FOI Archives - Page 2 of 2

Aberdeen City Youth Council Hits Out At CGP

Aberdeen City, Articles, Breaking, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, News No Responses »

Jan 272012

Aberdeen Youth Council’s former head Sean Press resigned because of ‘a conflict of interest’, citing his involvement with ACSEF the ‘pro-business and development body [which] is fully supportive of the City Garden Project’ per the Press & Journal. Now Aberdeen City Youth Council, the official voice of young people in the city, has spoken out against the proposed development of Union Terrace Gardens, describing the plans as “unwanted” and “potentially devastating to young people”.

17 year-old office-bearer, Kenneth Watt, comments on the decision:
“It’s not normal for the Youth Council to speak out against the Council like we are doing. However, the decisions made have the potential to be devastating to our generation, and generations to come and we are genuinely worried about the prospect of the City Gardens Project going ahead.”

As a result, the group has registered to submit 300 words in the voter registration pack.

The group also criticised the City Council in its involvement of young people in the decision-making process, after they discovered that only 113 young people from just two schools were consulted with. In the Youth Council’s own consultation 98% of 14-25 year-olds were in favour of retaining the Gardens.

The financial security of the City Gardens Project (CGP) concerns the Youth Council. The Aberdeen City Youth Council (ACYC) are worried by the lack of a plan to cover the possible failure of the risky Tax Increment Funding scheme. After multiple requests for detailed financial information from councillors on the monitoring board were ignored, the group became very apprehensive over the CGP’s feasibility.

Kenneth Watt, an office-bearer in the ACYC says that:

“Young People have been hit hard by spending cuts to key services already; the prospect of facing more in the future is a risk the Council can’t afford to take.”

“Young people need to be listened to and have their questions answered. We’re the ones that will have to foot the bill when the £96million loan can’t be repaid.”

One of the main sufferers of cuts to public services is Aberdeen’s youth. Northfield has the highest rate of child poverty in the north-east of Scotland and the Council cannot commit to such a financially unstable project when they are closing key services to the youth in many areas.

“It is ridiculous for the Council to commit to a £96million loan when vital community services – such as the Mastrick Young People’s Project – are being cut left, right and centre.”

It was claimed that the CGP would reduce crime rates in the city, which young people are frequently blamed for. Both final designs for the CGP have direct access from Belmont Street and Union Street, home to many pubs and clubs. A £170million project of this nature will not cure the violence and crime that Aberdeen faces.

“Voters need to think seriously about the long-term aspect of the City Gardens Project and the financial burden it could easily leave for generations of Aberdonians to come.”

“Union Terrace Gardens is a space that is unique to our city. Our parents have loved the Gardens, we love the Gardens, and – if retained – our children will love the Gardens too.”

Old Susannah No. 64 – The Web In The Garden

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Environment, Information, Satire and Humour No Responses »

Jan 192012

Old Susannah tries to get to grips with the newspapers, the actual news, and council-speak. By Suzanne Kelly.

Dancing in the streets is assured today, for tomorrow we will be dancing on the concrete ramps! (hopefully without falling off of them). Rejoice! Result! The lovely ramp / Teletubbies design has been selected (just in the nick of time for the Referendum, mind) to ‘transform’ Union Terrace Gardens.

Old Susannah has been laid low by a cold/cough, so no outings of late to Brewdog or anywhere really. This has given me plenty of time to catch up on my leisure reading, so I’ve now read tons of minutes, board reports, registers of interest and so on. But I’ll soon celebrate this good news with a brewdog or two.

I was so glad to have bought the Evening Express on the 17th; it had taken its own 50-person poll and guess what? Yes, 59% of people polled want to ‘transform’ the gardens! Fantastic! Perhaps we should just knock the Referendum on the head now and go with those results.

To those few remaining NIMUTGs / NIMBYs / Luddites out there who think the vibrant and dynamic scheme to put concrete ramps over Union Terrace Gardens is nothing but the old boy network flexing its muscles to give some of the more hard-up members work, money and real estate, I say no. There is no conspiracy. There is nothing untoward going on. (Can I have a directorship now?)

If anything looks funny, be it overlapping interests and board memberships, coincidental office block developments in the area, or what have you, here are some useful definitions to allay any fears. Rest assured – in a few short years when you’re looking over your plastic hedge in the Monorail Café as the band plays in the Dr Bochel outdoor auditorium, you’ll look back and be glad that your tax money was well spent in convincing people what’s really important.

The Gardens dominate the news and the definitions this week as well.

City Garden Project Minutes: (compound noun) a series of documents charting the apolitical, beneficial, transparent proceedings of the Project team appointees.

We’ve already seen that there is no overlap between the City, Chamber of Commerce, BiD, a couple of multi-millionaires and some council officials. Here’s a little quote from the September City Gardens Project Implementation Team which shows as much:-

“Agreed that it would be helpful if ACSEF and Aberdeen Grampian Chamber of Commerce could provide supportive letters to the key decision makers within the Scottish Futures Trust. The web link to the submission to be forwarded to ACSEF, the Chamber and BID”.

and now to illustrate the total independence of the Implementation Team, let’s put some names in brackets for the organisations listed above of people connected to the City Gardens Project as well:

“Agreed that it would be helpful if ACSEF(John Michie, Jennifer Craw, Colin Crosby, Tom Smith, Callum McCaig) and Aberdeen Grampian Chamber of Commerce (John Michie, Colin Crosby) could provide supportive letters to the key decision makers within the Scottish Futures Trust. The web link to the submission to be forwarded to ACSEF, the Chamber and BID (Callum McCaig, John Michie – Chair)”.

It’s going to be a hard slog for these people to get themselves on side, don’t you agree? Or perhaps that’s what’s meant by ‘having a word with yourself.’

For a more complete de-bunking of any lingering doubts, have a look at this little link, showing the members of some of our homegrown organisations. http://oldsusannahsjournal.yolasite.com/

Overlap: Adjective – for two or more items to share similar components, area or characteristics.

If you have looked at the spread sheet on the above link, you will see there is just a touch of overlap. Believe it or not, there are people who are involved in a quango here, a committee there – and all of them relating in some way to the desire to improve Union Terrace Gardens.

That nice Mr Michie gets around quite a bit, as do Messrs Collier and Crosby. Never before have so few done so much in so many organisations against the wishes of so many. Referendum or no, I think this lot are unstoppable.

Bad Timing: (Eng Phrase) events which in some way conflict with each other or subvert other events.

This will be a tough one to explain, so here is a wee example. The deadline for registering a group for the Union Terrace Gardens Referendum was 13 January – so far, so good. The deadline for these groups to submit a 300 word statement as to why people should vote for or against Teletubby land – sorry the dynamic ramp system which will turn Aberdeen into Barcelona– is 20th January at 5pm. The Referendum is a month away.

Still so far, so good. Then we come to next week. On 25th January the full council is going to vote on a report about the Gardens project – the report has various clauses which seem to indicate this thing might cost the City money after all – who would have guessed it??? But by then it will be too late for any of the statements going in the Referendum voting pack to be altered.

On 25 January it will also be too early to know what the referendum result will be – but the city is still going to vote on some very crucial items. Why you might ask is this happening now? Why would the city want to do this before the referendum and before the new council is elected in May – only a few months away?

It couldn’t possibly be so that any potential voters see the City voting to go ahead and decide that voting in the referendum (which is not binding of course) is pointless. It is not to discourage, dispirit or mislead – obviously not. I think this haste all just has to do with saving time. I did ask this question of the council – and they’ve told me not to worry my old head about it. Fair enough then.

PS ….

I am currently less than pleased that the City cannot (or will not) provide me with a list of property that the Mortification Board is responsible for – the FOI folk have told me to come down and look through the archives. I still can’t believe Councillor West (leader of the Morticians – sorry Mortification Board) doesn’t have this info.

However – I am happy with him on this one score, and I thought it worth sharing. So, here are some extracts from old minutes from the City Garden Project Monitoring Board – cast your mind back to August – this is what was being said…

“Councillor Yuill asked Mr Brough to confirm whether there would be a ‘no action’ option on the card. Mr Brough replied that there would NOT be a ‘no action’ option at this stage because the feedback was part of a tendering process to select the best of six designs. Once the best design has been selected, other parties, such as the Council, may wish to determine whether the status quo was preferable to the chosen design. However the Project Management Board do not see this as their role. Their job is simply to come up with the best possible design for a proposed City Garden Project.

Councillor West asked that it be noted that every week the councillors of the Monitoring group have asked for the ‘no action’ option to be part of the public display and this has been passed on to the Management Board by Mr Brough. The Councillors stated that they were very disappointed that this was still not an option”.

You might ask yourself who is driving this project. It’s not the citizens. It’s not the councillors. The answer just might lie on my spread sheet.

Next week – A Milne special issue, some Trump gossip, and more.

Not The First Choice – Webs, Worms And The CGP.

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Information, News, Opinion No Responses »

Jan 192012

By Mike Shepherd.

The final design for the City Garden Project was picked this week. The proposed plan is to replace Union Terrace Gardens with a futuristic design of curving walkways and grass called the “Granite Web”.
The announcement stoked up even more controversy as it appears that the design was not the first choice amongst those that voted in the exhibition in October last year.

Favoured was the “Winter Garden”, the design with the big greenhouse resembling a giant glass worm.

A letter in the Scotsman gave a typical response to this ‘consultation’:

“Pointless poll. Of the six designs submitted for the development of Aberdeen’s Union Terrace Gardens, one emerged as the clear favourite during a protracted public consultation in which the Aberdeen electorate took part.

Yet a panel of judges has selected one of the other designs, and the Aberdeen public is apparently to be given the choice between this one or nothing. What is the point of holding a public consultation and treating the result as if it didn’t exist?

Derrick McClure, Aberdeen”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/letters/letter_pointless_poll_1_2061360

It is not the first time that a consultation on the fate of Union Terrace Gardens has been ignored. A public consultation run in 2010 saw a majority of the public rejecting the scheme.

The design itself is also controversial. John Glenday, the editor of the magazine for Scottish architects the Urban Realm, commented:

“Diller Scofidio & Renfro’s ‘granite web’ of interconnected walkways has been sold as a vision of the future for Aberdeen. However the seductive sixties sci-fi vision presented may be out of date before the journey from concept to reality has even begun. In their submission the architects have spun a tale of making Aberdeen “throb” again but the history of elevated walkways and underpasses, as anyone who has ever traversed any concrete New Town will attest, is often dystopian.

“Health and Safety officials are also likely to have a field day with the walkways and platforms as presented, inevitably leading to a compromised design with fencing, signage and other clutter once the demands of building regulations are met.”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/cartoon/analysisagrandschemebutitmayjustbealittletoolate

Others have been more sceptical. It has been variously likened to a Teletubbies TV set, a skatepark and even ‘Mounthooly Roundabout on steroids’. The City Garden Project have however reached for their dictionaries to praise the ‘vision’, with press releases abounding with words such as ‘transformative’, ‘vibrant’ and ‘dazzling’. Despite the hype there are very few facts being presented. We still do not know how much it will cost or how long it will take to build.

In another development, Aberdeen City Council are to hold a special council meeting next Wednesday to discuss the City Garden Project.
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=18252

The report for the meeting asks councillors to approve the final City Garden Project design , expects the private sector to commit at least £70 million towards the project and discusses some of the land ownership issues.

There is no discussion in the report as to what happens if the City Garden Project goes into massive cost over-run. In 2009 the then Chief Executive, Sue Bruce, decreed the private sector would be responsible for any cost over-run. Since then, no procedure has been discussed on ensuring agreement about this. In my opinion, Aberdeen City council are being grossly negligent here.

Councillors are effectively being asked to approve the final City Garden Project design ahead of February’s public referendum.

Yet the report mentions that:

“ACGT has produced initial draft proposals in respect of the likely uses of any internal and external space to be created by the proposed development and are currently redrafting these proposals to reflect the space provision within the design recently selected by the Design Competition Jury.”

It is difficult to see how councillors can approve a project when there is no clear statement as to what the scheme is going to be used for.

The requests to councillors to spend up to £300,000 on legal costs from Council funds will be very controversial. We have been repeatedly told that the City Garden Project will have no impact on Council budgets, yet this is clearly not the case here. Some will ask how such costs can be justified when services and amenities are being drastically cut elsewhere.

Polling cards for the referendum are to be issued to Aberdeen residents on or around the 16th February. We will be asked for a third time – what do we want our city centre to look like?

The public are being treated with disrespect on this issue. Nevertheless, Aberdonians should ensure that they vote in the referendum. This one counts.

FOI Prevails: The Quest For Milne Property Deals

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, News, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 152011

Voice’s Suzanne Kelly provides further detail regarding The Scottish Information Commission’s decision on Aberdeen City Council’s handling of FOI requests regarding sales to and contracts won by Stewart Milne related companies.

This week the Supreme Court sided with Aberdeen City Council and rejected Stewart Milne’s appeal concerning profit-sharing on a land deal.

Milne bought land from Aberdeen City Council (property worth some £5 million was sold to him for c £375,000) with a clause stipulating Milne had to share any related profits with the seller, Aberdeen City Council.

After lengthy appeals, the Milne Group must pay £1.7 million pounds to Aberdeen City Council (legal costs are at present unknown).

Precisely how and why the cash-strapped City Council made this deal still remains unclear. Once acquired, the property was sold from one arm of the Milne group of companies to another, and on this basis, Milne’s position was that there were no profits to share. The Courts have disagreed.

This issue spurred a freedom of information request to the City Council.

What land had been sold to Milne-related companies? What contracts had been awarded to the Milne companies? Was a group of companies receiving preferential treatment by being sold public assets without the assets going on the open market to the highest bidder? Was a construction firm buying land at considerable discount with one hand, and at the same time under-bidding competition to win work?

It is a year (and a few days) since the initial FOI request was lodged with Aberdeen City Council. Late replies, denials that information was held, assertions that information was too difficult and costly to obtain were some of the obstacles in the way of obtaining information.

If not for the Information Commission, there would be no chance of this information – concerning public assets and the public purse – coming to light. As it is, the City has until 23 January to finally comply. At that time it must either disclose the information or lodge an appeal against the decision.

The decision will be disclosed to the public around 16th December. In the meantime, here are some of the important issues and facts to emerge from the Information Commissioner’s decision.

On 10 December 2010 a FOI request was sent to Aberdeen City. Such requests are to be answered within a specific time frame and are backed up by legislation.

The City failed to respond in time. Aberdeen’s representatives said the information was not easy to obtain, would cost over £600 pounds to collect, and that some of the data was immune from disclosure. When the request was largely turned down, an internal investigation by ACC into its handling of the affair was requested as the law permits. The City was sorry it was late in responding, but it was not going to release the information.

Findings:

The Information Commissioner’s office was supplied with the entire (lengthy) chain of emails from the first request through the refusal and the internal investigation. The Commissioner will soon release its report into ‘Case 243/2011’ and these points are among the findings:-

ACC FAILED to comply with Part 1 of the Information (Scotland) Regulations 2002 (FOISA)

ACC FAILED to comply with the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

ACC FAILED in dealing with the request by wrongly claiming that section 12(1) of FOISA was applicable to the request

ACC FAILED to provide reasonable advice and assistance under Section 15(1) of FOISA.

ACC FAILED to meet statutory timescales for handling the request

Background:

The comprehensive decision from the Commission covers the history, legal issues and relevant points of my request. The Background section covers my initial questions to Aberdeen:

1. List of property (including but not limited to land, buildings, building services, material goods, etc.) Aberdeen City sold to the Stewart Milne Group, Stewart Milne Homes and/or any associated companies, and/or directly to Mr Stewart Milne. List to show property name/description, date of sale, sale price, minutes/reports of the City Council approving/recommending the sale, and if available the market value at time of sale.

2. List of property or services (including but not limited to land, buildings, building services, material goods, etc.), the Stewart Milne Group, Stewart Milne Homes and/or any associated companies, and/or directly to Mr Stewart Milne sold, managed or built for Aberdeen City Council. List to show property name/description, date of sale, price, reports/minutes of the City Council recommending the purchase, and if available the market value at time of sale.

If any aspect of this request is not clear, then please contact me directly for clarification.

I was asked to clarify what I meant by Stewart Milne associated companies, and on the same day as the request was emailed to me, I sent this list from Companies House:-

05232604	D	STEWART-MILNE CATERING LIMITED	Dissolved
SC305012		STEWART MILNE CENTRAL LIMITED
SC152943		STEWART MILNE COMMERCIAL LIMITED
SC083265		STEWART MILNE CONSTRUCTION LIMITED
SC054259		STEWART MILNE DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED
SC191167		STEWART MILNE (GLASGOW) LIMITED
SC057709		STEWART MILNE GROUP LIMITED
SC132524		STEWART MILNE HOLDINGS LIMITED
SC137803		STEWART MILNE HOME OPTIONS LIMITED
SC065403		STEWART MILNE HOMES LIMITED
SC096898		STEWART MILNE HOMES (SOUTHERN) LIMITED
SC056620		STEWART MILNE INVESTMENTS LIMITED
SC063606		STEWART MILNE INVESTMENTS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED
SC349644	D	STEWART MILNE KITCHENS AND BATHROOMS LIMITED	Dissolved
SC204848		STEWART MILNE PART EXCHANGE LIMITED
SC145941		STEWART MILNE PROPERTIES LIMITED
SC192726		STEWART MILNE (WEST) LIMITED
SC305009		STEWART MILNE WESTHILL LIMITED

The City also wanted to know what time period the request covered. This was a bit of a surprise – was the list of property sold so extensive that a cut-off date was needed? Dates of 1980 to the present were chosen.

On 9 February 2011 the City advised that the request would be too costly, and that it did not hold information relating to property it had sold to Stewart Milne companies. An internal inquiry into how the City handled my request was offered and accepted. This inquiry proved rather fruitless, and on 4 May 2011 the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner was asked to look into the case. The investigation began.

The Information Commissioner’s office contacted Aberdeen City Council on a number of points. One of the issues was whether or not all or part of the FOI questions should have been dealt with as an Environmental Request (EIR). The City then told the Commissioner’s office it ‘no longer wished to withhold the information in the reports (about tenders) in their entirety. Some but not all the information on contracts Stewart Milne companies had won in September was released. This included information about new build work at Byron Park, Hayton Road and Rorie Hall. The documents were heavily redacted.

It was nine months since the FOI questions were first asked of ACC. At one stage during the Commissioner’s investigation there was an opportunity to re-state the case and explain why the information should be put in the public domain. I wrote about the state of Aberdeen’s finances, the fairly recent criticism of the City’s fiscal operations by Audit Scotland, the lack of transparency in the City’s dealings, and my concern for the disposal of public assets without clear attempt to get the best possible market price.

The decision notes my claim that ‘public assets should be bought and sold in a fully transparent manner, especially in such a cash-strapped city as Aberdeen.’ I wondered if my efforts would be enough. I waited.

Findings & Analysis:

One of the most important reasons for refusing the request was cost. If the costs were truly going to exceed £600 (the threshold over which public authorities do not have to respond – but can if they wish to), then someone at ACC’s Freedom of Information Office should have offered guidance as to how to reduce the cost of the search. This never happened.

Aberdeen’s initial cost estimates indicated that many people would have had to spend hours on the request, and some of these hours were going to be charged at over £15 per hour. As it turned out, the maximum hourly rate that a public entity can charge for searches is £15 per hour. Perhaps someone in the City’s Information area should have known this?

Over the course of the dozens of e-mails exchanged, I made clear I did not accept Aberdeen’s claim that supplying a list of the property would be to arduous and too expensive.

At one point the City said some of its records were only on paper format. I informed the Information Commission that the City holds an Excel spread sheet detailing the property that it owns and that I considered it likely that the Council would have a similar spread sheet for property it disposed of.

Aberdeen said such a record did exist, but that it didn’t show to whom property had been sold. (This seems like a very poor state of record-keeping if it is the case). The City said its list would be ‘meaningless’ to me. The City estimated that it sells some 10 pieces of property per year, and we would be talking about 140 sales from 1996. In summary, the City said it would cost £1,117.50 (a rather precise figure I thought) to get the details I was after.

Item No. 50 of the Commissioner’s decision reads:

“…the Commissioner is surprised that the Council is unable to establish the identity of the purchaser in relation to individual property disposals in a less labour intensive manner, he accepts that the Council does not have simple access to the information requested…”

Here are some other points from the report concerning the issues:-

51. “Having considered the Council’s submissions, the Commissioner accepts that it has identified a reasonable method of locating and retrieving the information Ms Kelly has requested. This involves two distinct stages: firstly identifying those property sales in which the purchaser was one of the parties of interest to Ms Kelly and then secondly locating and providing, for only those transactions involving relevant purchasers, the particular pieces of information requested by Ms Kelly about that transaction. The Commissioner is satisfied that the information requested could all be located within the file relating to the property sale.”

52. “Turning to the Council’s estimates of the staff time required to complete this process, the investigating officer reviewed the copy of a file provided by the Council. Although this contained over 780 pages of information, the investigating officer was able to identify the purchaser of the land or property within two minutes of opening the electronic file. Although, in this case, the purchaser was not one of interest to Ms Kelly, the investigating officer went on to locate the types of information about the sale she had requested. The investigating officer was able to identify and extract the relevant information from this file within a further 15 minutes.”

53. “Having considered the Council’s (somewhat limited) submissions and the investigating officer’s review of the sample file, the Commissioner is unable to accept the Council’s estimate that it would take 30 hours to establish which files involved sales to relevant parties. This suggests that this initial stage would take an average of just under 13 minutes per file….”

The Commissioner’s findings on the issue of retrieving the information are even more concerning than just this over-calculation on the City’s part. Looking back to an earlier point, it seems the Council are no longer keeping records of crucial information such as how public assets are disposed of:-

43. “The Council explained that there is no longer a comprehensive database which records all transactions…”

After a less-than-glowing recent report from Audit Scotland into Aberdeen’s property management – why is there ‘no longer a comprehensive database’ concerning important transactions?

The decision then goes to the matter of the ‘duty to provide advice and assistance’. The Information Commissioner found

“…the Council offered no advice and assistance to Ms Kelly on how she might reduce the scope of her request…” and “Given that the Council provided no advice or assistance to Ms Kelly in either narrowing the scope of her request, or accessing some of the information of interest to her, the Commissioner finds that the Council failed to comply with its duty…”

Part of my FOI request concerned contracts won by Milne companies. Were we selling land at very favourable rates to a bidder who might put in low bids? Would it be possible that a contractor won work by bidding lower than the competition, but that another company connected to the contractor bought land at profit-making prices – possibly even to the detriment of the public purse? This possibility crossed my mind.

The Council felt harm would be done if details of contracts awarded were publicised. I commented that there was a need for confidentiality during negotiations of a contract, but not once a deal is concluded where public money is being spent.

The Commissioner noted that my requests were about one year after the contracts were awarded. The tenders had been evaluated; the contracts were issued. As it turned out, the unsuccessful bidders had been advised of the details after the award – but by some kind of oversight or another on the part of Aberdeen City Council, this information was never made available to the public despite EU law making such disclosure mandatory.

This is what the Commissioner’s investigation found:-

“The Commissioner is unable to accept that a competing company would be able to gain significant insights into the relevant company’s capabilities, pricing or bidding strategies from the disclosure of this information [information re. Bids]… the commercial sensitivity of that information will have diminished with the passage of time, and in particular with the award of the contracts in the subsequent phase in the Council’s home building programme. The Council has provided no evidence to support its submission regarding the continued risk or harm following from the disclosures of that information.”

More to come:

The decision has been released to me and the City. They have until 23 January 2012 to lodge an appeal or comply. The Commissioner’s intervention and in-depth analysis is greatly appreciated and clearly was much needed.

This report will be available to the public via the internet c. 16 December. It will prove a valuable read to other researchers and anyone interested in how Aberdeen City Council handles information and requests for information. However, one year on from asking the initial questions, there are still crucial questions unanswered:-

Who suggested selling land to Milne companies? What was their position in ACC?
Exactly what public assets have been sold to Milne related companies?
Who in the City was involved in progressing and approving the sales?
Were any bids won by placing bids with very low likely profit margins?
What internal audit procedures, if any, flagged up any issues with the sales or contract awards?
Does anyone within this chain of decision making have any links to any of the Milne-related companies?

Further information on this subject will be forthcoming. Aberdeen Voice will be reporting on the City’s next move.

ACC Ordered To Release List Of Property Sold To Milne

Aberdeen City, Articles, Breaking, Community, Featured, Information, News No Responses »

Dec 122011

Aberdeen Voice has learned that the Scottish Information Commissioner has upheld Voice reporter Suzanne Kelly’s Freedom of Information request with regard to land and property sold by Aberdeen City Council to Stewart Milne and associated companies.

Less than a week having passed since Stewart Milne’s appeal to the Supreme Court failed, the Scottish Information Commissioner has decided that the Council must provide Kelly with information on land transactions between Aberdeen City and Stewart Milne companies.

The Supreme Court had been asked to review the details of a land purchase Milne Group made from Aberdeen City Council. The Supreme Court found that Milne must pay the City £1.7 million over the land deal.

The cost of the legal action is at this point unknown.

Kelly had followed the case, and had heard from several sources that there may have been other deals regarding the property developer and the City.

In a Freedom of Information Request made to the City, Kelly asked for a list of property sold to Milne and/or associated companies and the selling price, as well as a list of contracts the Milne companies had won from Aberdeen (there are several companies connected to Stewart Milne). Kelly wanted to analyse the contracts won and land purchased. The City initially refused her request.

An appeal was lodged, and the Information Commissioner was asked to look at the history of the freedom of information request and the grounds for refusal. The Commissioner issued its findings on 9 December 2011. The Commission decided that Aberdeen City Council and its Freedom of Information officers failed to act properly on a number of issues.

Key points include:-

The City did not always respond to correspondence and requests in a timely manner.
The City said it did not have a comprehensive record keeping system and finding the information would be very difficult. Kelly proved to the Information Commissioner that the City keeps much of its property portfolio details on spreadsheets.
The City said it would cost over a thousand pounds to find this information.
Kelly received some of the requested information during the course of the investigation including details of c. £10 million worth of construction contracts won by Milne and associated companies. No information has as yet been released by Aberdeen to show what property it sold to Milne.

The property dealings of Aberdeen City council had come to the attention of Audit Scotland some time ago. In its findings Audit Scotland found:-

evidence of procedural and administrative deficiencies and poor record keeping,
cases where accurate and relevant information was not reported to elected members,
a lack of evidence to support the valuation at which properties were sold, and
cases where the Council may have achieved a better price. Overall, it appears that there is a potential loss of capital receipts which may be more than £5 million.

The City is considering a number of budget and service cuts, and this spurred Kelly on. Kelly states.

“If the city is awarding contracts based even in part on low bids, then I question the wisdom and prudence of selling land at a fraction of its potential market value to a successful bidder. The City has a massive property portfolio, and if must keep detailed and accurate records of its transactions. In light of the Supreme Court decision last week, the decision from the Information Commissioner is extremely timely and most welcome. I look forward to receiving the information I have sought for so many months.”

Milne is also a director of Aberdeen Football Club. It is slated to sell its existing Pittodrie Stadium ( the UK’s first all-seater stadium ) and use the proceeds to build a stadium in greenbelt land near Loirston Loch. Planning permission was hotly contested, with local community councils objecting to the plans. The area is home to a variety of wildlife. The club’s income is thought to be in steady decline, as attendances have fallen and the team struggle to climb the league.

Says Kelly,

“I shall contact Aberdeen Council if I have not heard from them shortly, and as soon as the information is made available to me, I will report back. The Commissioner agrees that the public have a right to have the information I have fought long and hard to obtain.”

Old Susannah No.58 – The Lie Of The Land

Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, History, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour No Responses »

Nov 142011

Old Susannah pays her respects, but is unable to maintain her silence as she takes a look around what has been happening in our vibrant and dynamic city and beyond.

Things continue to be vibrant and dynamic this week in the Granite City. On Friday 11 November some 4o-plus people gathered for a minute’s silence to mark those who fell in war. Robert Martin who works nearby in Golden Square told me he first started coming to Union Terrace Gardens for the traditional minute of silence a few years back.
“What better, more peaceful place is there in the heart of the City to have the minute of silence,” he commented.

A gardener tried to tell the group they should be at the war memorial instead – he could not understand that we were all happier in the Denburn Valley.

For the record, this was not a celebration of nationalism, or glorification of war; it was a gesture of respect for those who lost their lives in war. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just stop killing each other, and sort out economic and social problems another way? Maybe that day will still come.

Then there was the enjoyable opening night at Peacock for its winter exhibition. The 400 or so works are on show until 23 December and are all for sale. Alicia Bruce is offering small prints of her iconic photo portraits from the Menie Estate which had such a good reception when she exhibited at Peacock. There are abstracts, portraits, beautiful drawings, and even one or two offerings of mine.

A quick word about litter.

During the week I asked an older man who’d dropped litter to please pick it up. He explained (with some interesting vocabulary words which I must look up) that ‘he didn’t know me’, ‘he didn’t have to’ and ‘I could not make him.’ It was a very impressive display indeed.

Days later I was at Sainsbury’s Berryden, and groups of students (probably just over 20 people in total) had stopped by the store to get their lunch. They had wrappers, bags, papers, serviettes, bottles and so on. And as I waited for a bus, I saw each and every student put their trash in the trashcan near the bus stop.

I am pretty sure they were from St Machar. My appreciation to them and the other people who do the right thing. It’s not difficult, it’s not brain surgery. It does however make a huge difference.

But whatever you were doing this week, everyone’s thoughts were with one brave man who is fighting a valiant struggle of his own. Yes, Stewart Milne’s case went to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

The Press & Journal had no room for this story on the day, due to the breaking news that geothermal energy exists. This astonishing front page special even had a picture of a volcano to illustrate it. I had personally expected a story about a cow with a ladder on its neck, but the geothermal story did the trick, and between it and the massive ads for Milne Homes, no room remained for the little matter of our City being called to the Supreme Court.

Then, Friday, the P&J did run with a story on Milne, which leads neatly to a little definition or two.

Negotiate: (verb, Eng) to settle a conflict or disagreement by compromise.

Those of us who read the Press & Journal story will have felt sorry for Stewart Milne. He claimed the matter could have been settled had Aberdeen City council accepted his offer of negotiation.

According to the P&J, Stewart Milne Group claimed:

“We have offered to go to independent arbitration on several occasions over a long period of time,”

Usually negotiations happen when both sides have a valid argument or case to make. To refresh everyone’s memory, the City sold land at Westhill to Mr M for far less than it was worth – the City’s clever business plan was not to sell the land on the open market, but sell directly to Milne (I am sure there was a great reason).

He got a great price on the understanding the City would eventually get any sale profit. In a really clever and not at all dodgy-looking business manoeuvre, the land moved from one arm of the vast Milne empire to the next, at a cost around £500k –apparently more than what the 11 acres cost in the first place. This was perfectly normal, and could have happened to anyone. Quite truthfully, Milne then indicated that there was no profit to share.

This giant poster in no way looks like a desperate advertising ploy, but it does paper over some cracks nicely.

The City and subsequent courts have disagreed with Mr Milne’s logic (shocking!), and rather than enter ‘negotiation’ over the £1.7 million under dispute, the City decided to see the case all the way through. Milne could have accepted the last court’s verdict, but he appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. If you’ve only got £60 million, then you’ve got to hold onto every penny these days.

The trial was televised, and although Old Susannah is no legal expert, it didn’t look all that great for Stew.

Now we just have to wait for the outcome – at which point no doubt everyone’s favourite football club owner will immediately give Aberdeen the £1.7 million it is owed, plus court costs. I think an apology is also due, and hope the City are drafting one to Mr Milne for taking things this far.

This expensive litigation obviously in no way impacts on the role Mr Milne plays in ACSEF, the City and Shire’s invention which is helping us out of economic chaos. Aside from the bang-up job ACSEF has done so far for our city’s shops, it’s created a brilliant logo for itself, and now has a great big vibrant, dynamic mural at McCombie Court. This giant poster in no way looks like a desperate advertising ploy, but it does paper over some cracks nicely.

In light of Stewart’s logic concerning negotiation, the next time you get mugged or have your wallet snatched, don’t go to the law. Just find out who’s got your money and negotiate to get some of it back. Sorted.

Reading this story about how Stew wanted to negotiate, I wonder if I’m not having déjà vu. This sense comes from the P&J article some time back, when Milne and everyone’s favourite forum, ACSEF, were taking over Peacock Visual Art’s project and turning it into the great City Garden Scheme.

Just before the final, decisive and divisive voting on the project took place, ACSEF / Milne said that Peacock had been offered some kind of 11th hour alternative, but were unwilling to strike a deal. Of course if you read the full story, you would have eventually discovered Peacock said ‘we were never contacted about any deal.’

I hope in future any Peacock person, Aberdeen City legal rep, etc. will just ‘negotiate’ when Stewart wants something – it will save the taxpayer lots of money to just go along with him from the start.

In fact, when I think of Loirston Loch, the Triple Kirks glass box scheme, Pittodrie and so on, I wonder if we haven’t just started to say yes to him already.

Geography: (noun) study of terrain, locations, types of environments and areas.

If you are out there, Pete Leonard, Director of Housing, perhaps you might consider a geography lesson or two. Pete insists Tullos Hill is ‘urban’. The hill is next to all the lovely industrial estates which have helped make Aberdeen the profitable centre of the universe it is, but the hill just isn’t all that ‘urban’. It’s covered with plants, grasses, wildlife, pre-historic cairns and so on.

Here in Aberdeen, there is a complete separation of contractors and councillors

On the word of Mr Leonard, I went to Tullos Hill the other day assuming it had been urbanised. I looked for fast food, a coffee or a monorail ride, but there was nothing of the kind to be found.

It struck me that Ms Malone (who has lately been very, very quiet) might want to look for a new initiative to push. Perhaps if she abandoned the ‘tree for every citizen’ scheme and maybe had ‘a monolith for every citizen’ and/or ‘monorail for every citizen’ scheme, it might increase her popularity. As I hear it, an improvement in her popularity stakes is currently the only possible direction.

Aside from Tullos, other urban areas in our city are easy to recognise by the well-maintained roads and footpaths, the general cleanliness, the complete lack of any crime, and all the many open local shops.

Corruption: (noun, English) a state of dishonesty, lack of integrity, self-interested behaviour of a person or body in a position of trust.

Edinburgh has faced accusations of council corruption. (“At least it couldn’t happen in Aberdeen!” I can practically hear you say.)

For openers, according to the BBC, the hospitality records are incomplete. ( This contrasts with our city’s up-to-date, perfectly set out, fully inclusive records which seem to indicate some councillors went to absolutely no events whatsoever in 2009 and or 2010). But that’s the least of Edinburgh’s problems.

Edinburgh’s councillors are in the firing line for ‘possible fraud and serious wrongdoing’ with regard to building works and property.

Audit Scotland could not decide if the city was just a wee bit disorganised, or if there was a whiff of corruption

It also looks like a city councillor had a holiday paid for by a contractor. Here in Aberdeen, there is a complete separation of contractors and councillors. In those rare occasions when a councillor is somehow connected to a contractor, then they stay well out of any possible conflict situations.

Some years ago we had our own little trouble with Audit Scotland, you may remember.

They had a few uncertainties after a detailed investigation of our city’s property selling activities. There were questions as to why so many properties were being sold below value. Audit Scotland did tell the city to stop selling property at knock-down prices, and otherwise pay attention to details – like who is actually buying your property and what it should sell for. In the end, Audit Scotland could not decide if the city was just a wee bit disorganised, or if there was a whiff of corruption. In the end, they invited our local police to look into the issues.

After a completely thorough, detailed investigation, the police found nothing untoward. Old Susannah is not sure when the investigation was conducted. Then again, I’m not sure when exactly Stewart Milne Group started advertising on police cars, either.

Next week: hopefully a Milne court and FOI case update; a fond look back at the careers of John Stewart and Neil Fletcher, who are not going to run for re-election in May.

Stop press: Christmas Gift Solution: Tired of the usual old boring gifts – the handbag-sized bottle of vodka, the city council carriage clock or branded pen? Look no further for your gift requirements: The City is selling photo prints of its greatest moments. Rather than taking a picture of St Nicholas House or the ACSEF logo yourself to make a welcome gift for a loved one, just go to the City’s website.

What is the most popular subject on sale? Why the Lord Provost of course! There are only about 750 photos of him in action this year but fret not: there are two other years of Lord Provost photos as well. Make a lovely print on canvas, or can be sent to an artist to create a portrait in oils. I just might buy a photo of the Lord Provost handing over a gift and turn it into a mug, a mug for some reasons being the first thing that springs to mind.
See: http://aberdeencitycouncil.newsprints.co.uk/

Stop press 2: there will be a further extension for getting your entries in for the Union Terrace Gardens art competition – more news soon!

Old Susannah’s Journal No. 32

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Satire and Humour No Responses »

Apr 222011

Voice’s Old Susannah casts her eye over recent events, stories, and terms and phrases familiar as well as freshly ‘spun’, which will be forever etched in the consciousness of the people of Aberdeen and the Northeast.

There have been a fair share of animal cruelty stories in the last few months; Donald Forbes will soon have is day in Court (looks like 16th May at Aberdeen Sheriff Court – if you’re free, do stop in and wish him well). But there are some other charming people who deserve a mention this week.

Picture this: you are frail, in your 80s, and a youngish girl has been sent as your carer. Just hope it isn’t Kirsty Rae, a home carer for Aberdeenshire Council. She has been caught apparently stealing hundreds of pounds from elderly, vulnerable older women – one believed to be 89 years old. It is a crime how little money our oldest residents are expected to live on to start with – but can you imagine the stress for these women – thinking you had lost your money – and worrying if you were losing your senses?

Allegedly Ms Rae has previous form – she is one to watch in future – actually just watch your older relatives and your wallets if she is within a few hundred yards.

No doubt she has a problem, maybe had a tough childhood, money problems or some other reason we should all feel really sorry for her – and no doubt has reasons why she should not get a custodial sentence. As for me, I will reserve my sympathy for the robbed women – who have lived through World War II, probably worked hard and scrimped and saved all their lives.

Nice one Kirsty.

My second man to watch in the news is the Aberdeen Football Club fan who apparently head-butted a 12-year-old boy.

The boy was asking for it – he had the nerve to be wearing a Celtic jersey AND was in a shopping centre – with his parents. Matthew Brown is thought to be pleading to avoid a football ban – he had been drinking you see. I guess that makes it all right.

The little boy will obviously be very apprehensive and intimidated for some time to come, and was nauseous and ill after the vicious attack. But hey, Matt probably won’t do it again. Unless he has been drinking. Matt – it is only a game, and not an excuse to attack children who choose a different team than yours. No need to get the younger generation involved in any of your personal gripes. Deal?

There is of course no reason why a party would want to stick to the usually generous promises it makes in a manifesto

On a happier note, spring is in the air (well, the haar is pretty thick anyway), and election fever is gripping the City and Shire. In the pubs and clubs the talk is all around the AV – Alternative Voting system referendum, and with the exciting leaflets flooding through the letterboxes explaining how honest, gifted and wonderful each candidate is, it is all anyone is thinking about.

Is the suspense getting to you? I would love to hear your thoughts on this exciting election looming for the 5th May. But what does it all mean? What will it mean for the Country? For our great democratic, unified City? Perhaps looking at some of the terms in depth will help.

Manifesto: (Noun) Work of fiction used to deceive; usually deliberately written to be so long and tedious that anyone who tries reading one will utterly forget their own name, let alone remember the manifesto’s economic policy on EU agricultural subsidies or educational targets.

A party just isn’t a party without a good manifesto; the manifesto gets to have its own ‘launch’ party at which the press stifle yawns and try to think of interesting questions on a document that is ultimately as exciting as a telephone directory – only a lot less believable. There is of course no reason why a party would want to stick to the usually generous promises it makes in a manifesto.

Some parties – for some reason Liberal Democrats in the last prime ministerial elections come to mind – promise the world. Free education for all, ice cream for everybody, and two cars in each garage.

I know – perhaps we can have a consultation on this: maybe the public can be given a choice of route options

They then find themselves with a tiny bit of power, and needing to have a slice of the pie, they fold like a cheap suit and do as they are told by the more powerful party (for some reason I think of the Tories). If your manifesto promises no tuition fees, there is some possibility that one or two of the voters will notice if you are a bit less than good to your word. But then again, it is not as if they can do anything about it.

I’ve had a look at the 89 page Liberal Democrat Manifesto, and see that they intend to deliver something called the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route; this pledge is filed under the phrase ‘for efficiency’. I know – perhaps we can have a consultation on this: maybe the public can be given a choice of route options and vote on the matter after some road shows.

Old Susannah is getting old and her memory is going, because I mistakenly remember sitting at an ‘Aberdeen Civic Forum’ meeting in the town hall, where NESTRANS promised that the route would be finished in 2012. Maybe I got that wrong: perhaps it is the LibDems that will be finished.

But there is good news: The LibDems care about wildlife: From the manifesto:

“The nation’s farmers are also stewards of the countryside, playing a key role in protecting Scotland’s wildlife and habitats”.

Presumably, with the exception of inconvenient deer.

Polling Station: (Noun) A place where, if you are lucky enough to find it, you will be given a numbered piece of paper, have your name written on a numbered sheet of voters names – and then be told that your vote is totally anonymous.

You will have a choice of parties to vote for – Raving Monster Looney party being amongst the more conservative and long lasting of them.

You will wonder if you are looking at photographs of fashion models and movie stars at first

It is the 21st century and we are a technologically advanced society. This is why we are voting using pieces of paper which are stuffed into a wooden box, then later taken to a larger counting area and people hand-count the votes for hours into the night and the next morning.

Mistakes are never made, and no one ever counts incorrectly. You might think that an electronic voting system would be a good idea, but there is something to be said for this method. I’m just too polite to say it.

I said it can be difficult to find your polling station – particularly as some 14,000 Aberdeen residents received their polling cards telling them where to go to vote: to a school that had been closed down some months before. To be fair to the Council, it would be awfully hard to keep track of all the schools we’ve closed, and you cannot be expected to check all the fine details when you print a couple of thousand polling cards.

Flyer: (noun) Printed page delivering short, factual, truthful messages. The means by which political parties remind you of all the good they have done and will do.

The person receiving a flyer through their letter box will religiously read all flyers and save them for posterity, if the dog hasn’t chewed up the flyer and the flyer deliverer’s hand first. They come in fabulous colour schemes such as sickly gold and dark purple to seem all the more cheerful. You will wonder if you are looking at photographs of fashion models and movie stars at first, then you realise it is pictures of your would-be elected officials.

Remember, if it is printed in a flyer, it is true. Candidates are very careful not to promise more than they can deliver, and with our services and society in the shape they are today, there is very little left to promise anyway.

NEXT WEEK: news on FOI requests into Union Terrace Gardens and City property sold to Stewart Milne; Deer update (the deer have 19 days left as things stand before the blackmail ultimatum is up), and more definitions.

Freedom Of Information? – Not In Aberdeen

Aberdeen City, Articles, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Feb 112011

Voice’s Suzanne Kelly tells of her attempts to use Freedom Of Information (FOI) Legislation to find out exactly what property the City of Aberdeen has sold to Stewart Milne/ Stewart Milne companies.

Stewart Milne Construction and its related companies certainly seem to own a fair amount of land in Aberdeen and surrounding areas.

I formally made a Freedom of Information request to the City to find out what public properties were sold by the Council to Milne-related companies.

After a nine week wait for a reply to the original FOI request submitted by e-mail on 9 December 2010, the City declined to supply any information. The City information office sent two documents explaining the rationale for declining the request; the reasons given in these documents can be summarised as follows:-

it would cost too much (£1200) to answer, and
making this information public would damage the Council’s relationships with its suppliers.

( Copies of response letters can be viewed below. )

The public should have the right to know how its assets, in this case land, are disposed of. It must be remembered that the City and Mr Milne have recently been in court over one of these deals. It appears that land in the west of the city was sold to a Milne company for less than market value, and that there was an agreement that any sale profits would be shared with the City. After legal action on the Council’s part to recover some of the perceived profit, it came out that Milne sold land from one branch of his empire to another, and claimed no share was therefore due to the Council.

Oddly, the courts are thus far not sharing Milne’s opinion. However, Milne is reportedly taking the City, and therefore the taxpayer, back to court to appeal this latest judgment: this is why it is imperative that we are told what else he or his companies bought from the City, and what the sale prices and actual values were.

What exactly lies behind Aberdeen’s lack of transparency?

The City disagrees with this assessment, so an appeal will be lodged to its Information Officer over the refusal to answer the FOI request. The City also seems to have confused its dates somewhat.

The official letters denying my information request refer to the request date as 22 January. Is this inefficiency, or a deliberate attempt to obscure the original 9 December e-mail request date?

The City asked me to clarify my request on 23rd December, which I did the same day. It is most definitely relevant to the citizens of cash-strapped Aberdeen to know what kind of deals have been done. Aberdeen citizens are facing millions of pounds’ worth of services cuts; local schools are closing, and children and people with special needs are being told to expect yet more cuts.

If the City is continuing to sell off assets at less than market value (despite Audit Scotland’s recent criticism), then something is greatly amiss. The facts are these – I first sent an e-mail on 9 December asking for information as follows:-

“I have tried unsuccessfully to find the following using your website – please provide it to me under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, many thanks.

The Council responded by email on 23 December, asking what I meant by Stewart Milne companies, and what time frame I had in mind (which may indicate the sales cover a long period of time).

When I received the request for clarification, I immediately visited the Companies House website, and immediately replied with a list of near a dozen entities bearing the Stewart Milne name which are registered in Scotland.

I also reminded the City’s Information Officer that I wanted a complete list and had no dates in mind. Weeks passed; I sent two further reminders and finally wrote that I would be contacting the Scottish Information Officer.

This prompted a next-day reply which was a refusal to comply. The Freedom of Information Act is meant to give all citizens access to data held by elected officials and public bodies.

In cases where disclosure of requested information would be too costly or would prove a serious breach of security or confidentiality, or would damage fiscal relationships, information may be withheld.

If the requestor is not satisfied with the response received, they have access to the non-partisan Scottish Information Officer, who can order disclosure of information.

What exactly lies behind Aberdeen’s lack of transparency? What ‘supplier relationships’ are under threat if the transactions are revealed?

How can it cost £1200 to supply a list of property sold and Council Committee Minutes approving such sales, keeping in mind most Minutes are already on the City’s intranet site?

Who has been involved in the transactions and the decisions regarding my request?

( Click on images to enlarge )

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