Another stain on Redbridge Governance

The video below plugs the meeting this evening at 8pm at the Methodist Church Hall at 8pm on Percy Road IG3 and references the examples of poor governance in this blog

I am disappointed to report that the Redbridge monitoring officer has refused to investigate why the 26^th September 2023 video of the Safe Redbridge Policy Development Committee was not published last year. My email to the monitoring officer is at the end of this blog. The video is now available it shows me saying the Council should monitor knife crime monthly, rather than Cllr Johnson

The quality of governance at Redbridge has been stained before per these examples.

1) Cllr Jas Athwal being left in post as Council Leader despite being suspended from the Labour Party pending a Labour Party investigation into sexual misconduct.

2) No investigation of why so many Councillors were sending zero or very few emails to residents over a six month period. The details are at Councillor Emails

I challenged about why three councillors were missing from the list. The Council did reply per the below and all thee councillors had sent zero emails to residents over a six month period! 

Please accept our apologies that information in respect of three
councillors was missing from our initial response sent to you.  Please see
data below.
 
 

+------------------------------------------------------+
| First name | Surname | Sent | Received | External |
|------------+------------+------+----------+----------|
| Kay | Flint | 0 | 265 | 0 |
|------------+------------+------+----------+----------|
| Sareena | Sanger | 0 | 249 | 0 |
|------------+------------+------+----------+----------|
| Robin  | Turbefield | 0 | 221 | 0 |
+------------------------------------------------------+

3) Cllr Athwal refusing to disclose his property interests in Redbridge relying upon the death of David Amess MP. I successfully challenged the Council on this point. The Council defence is at Amess Disgrace

4) Taking money from developers for pre-application advice, a clear conflict of interest. More at Developer Cash for Redbridge An extract is below:

5) The constant silencing of the public at meetings who want to ask reasonable questions.

Below is my request for an investigation

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Pervinder Sandhu

I request you transfer my request for an investigation to a monitoring officer in another borough because I cannot understand how you make an impartial judgment on what could be the conduct of your employer.

I seek an investigation into two issues

Firstly why the video of the Safe Redbridge Policy Development Committee of 26th September 2023 is not on the council website. This is arguably the most embarrassing video for Redbridge Labour for 2023. In this video Cllr Johnson will be heard arguing for the committee to monitor knife crime. Cllr Johnson has recently resigned from the Labour Party and wrote “… being chastised for daring to raise concerns about knife crime and request its inclusion in our policy development was a defining moment for me.”

I also spoke at the meeting of the 26th  September in favour of the council monitoring knife.

I seek this video for part of my campaign to win the endorsement of TUSC to be the parliamentary candidate for Ilford South. Should the video ever be published I will cut and clip it for Twitter, Facebook etc to argue that Labour is not serious about knife crime because it reprimands Councillors like Councillor Jackson and ignores members of the public like me who argue the knife crime should be monitored each month by Redbridge Council. Therefore, I encourage you to carry out an investigation into who either refused to publish or delete the video of the 26th September if it was ever published. Should no investigation take place it will only encourage speculation about what has taken place which is likely to damage public confidence in our local democracy.

Secondly I seek you investigate why Cllr Athwal is not disclosing he is a landlord in either his Redbridge or LGA register of interests. Screenshots of the registers are at https://twitter.com/Andywalker1945/status/1737181995975766121 of both for you for ease of reference. Being a landlord should be disclosed in boxes 4,5 & 6 of the LGA register and box 2 of the Redbridge register.

“Orchard Garden Day Nursery” does not exist per the LGA register, but “Orchard Garden Private Day Nursery” is a ltd company registered at companies house reg number 04839288. This is clearly a typo, but nonetheless should be corrected immediately. Village day nurseries does exist and is registered at companies house reg number 06376023, this company is not listed at all on the LGA register and the register should be updated immediately.

I have raised both these issues with Cllr Ahwal on twitter (the register issue in not so much detail as listed above)  and been ignored which is why I am requesting you intervene. The tweet about the missing video is at https://twitter.com/Andywalker1945/status/1742914737057436012

Regards

Andy Walker
120 Blythswood Road
IG3 8SG