To the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy secretary.
And.
To the Health Secretary:
For Clarity - Attempt 585.
585) We'll Be Doing Our Bit For Quite Some Considerable Time To Come Or So It Would Seem.
Dear Mr Clark and Mr Hunt,
We're getting used to being given the runaround by British bureaucrats - it's the way things are done over here. It's a big part of our British identity.
Apparently, according to Yanis Varoufakis, it's also the way things are done over there in Europe by the Brussels bureaucrats in particular. He tells us that,
"The runaround is a systematic means of control over uppity governments...As for its apparatchiks, the EU runaround is essential to their personal status and power." (Yanis Varoufakis - 6 Brexit traps that will defeat Theresa May. The Guardian)
The people at Ombudsman Services and Livewell Southwest Ltd: Gillian Fleming, The Rev Smith, Professor Dame Janet Finch and Professor Waite each had the means, the method and the opportunity to answer our questions, only they chose not to.
Yanis Varoufakis put it this way,
"Their responses, when they came, would be perfectly independent of anything I had said. I might have been singing the Swedish national anthem. It would have made no difference."
He's right and here are two examples by way of illustration.
First example - We tried asking Professor Dame Janet Finch, Chair of Ombudsman Services, wasn't it the case that her Lead Ombudsman, Gillian Fleming, had failed in her duty as an Ombudsman when not disclosing Monk and partners' photographs to us or reporting Mr Monk to the RICS Regulatory Board?
We wrote,
"Q 88: I asked, was agreeing to carry out essential repairs not a tacit acceptance (by Monk and Partners) that the original survey was not of an acceptable standard?"
(Otherwise why did Mr Monk of Monk and Partners agree to carry them out?)
I didn't get an answer from the Ombudsman.
(This was an Ombudsman who didn't answer questions from an uppity complainant)
Q 89: I asked the Independent Assessor to comment on the professional integrity of Monk and Partners, given the Ombudsman's statement that,
"I did not look at the photographs." And, "Your view seems to be that external photographs taken without express permission are somehow inadmissible because they amount to evidence gathered in a suspect way."
(But Mr Monk had previously stated he would not come to our home again! Isn't it evidence gathered in a suspect way? And why didn't Mr Monk give us a copy of the photographs - We were employing him after all?)
I pointed out to the Independent Assessor that I knew what I thought, but then I wasn't the ombudsman. I know that a teacher standing outside a pupil's home and photographing it would be in serious trouble but that similar standards did not seem to apply to certain surveyors.
The Ombudsman had the evidence but seems to have seen nothing wrong with this.
The Independent Assessor's response was,
"The Terms of Reference, which can be downloaded from the website, provide that the procedure for the conduct of an investigation will be such as the Ombudsman considers appropriate subject, in brief, to the duty to proceed fairly, to make reasoned decisions, not to disclose details of a complaint except in certain circumstances and to have regard to any rule of law, contract, code of conduct."
That is not what the Terms of Reference say (in this instance). 7.3 is quite specific on the matter,
"Information passed to the Ombudsman will be disclosed to the other party unless reasons are given setting out circumstances justifying non-disclosure."
(We got Mr Monk's photographs via a Data Protection Act Request. Why weren't they disclosed to us and when they weren't, why weren't we given a reason for the non-disclosure by the Ombudsman as stipulated in her Terms of Reference?)
How is this fair and transparent?
The Ombudsman had written to me on 24th August,
"I would reiterate that the question of whether the Firm has acted in a manner consistent with the standards of conduct required is a matter for the professional body concerned, which in this case would be the RICS."
Yet the Terms of Reference 10(b) state that the duty of the Ombudsman is,
"To report to the RICS Regulatory Body any cases which involve serious or persistent breaches of the RICS Rules of Conduct by RICS Member Firms."
There are two issues here:
Firstly, it is a matter for the Ombudsman - it is a duty - (of which she and her Independent Assessor both seem to be totally unaware) to report breaches to the RICS Regulatory Board. Otherwise how are they - the RICS - ever going to know? It would be a remarkable turn of events should the Member Firm report itself to the RICS Regulatory Board
Secondly, if the Ombudsman didn't consider Monk and Partners actions to be serious enough to report to the RICS Regulatory Board, surely she should have said why. They are, after all, part of her duties and responsibilities as set out in the Terms of Reference.
It is not, "a matter for the professional body" (as Gillian Fleming states) - it is a matter for her as Ombudsman, a duty. Opting out is not an option.
Professor Dame Janet Finch, Chair of Ombudsman Services, passed our complaint on to The Rev Smith, CEO and Chief Ombudsman at Ombudsman Services, who in turn passed it on to Gillian Fleming, Lead Ombudsman at Ombudsman Services:Property they very person we were complaining about in the first place. The Lead Ombudsman did not answer our questions about her.
We asked |Oliver Colvile our MP to ask The Rev Smith the same questions which he duly did. The reply from The Rev Smith was that we had misunderstood the company's Terms of Reference. The Rev Smith didn't offer an explanation as to how we'd come to misunderstand them or what, exactly, it was about them that we had misunderstood.
So no transparency or accountability there either.
Yanis Varifoukis' description - one of being given the runaround seems both accurate and appropriate.
The second example involves Professor Waite, CEO of Livewell Southwest Ltd. We tried asking Professor Waite why we hadn't been given the name of his Anonymous Desk Top Reviewer - the one responsible for the ludicrous decision - and were told by him that we should have known the person's name. That was it. Nothing more was forthcoming.
I'm thinking of learning Swedish.
Q. Mr Clark and Mr Hunt, are the two above examples, examples of acceptable standards of transparency and accountability in a modern 21st century democracy that has proudly just Take Back Control?
Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert
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