ICO calls time at Swansea

 

Time stands still at the Guildhall, is this why FOI are delayed?

A result in 17 hours for the Information Commissioner's Office, who forced Swansea Council to disclose that they had made 202 Personal Data Breaches, which had affected more than 3,435 individuals in the period from May 2018 to December 2021 [1]. 

The full FOI request for the number of  "Personal data breaches since GDPR day" is publicly available on WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

In a strikingly unusual move, a case officer responded to an FOI complaint in nine days, compelling Swansea Council to respond: 

Some have questioned whether the new Information Commissioner, John Edwards, who took up his role on 4 January 2022, would uphold the 2000 Freedom of Information Act. There's a massive backlog of cases, in many instances not addressed for over a year.

Has John Edwards as new Commissioner brought with him a new broom for the New Year? 

Was Swansea Council's failure to respond according to the law - promptly and in any event no later than twenty working days - too blatant and egregious for even the ICO to overlook?

Does the intersection of GDPR and FOI risk shaming the ICO if had let it slide, grossly undermining any authority it needs to discharge the Commissioner's duties? Knowing how many mistakes have been made and how long it took for the Council to comply with its legal obligations to decide whether to notify (under 2018 DPA/GDPR) is a bread-and-butter metric that should be at the tips of a section head's fingers.

Does adding Annotations to WhatDoTheyKnow, publicly shaming public authorities,  trigger the PR department/ministry-of-spin to jump on the Freedom of Information team?

Has John Edwards simply done some comparative maths? Public authorities like billion-pound Swansea have budgets splurged on bulging PR departments and second-rate consultants' reports, whilst their FOI and data protection clean-up crews are woefully understaffed and in many situations not empowered to gather timely, nor (in some cases) truthful responses from their own colleagues. If the humble citizen is resilient enough to file and pursue a complaint at the ICO then Mr Edwards' teams will simply pick up the costs of enforcement - I've a pretty easy fix for that.

Command Post Bunker on Mumbles Hill
cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Nigel Davies - geograph.org.uk/p/3064574

Swansea itself has monuments scattered around the city to mark the bravery of the air-defence units that sought to protect her citizens, throughout the Second World War and especially during the Three Nights' Blitz. As a young child I remember clambering through the Command Post Bunker up on Mumbles Hill. A friend's father would jam 2-5 of us into the back of his Mini to take us there, in the days before seatbelts! We'd run around, playing innocent hide and seek, then inevitably pretend to strafe and kill each other as we'd defend or attack a bunker, playing out being imaginary soldiers with sticks for Sten guns.

Mr Thomas would describe the huge anti-ship and anti-aircraft guns, the devastating noise and damage to homes they'd make during firing drills, and the intense searchlights that would scour the sky during a raid (Coastal Defence 299 Battery A on the rocks way below). We were perhaps too young and innocent to understand the trauma of living through it, the true horror of war. We dismissed the notion that the city centre was "new". We only saw the first part of Dylan Thomas's "ugly, lovely town", years before the tag of "Pretty Shitty City" was imprinted on celluloid. Come and see for yourself, when COVID restriction safely allow, it's a lovely place to walk to earn yourself a Joe's Ice Cream, and remember those who made sacrifices to protect their communities.

The impact of a personal data breach can be devastating to an individual, and their family. Thousands of families in the Swansea Blitz had their homes and private lives literally blown open, relationships and even "permanent" structures within their communities razed and rocked. Each of the 3,435 individuals affected by these 202 personal data breaches is a person. Many of those individuals won't even know it happened - if the clean-up crew has covered over a mistake *and* decides the breach wasn't notifiable. In some cases those breaches will have exposed people to physical, mental and financial harm or destroyed trusting relationships. It may started from a simple mistake, but can have very serious consequences. 

Swansea Council may not know, or even care, just how deeply these personal data breaches can cut. Many times some would love to train a 6 inch naval gun on an organisation. Standing on the hill and pretending with binoculars can be quite cathartic, or so I'm told, and won't get your personal data added to a watchlist 😉

Shining an intense search-light by asserting information rights is a formidable weapon in and of itself. The cascade of mistakes and misdirection that fell out from one simple mistake in this instance are breath-taking. The failures documented, laws broken and contradicting lies revealed are truly shocking.

"Upholding information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals" is the tag-line, for now, of the ICO. Let's hope that this rapid-intervention, keep ing short-accounts to prevent the FOI backlog from ever starting to grow, is maintained. The ICO needs to be more than flashy jackets, buzzwords and sandboxes. Citizen audit, driven by a desire to put right personal injustices, is a massively powerful tool that strengthens our society. The Freedom of Information Act is right at the heart of that. 

If you are wondering if *you* are part of the breaches, then ask for your own data from Swansea and check for free here - they might even fix some of the errors and social engineering on the page if they have a few more visitors (reported to ICO July 2020).

[1] Note strictly the FOI responded to was only for Personal Data Breaches since GDPR day, and therefore 199 breaches affecting 3,432 individuals, rather than 202 affecting more than 3,435.

Throw back Sunday - 6.1 revealed

One of the astonishing revelations from Ammanford Town Council's Clerk (~£32K pa) was that he couldn't find correspondence presented to full Council on 9 December 2019,when he attended his first meeting to take up the reins on a full time basis {see Liar, Liar, Townhall on fire (pt4)} .

By virtue of  Section 57 of Local Government (Democracy) (Wales) Act 2013 these documents should have been made available electronically to the public when Councillors were summoned to the Meeting .

So, to be helpful, I thought I'd serialise things - having suitably redacted as the Council should have done to comply with the DPA2018 (GDPR) .

Let's start with item 6.1, of 28 August 2019: 

Lessons to learn:

• The Council has never formally acknowledged receipt - complaints policy says five days (despite a phone call chasing). It certainly didn't resolve the issue within 20 working days - like the policy says "most" complaints will.
• Taking over three months to bring an item before Council is worrisome.
• Councillors should have reviewed the correspondence and asked questions.
• Dating items presented, as a policy, would have covered all these issues, and "protected" against an FOI request.
• Publishing the documents referenced in an Agenda, per Welsh Law would have stopped this ever becoming an issue, currently corona-parked with the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.

Watch out for 6.2 tomorrow.

Liar, Liar, Townhall on fire (pt2)

Adam Price recently sought attention for his idea to make lying by politicians a criminal offence. Less than 100m from his office, Plaid Cymru controlled and dominated Ammanford Town Council must be doing him proud.

Last week's South Wales Guardian front page (3 ex mayors quit in Ammanford Town Council walkout) had this astonishing quote:

A spokesman for the town council said: “Ammanford Town Council endeavours to uphold standards.
“We always ensure that policies and procedures are adhered to.”

Always? Always??

Almost fifty years ago, the Local Government Act 1972 laid out some pretty basic requirements, including when and how to call Meetings, to record business transacted and to make records available for public inspection. Ammanford Town Council haven't been complying with the Act for years (since 2016), acknowledged through the course of eleven complaints when the Council stated that it did not hold minutes of some meetings  - "if they were ever in existence".

Twenty years ago, the Freedom Of Information Act 2000 came into force, giving a legal right of access for citizens to see records held by public bodies, within a defined timescale. Solicitors acting for the Information Commissioner began preparing an application under section 54 to "deal with the authority as if it had committed a contempt of court" on 24 January 2020. The Council has ignored a second Information Notice - and multiple extensions that compelled it to respond - to conduct a simple Internal Review, accounting for some ~£20K of public money (the dodgy splashpad/park CCTV that didn't work when the leaves were on the trees). And then there's a separate case officer who compelled them to respond within 10 working days, on 8 Feburary, to provide simple dates from complaints/correspondence they are trying to cover up.

Seven years ago, the Local Government (Democracy) (Wales) Act 2013 was enacted, requiring Town & Community Councils to have websites, issue notices electronically, publish Minutes and documents referenced within them on their website. Statutory Guidance was issued in May 2015. The obligations aren't particularly onerous. It barely applies 1990's technology/practices to the 1972 record keeping. The Council's failings in this area led to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales investigating, fining (twice) and declaring the Council to be in serious maladministration. The Report was suppressed, the actions ordered haven't been followed, the follow-up complaint ignored. The Ombudsman gave them an ultimatum to comply by 19 January 2020 and has yet again given them a further extension to comply with the requirements to publish Minutes and referenced documents by the end of this week.


It is notable that the front page story of "3 ex Mayors quit" is over two months old - it happened in December 2019, the resignations were accepted and ratified on 14 January 2020 in a seven minute Extraordinary Meeting Council. Aside from the four observers present, the general public (and press) were none the wiser. Publishing Draft Minutes electronically is a trivial task. Scanning and uploading the ratified/signed copy should take less than ten minutes. So why are Minutes still being withheld for 3-4 months?

And even more curiously, why has the Agenda for 2020-01-14 EGM vanished from the website? The Guidance states that documents need to be be available and archived for a reasonable length of time.


Over a year ago the PSOW ordered the Council to adopt and publish a Complaints procedure, by April 2019. This was half-adopted by the deadline, with Councillors bickering about some of the grammar months later. The procedure requires complaints to be formally acknowledged within 5 days. Only after thirteen weeks of deadlock can one ask the PSOW to consider investigating (the form now requires that a complainant discloses what legal action they have pursued or considered, before the Ombudsman will think of getting involved).  The PSOW has two open investigations, with another just resolved. How could three complaints reach the PSOW if Ammanford Town Council "always" adheres to their policies?

On 13 February the Council wanted to increase the precept by a further 43%. The Council was unsure of how much Reserves it held (?!). Basic financial controls and reporting would mean that any competent body should *always* know how much money it has. The Council now employs a full-time Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer. As the Americans say "You do the math"!

I've joked previously whether we should drain the swamp from the bottom or the top. Are festering Ministers, or Prime Ministers, to blame? B-Team politicians in the Senedd? Or do we accept brazen lies, dishonesty and incompetence at the heart of our Communities; and then "always" expect them to develop integrity on way up the greasy pole?

Perhaps the Councillors needs to reflect more on their illustrious party leader Adam's words “Honesty is the most important currency in politics. We have to protect it, before it reaches moral bankruptcy.” Always.

Half-job Jo skips the ICO

Carmarthenshire County Council managed to land a puff piece in the South Wales Guardian, suggesting complaints were down in 2018-19 compared to a year earlier. Drill down a little and it seems complaints to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales had more than doubled (23->48) for the same period.

Complaints going "up a level" are quite exceptional. It takes a robust mindset to "exhaust" the Council's own complaint and review procedures before the PSOW will consider even accepting a case, let alone investigate. A Council officer is quoted as saying:

"The positive is that none of them were upheld."

Curiously, none of the five Decision Notices issued by the Information Commissioner's Office in the same period were referenced in the report. Four of which were upheld (in part or whole). How odd.

ICO Decision Notices tend to be only issued when a complainant specifically requests one - as the Information Commissioner is very busy and the backlog within her Office is typically 2-4 months to get a case first assigned. Investigations can easily stretch to well over a year, by which point many complainants have given up. However, the ICO is very clear that a Complaint should register long before they rule:

Links here for the "Compliments & Complaints Annual Report 2018/19", the ICO's "Action we've taken" in relation to Carmarthenshire County Council and the ICO's "Section 45 - Code Of Practice - request handling".

Image credits:
Business photo created by kjpargeter - www.freepik.com
Carmarthenshire County Hall cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Nigel Davies - geograph.org.uk/p/23208
Lovingly munged with the GIMP

Plaid claim credit at Ammanford Town Council

There are tall-tales, and there are real whoppers. 'Plaid Cymru | Party of Blame' are really pushing out the boat with their electioneering for Ammanford Town Council, in the upcoming Myddynfych ward By-Election. 

If 'Plaid Cymru | Party of Blame' have to ask, then you probably don't know

"What has Plaid done?" candidate Rhodri Jones's pamphlet has the bare-faced cheek to ask. Before laying claim to some fabulous projects, way beyond the scope (and competence) of Ammanford Town Council:

• Roundabout - "complete"?! Diggers on the pavement this week, started in October 2017, overground works had their own 1st anniversary celebrations and dedicated prose; a Carmarthenshire County Council and Welsh Government project
• Ammanford AFC - Carmarthenshire County Council cash of £125K with no planning scrutiny for the new stand and no reference to ATC contribution
• Council Hwb - Carmarthenshire County Council toxic de-branding project
• Margaret St Junction - ATC have no recorded information about it (CCC again)
• Foundry Rd - someone else's money again
• Bandstand - another CCC endeavour that's dragged on, is blocking Asset Transfer with previous funds withdrawn
• Coaltown Coffee - promoted in the Senedd, not paying business rates in Foundry Rd (Datasets Empty Property Rates 020119.xls A62:G62)
• Dyffryn Rd - another County project, located over-the-border in Saron Ward (well-run Llandybie Community Councillors campaigning since before 2011)
• Lloyds Bank - the murky commercial County grant, with domestic units

Pictured (on the pamphlet) we have the great and the good of "County Councillor" (ATC replacement Mayor) Deian Harries and "Member of Parliament" Jonathan Edwards - remembering to give the County Councillor his full title, as bickered over in the more recent Minutes to be liberated from the recesses of the Town Hall.

Whilst claiming credit for things well outside their remit, let's give due
credit to the post-"Iscennen Plaid Slide" period.

Ammanford Town Council have recently been fined a further £250 by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. This is the second fine imposed in a year, along with the declaration of maladministration, for the same complaint! The Ombudsman's report is highly critical, even in its final watered-down form. You can read it in full here - it should be displayed in the Notice Board along with the candidate notices (now they've changed the lock, after ex-office holders left with the keys & Mayoral chains).

To be clear about the fines, the Town's council-tax paying electorate carries the cost, not the fifteen elected councillors (or co-opted cronies, as applicable). Any Councillor with a clue would not have accepted the way things have been run. Those with a shred of integrity should have resigned.

The two-year battle to liberate legally required Minutes has resulted in  two Decision Notices finally being issued in recent weeks. FS50711667[1] & FS50755792 uphold ten complaints, documenting mayhem. The Information Commissioner noted taking the exceptional step of issuing an Information Notice (see FS50711667 S.28), compelling the Council to  respond last summer - which they continued to ignore.

Being stonewalled on the Minutes by ATC, curiosity led to revealing the
financial irregularities, missing VAT returns, lack of proper financial
controls, un-audited/not-published accounts and unearthed the Wales Audit
Office investigations.

£4,350 is the potential fine for a public body failing to register as a Data Controller (as any small business owner will attest). The ICO confirmed that it began enforcement action in July 2018 against Ammanford Town Council. Does the Council now hold sufficient reserves? Or will the precept that's just been doubled be doubled or trebled again?

Ammanford Town Council isn't even sure which set of Standing Orders is in
force, some Councillors think 2012, others 2013. The 2013 version just disclosed (again under the compulsion of the Freedom of Information Act) are England-specific, failing to take account of devolution nor the toothless legislation passed by the Notional Assembly in 2013 (in force since 2015). Empirical evidence, two fines by the PSOW, drives a coach and horses through Part 1: section 42 and the head-buried-in-the-sand maladministration orchestrated from the Mayor's Parlour. ATC even pay for membership of One Voice Wales; but take their Orders from the English National Association of Local Councils (Duh! There are clues in the names)!

In Ammanford 'Plaid Cymru | Party of Blame' has lauded holding the trifecta of political control of Town Council, AM and MP; clustered within 300m. What chance is there of reasonable scrutiny, or even dissent, with a Party whip? The mind boggles further when we give AM Adam Price full credit as new Leader of Plaid and remember that Plaid control the basket-case of Local Government that is Carmarthenshire County Council. Has poor Ammanford found the five magics?

Give me Town Councilry
Give me County Councilry
Give me Notional Assembly

Westmonstery, Party Leadery

Magic, if you please







However, let's give the 'English Labour Party in Wales' Amman Valley branch office fair recognition for running in cosy cahoots. The appalling malpractice of not preparing, ratifying nor publishing Minutes (in a timely manner) began under County Councillor Colin Evans (Lab) stint as Mayor. Fifteen elected councillors (or co-opted cronies, as applicable) facilitated this, overseeing a part-time Clerk who's hours amounted to little more than what many youngsters put in on a weekend shift. Joio.

I'm not eligible to vote in the Myddynfych ward by-election (nor sadly the Wernddu ward), despite my livelihood depending on the Town's provisions. If I could ask a few questions to candidates then these would lead the conversation:

1. How many Ammanford Town Council meetings have you attended in the last 3, 12 & 24 months?
2. Do you believe in transparent and accountable (community) governance?
3. Have you read the Standing Orders?
4. Have you heard of the 1972 Local Government Act, Local Government (Democracy)(Wales) Act 2013 or the Welsh Government's 2015 Statutory Guidance?
5. Do you think that party politics has any place in serving at a town and community council?

County Councillor Colin Evans objected to this democratic election (24 Jan 2019), on the grounds of cost. Ammanford Town Council's "political elite" (that has to be an oxymoron) wanting to divvy up the two wards one each for 'Plaid Cymru | Party of Blame' and the 'English Labour Party in Wales', to retain the balance through co-opting. 

Ammanford deserves better. If eligible to vote on Thursday then please vote to make sure it gets better.


[1] The Information Commissioner stated the wrong year in numerous places in the DN, and is legally unable to the correct her mistakes unless an Appeal is lodged and won through the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). They also classified the complaints as "Not Upheld" in the "Action we've taken" section of their website. Seeding the idea of a "How useless is..." future mini-series.

[Picture brought to you courtesy of Plaid Cymru, Edward J. Repka, Combat Records/Capitol Records, Section 30A and Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the GIMP & Vic. Sources here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Megadeth-RustInPeace.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plaid_Cymru_logo.svg]

Cultural Learnings for to make Ammanford great again

Colin's Got It Covered(Up) in Mayoral Mankini of Office

Ammanford's year as "Town of Culture 2018" is now well underway. I wondered what was meant when the "initiative" was announced. So far efforts have been mostly focused on celebrating the entertainment side of things. For some light relief I'd like to take a look at local governance, how Ammanford Town Council's culture of ineptitude and secrecy feeds into the pitiful state of local so-called democracy with a blatant disregard for accountability.

Ammanford Town Council was recently fined by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, upholding a complaint of maladministration. The anonymised Decision Letter is linked here. Mr X's complaint was hand delivered to the Town Hall, Iscennen Road on 21 December 2017, as follows:

"I write to make a formal complaint regarding the absence of published Minutes for Ammanford Town Council’s meetings, since August 2016.
 It has long been a requirement (Local Government Act 1972) for the Council to properly record and make Minutes available for inspection.  Since 1 May 2015 section 55 of the Local Government (Democracy) (Wales) Act 2013 has also required community and town councils to provide these in electronic format, along with the proceedings and (in so far as reasonably practical) any documents referenced in the Minutes (you may find guidance and press releases publicising this on the Welsh Government’s website).
 Please acknowledge receipt of this complaint and in the first instance provide a copy of your complaint resolution process (which should also be on your website). The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has asked that I exhaust the Council’s formal complaints process before they will continue with their investigation into Ammanford Town Council’s performance."

The PSOW originally buffeted the issue when first reported in December 2017, claiming that Mr X hadn't followed Ammanford Town Council's complaint resolution process - a cyclic argument as Ammanford Town Council doesn't publish it's process. Following delivery of the written letter, the matter was put back to the PSOW for proper consideration. The PSOW failed to respond; further prompting led to a formal review and the PSOW ruled (without a right of appeal) that the complainant had to give 13 weeks for Ammanford Town Council to respond - the clock ticking from the letter through the door, rather than the matter first being raised with the Council (electronically) on 18 October 2017. A plucky case officer also took the initiative to call the Town Clerk, provide an electronic copy of the letter and inform Mr X of this positive action. Payment, details of the complaints process, and some highlights of the new Town Clerk's first year in post were provided, in a brown envelope, on 27 April 2018.

The PSOW action compounds that of the Information Commissioner's Office, who have ruled that Ammanford Town Council was/is in wilful breach of the Freedom Of Information Act (2000). The ICO has repeatedly spoken with the Town Clerk and directed the Council to release copies of the Minutes. Four ICO Decision Notices are pending release from the work-waiting queue. Enforcement action is imminent - once the file is allocated back to a case officer (96 days and counting, since confirmation on 8 February 2018). Some Minutes were published, but they are incomplete and "prove" the existence of other Minutes which have been missed in the relevant quarterly period. The full discourse is available publicly on the WhatDoTheyKnow platform at the following URLs:

   Request submitted 18/10/2017
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/aug_dec_2016_minutes_for_town_co
   Request submitted 01/11/2017
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/jan_mar_2017_minutes_for_town_co
   Request submitted 16/11/2017
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/apr_jun_2017_minutes_for_town_co
   Request submitted 30/11/2017 (and botched delivery in notes)
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/jul_oct_minutes_for_town_council

Seven months on, and Ammanford Town Council still has not complied with its FOI obligations, citing a revamp of their website and upcoming GDPR changes as just two of the things on the jobs list. The Council may wish to take heed of the ICO's view that "Businesses must understand they can't break one law to get ready for another", in the £13,000 fine issued to Honda - commentary and links to the Ruling here at The Register. 

For the Reader wondering what interest our glorious and illustrious Welsh Government has in the matter (might they want to uphold the Law we paid them to write?), don't get too excited. After a bit of war-dialling last week, an officer tasked with Town and Community Councils lamented that they have "such limited powers of enforcement". Her best suggestion was to try and publicise the matter. Another option floated was to speak to a Scrutiny officer at Carmarthenshire County Council - that was drowned by laughter in milliseconds. 

Here is the Welsh Government's Statutory Guidance "Access to Information on Community And Town Councils".

And how about these (2015) words of inspiration from then Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews?

“Some of the best Community and Town Councils are already meeting high standards of openness and transparency, and from now we will require all councils to meet the same standards.” 

The legislation itself is quite readable and unambiguous. A pity the legislation doesn't seem to have any teeth.

A Council must operate on the basis of collective responsibility and has to be accountable. Duties have to be discharged irrespective of personal circumstances. Ammanford Town Council has met and discussed important issues, such as asset transfer and Planning proposals - but who knows the outcomes or the interests involved? It has statutory duties and stewards considerable sums of public money. Minutes have been distributed electronically to Councillors, by both the interim Town Clerk and the current Town Clerk. Serving Councillors have considerable experience in public life, including the current Town Mayor who was a former leader of Dinefwr Borough Council, and was a member of the infamous indemnifying Labour/Independent Executive Board at Carmarthenshire County Council. Not so long ago he had the cheek to claim that pan-Wales local government reorganisation would reduce representation and accountability. According to the recently liberated complaints procedure, the buck stops with the Town Mayor, but the incumbent has been silent (until now?). The complaints protocol is linked here.

This sorry adventure down the rabbit hole begs the question: how inept is Ammanford Town Council? Or worse still, what are they hiding? And most worryingly, is this culture directly or overtly transferred into representation at Carmarthenshire County Council?

I do hope that the distasteful image of Town and County Councillor Colin "Got It Covered(Up)" Evans in his Mayoral Mankini of Office will be all the publicity needed to nudge things along. The Reader really doesn't want to see more.

[Picture brought to you courtesy of Doug Peters/EMPICS Entertainment, South Wales Guardian, Section 30A and Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the GIMP & the number 6. Sources here:
https://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/33/photos/778000/620x/547b3bfade4f1_BORAT.jpg
http://www.southwalesguardian.co.uk/resources/images/7788223/?type=responsive-gallery-fullscreen
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9780111116029
https://www.gimp.org]