JUST WHO IS BULLYING WHO?

During the election campaign I received an email from the Borough solicitor informing me that an injunction had been taken out in my name (and every other Cllr) against a pensioner who was deemed to be harassing council staff and other members of Northampton Borough Council. The injunction forbid any contact between the pensioner and any Councillor or staff member without us first giving our permission for any such contact!

I was livid!! Putting to one side for a minute what the individual may or may not have done, what right has the Liberal Democrat led authority to take court action in my name without my authority? Two Liberal Democrat Cllrs gave evidence to the court and yet I and many others were not even aware of the action. When my fellow Independent Cllr colleague Malcolm Mildren asked the Borough Solicitor why he had emailed us after the action and not before? he was told that it was impractical for the council to have done so?

In other words they can  contact us easily after the event by email to tell us what has been done in our name, but not before to check with us if it is OK to use our name in any such action?

I immediately asked for my name to be withdrawn from the injunction. In a bizarre series of events, even though the individual was barred from any contact with Councillors, and with Councillors being asked not to correspond with him in any way shape or form, he still managed to be on the nomination papers of one parliamentary candidate for Northampton North and received personal mail from two Councillors who were also candidates during the election! Cllr Simpson I am told wrote to him on four occasions asking the individual to contact him! Doing so of course would have broken his injunction!

I won't go into details and/or reasons for the action as the case is still in the hands of the court, but I have no problem in giving you my own opinion on the matter which is that whilst some of the Council's concerns may have a modicum of merit and some of the individuals behaviour may have been over the top, I can't help to think that the words sledgehammer and nut come to mind! The individual has contacted me on numerous occasions, I have always replied and he has been grateful for the response. His agitation it seems is with those who do not respond!

You see I have always found that if you communicate and discuss matters truthfuly and honestly with people then even with the most agitated of people, you can usually find common ground and compromise. The use of the court in my mind in such circumstances is a sign of failure of the Council to deal with the matters correctly in the first instance. Not to mention a waste of Council Tax money.

So after the above, imagine my further anger when a constituent from St James contacted me recently to inform me of a letter he had received from the legal team at NBC threatening him also with an injunction if he didn't stop harassing Council staff!! The letter made wild allegations as to the behaviour of the individual and had emanated from a row he had had with the caretaker of a block of flats he resides in. The caretaker had a habit of emptying the bin store outside the tenant's bedroom window at 6am in the morning!! After failing to get any sense from the caretaker himself the resident took the matter up with his housing manager, but the noise nuisance continued. Now I am sure that at some point "words" would have been exchanged. I know if someone kept waking me up at 6am in the morning I might have a few things to say! But again, despite the fault being wholly on the part of the Council, it is the tenant who is threatened with court action by the council.

Now don't get me wrong, where there is threat of violence and or the risk of our staff being attacked or hurt then I would be first to back any action, but I feel that in these two instances (and who knows how many more) that the council have got it badly wrong. If they want people to stop being robust with them then they need to sort out the root cause of their problems. If they want to deal appropriately with any complaint then they need to talk reasonably with the individuals concerned.

Letters threatening court action and indeed court action itself in such circumstances are signs of the Council's weak customer liaison and of the authorities failure to act reasonably in dealing with bona fide complaints.

I therefore want to make it clear here and know that I will resist the Council taking action on my behalf as a Councillor unless they have the courtesy and decency to inform me first as to the reasons for their action and tell me what they have done to date to try to alleviate the problem outside of the court.

At the minute the Council under the stewardship of the Liberal Democrats are the ones in mind who are doing the harrasing, they are the body who are being unreasonable and they are the ones who are acting as the bully, and like most bully's we have to collectively stand up to them in order to show others who may be threatened that they have nothing to fear.