November 24: Not in the public interest?
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WHEN auditors gave Kent County Council
a clean bill of health over its commercial trading activities
and concluded that it was not competing unfairly against businesses
through its various companies, a number of recommendations were
made.
Among them was the auditors’
suggestion that KCC seek to be more transparent about what it was
doing in the commercial services area and put more information into
the public domain.
The full recommendation was that
KCC seek to "maximise disclosure of information in its
commercial undertakings, subject to exercising proper commercial
sensitivities, including expanding the disclosure of its commercial
activities in its own annual financial statements."
The ruling Conservative
administration duly pledged that it would seek to be more open in
the face of complaints from some companies that it had in the past
been rather too secretive.
And as a start, it set up a
sub-committee specifically to allow greater scrutiny to be given to
the activities of its commercial operations –
the Governance and Audit Committee Trading Activities Sub
Group, which met for the first time in September.
Its next meeting comes next week
but anyone expecting to glean information about what is happening
around KCC's commercial activities might be a little
disappointed.
Of the eleven items on the
agenda, more than half are to be discussed behind closed doors as
they have been ruled exempt under a piece of legislation known as
the Local Government (Access To Information) Act
1985.
This allows councils the
discretion to discuss some matters without either the press or
public being present and one of the grounds for doing so is if they
are in some way commercially sensitive.
As a result, reports that won’t
be considered in public include the following: the business case
for limited company private hire operation; the business case for
Kent County Supplies Ltd; a loan agreement to Kent Top Temps; the
return on investment from Kent Top Temps; an item on limited
company accounts and something referred to as "dividend policy –
private companies."
For all these items, KCC has had
to apply a public interest test, weighing up
whether disclosure would serve the public interest more than
withholding relevant information. The agenda does not spell out the
specific public interest reasons for considering any of these items
behind closed doors.
So it is difficult to know
precisely whether the grounds for the exemption applied are valid
or appropriate – although I am not contending that they have not
been carefully considered.
On the other hand, some may well
find it sits uneasily with the recommendation from auditors that
KCC seek to "maximise disclosure" or assist the committee in its
endeavours "to ensure that the trading activities of the
Council are run properly and transparently."
Tuesday, November 24 2009
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