the compensation amounts paid in the past.

The interesting thing to note is that this all represents not an unusual pattern of mishandling of a civil claim by HMCTS. These are everyday errors in a court system in which case files are in exceptionally poor shape and staff morale is at rock bottom.

Nor is this way of handling a complaint unusual or out of the ordinary. My experience of dealing with HMCTS staff has proven to me that the deny – ignore – avoid tactics are the standard response to complaints. Consequently the service standards never improve as they are unable to accept any wrongdoing has occurred.

The usual friendly customer service from HMCTS!

Footnote: in July 2019 HMCTS issued some new guidelines for its staff.

HMCTS decided it was, ‘the human voice of justice’. Based on three commitments, HMCTS said it will listen to you, explain everything clearly and guide you. ‘It’s a useful approach we are starting to apply every time we communicate – whether it’s when we speak, write or connect with the people who use our courts and tribunals, or the people we work with.’

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Sharp Practice Filling the Coffers at HMCTS

The service user is a cash cow to HMCTS

HMCTS has a number of ways of obtaining money from court users. Some of these amount to sharp practice and although within the Civil Procedure Rules can also be said to amount to an abuse of process.

Yesterday I discussed how difficult it is to obtain a refund from HMCTS (with an example!). Today I look at one of the ways they increase costs for parties.

Here’s one of the ways this happens.

An application in a civil claim was cancelled with a few days notice.

This is because the High Court Judge set to hear the case, The Hon. Mr Nicholas Lavender, decided to scuttle back to London before Yorkshire and the North East Circuit (for which he is senior civil judge) was put into tier three COVID restrictions. In the event this was pointless as a few days later the Government decided to lockdown the whole of England. However this caused significant disruption to civil listings at Leeds Combined Court this week. Great to see a judge who takes his leadership responsibilities so seriously.

The hearing was rescheduled with eight days notice to the parties. Which was insufficient notice for the Claimant. The Claimant informed the court of this and the grounds for being unable to attend the short-notice rescheduled hearing. Either these grounds were not out before the judge or else were ignored.

One facet of The Hon. Nicholas Lavender’s handling of cases can be seen on a website in which it’s complained that he seeks to drive up costs for litigants. Particularly ones whose cases he finds tiresome. I suppose he has to find some amusement in the job. This site can be found at https://www.bentjudgenicholaslavender.site/index.php/contact/ [viewed February 2020]. Some of the content of the site this writer is unable to verify: in respect of his seeking to drive up costs for parties however I am able to comment.

So consequently the grounds on which the Claimant couldn’t make the rescheduled hearing were ignored and an Order made by the judge regarding the rescheduled date. As per usual the route to challenge such an Order lies in the completion of an N244 form and the payment of a fee. Indeed this is the only route to do so when an Order has been made by the judge.

Now here’s where things get funky. In addition to driving up costs for parties he dislikes Nicholas Lavender likes to take his time on dealing with applications made. Sometimes this can be up to four months when HMCTS service standards say fourteen days should be the turnaround time for such.

So the court ignored the grounds for the Claimant not being able to attend the rescheduled date in order to make an application which would then cost the Claimant £55 to overturn. There is of course no guarantee that the application to vacate the rescheduled date would be heard before the due date of the hearing (especially not with this judge!) but hey… let’s take a punt on the idea of making some more money out of a service user.

This sort of thing represents clear sharp practice but is a common enough activity within HMCTS.

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