It has taken 10 months to attempt to get to the bottom of the claim that many made that the ERC 'consultation' was flawed. (Consultation with regards to the proposed New Leisure Centre)

We are still not there, however we are somewhat closer to discovering the facts.

Many will remember the alleged consultation that was published by East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) which they claimed showed that the consensus was in favour of a new build.

That then indicated Shawwood Greenspace was in the frame.

We have corresponded with ERC, sent in Freedom of Information (FOI) requests which have been refused, and due to technical complications highlighted by the commissioner the whole process required to be run again.

Our submission was that the IP numbers of those who allegedly took part in the consultation were of importance, in order to confirm the numbers of those for and against etc.

This was in order to validate the ERC claim that the majority were in favour of a new build, as a subsequent poll indicated the totally opposite in relation to a build at Shawwood.

ERC resisted the application and also fought the appeal to the commissioner.

The council claimed the numbers were personal data, and from those numbers they could identify individuals.

Something that the police, GCHQ etc are unable to do without the assistance of the IP service providers.

However we have been left in limbo and the reason will be covered in another thread.

What did occur was the commissioner requested that ERC provide the number of people who responded to the consultation.

ERC provided this data and that is what we now base our opinion on.

More to follow..........................

We are aware from the council paper that 3601 votes were cast.

Anthony Buchanan said this was a magnificent turn out, one of the largest ever for a council 'consultation'. Electorate 69,982 (2015)

We are also aware that 123 responses had been removed from the consultation after being identified as having been part of multiple votes from one person.

In response to the commissioners request the council confirmed the number of responses as 3601.

They also indicated that the number of individual IP addresses was 2981.

Which is of course a shortfall of some 620 from the top figure.

We then went back to the council and questioned this number and highlighted the only other number ever disclosed by the council was 123.

What could this 620 relate to.??????

The response.

I am advised by the relevant department that the total number of responses was 3601, of which 2981 had unique IPs - response from IP addresses already captured numbered 620.



As regards the 123 removed responses mentioned in the annex of the Council report, this figure is a subset of the 620. The 123 were suspicious responses that appear to be the same response being submitted multiple times.