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Are ERC intercepting elected members communications? Print E-mail

Published 17th August 2015

IT is being claimed that an invite to all twenty councillors at East Renfrewshire Council never arrived in their mail.

The invite was from the representatives of all ten community councils in East Renfrewshire requesting councillors attend their meeting to discuss the new CC scheme.

The email is reproduced in the next post and the following one highlights how this allegation came to light.

From: joint cc [mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]

Sent: 11 August 2015 00:16

To: 'J (Cllr) Fletcher' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Alastair (Cllr) Carmichael' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Tony Buchanan' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Gordon (Cllr) McCaskill' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'M (Cllr) Montague' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'A (Cllr) Lafferty' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'B (Cllr) Cunningham' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Ian (Cllr) McAlpine' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Elaine (Cllr) Green' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Vincent Waters' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Kenny (Cllr) Hay' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 'Jim Swift' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Gordon Wallace (Cllr.' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Stewart Miller' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'B (Cllr) Grant' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; paul.o' This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 'C (Cllr) Gilbert' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'Ralph (Cllr) Robertson' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; 'D (Cllr) Devlin' < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

Subject: URGENT

Dear Councillor

A majority of ERC's Administration Councillors voted through a Scheme of Establishment for East Ren CCs on the 24th June at a special meeting. We believe we can now show this amended scheme to be unlawful in its interpretation and implementation of the Acts and Model Schemes.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday 11th), all ten Community Councils with as many Community Councillors as possible, are coming together to discuss this matter in front of the press. Invitees include our MP, MSPs and both the Minister with responsibility and First Minister, along with Lorraine McMillan, Chief Executive, Jim Sneddon, Head of Democratic Services and Tracy Butler, Head of Community Planning. We sincerely hope the last three attend in person to ensure this new scheme gets a fair and balanced hearing.

The meeting is to be held on Tuesday the 11th August 2015 at 7.30pm at Albertslund Hall, 1 Westacres Road, Newton Mearns , G77 6WW.

We understand this is short notice but we are now extending this invitation to all twenty elected members.

It is starting to look like those who voted for the Scheme, were perhaps more motivated by the removal of the independence of Community Councils than in giving this Scheme as offered by your officers, the proper scrutiny it deserved and required.

If you are unable to attend, given the short notice we will understand , but if you would like a briefing note on where your officers have, we believe, gone so catastrophically wrong in their application of the Acts and Model Schemes, please reply to this email simply saying "copy of the briefing notes please."

Regards

East Renfrewshire Community Council Members

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent to all Thornliebank Community Councillors.

b_2015-08-16.jpg

Cllr Waters

From: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To: kenndarroch; lynnearnott; wisner; danmcphail; williamkenny; helenashanks; yvonnehamilton

Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2015 23:35:28 +0100

Subject: CC Meeting

Friends

I've been asked why I didn't accept an invitation to a meeting of CCs in the last week.

I understand it's being claimed all Councillors were invited. I wanted to make sure you were aware I received no such invitation. I believe no Cllr did, though someone seems to be putting that story about.

If anyone has an issue to do with CCs they want to speak about please let me know.

Regards,

Councillor Vincent Waters

SNP Giffnock & Thornliebank Ward

07783 88 71 70

@WatersSNP

Sent from Samsung Mobile on O2

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This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are not necessarily the view of East Renfrewshire Council. It is intended only for the person or entity named above. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the author by replying to this e-mail and then erasing the e-mail from your system. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, review, dissemination, distribution or copying of the e-mail is strictly prohibited.

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This footnote also confirms that this e-mail message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses.

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NEWSLINE has contacted two other elected members who have stated that they did not receive the email invite either.

It is known that the chief executive Lorraine McMillan stated in the past that ERC would not recognise the East Renfrewshire Joint Community Council Forum. (ERJCCF)

The question has to be asked, why apparently did none of the elected members receive this invite.

Are all communications to elected members intercepted and monitored by council staff?.

Did Lorraine McMillan instruct that this invite was to be withheld from the elected members of East Renfrewshire ?.

NEWSLINE has been made aware that the intercepting and blocking of emails was identified previously. The chair of NMCC alerted us to this email chain.

WE would have to ask the question, is this democracy at work.

Surely even the administration councillors should be outraged that their correspondence is allegedly being intercepted, screened and rejected without their knowledge.

Is this further evidence that ERC is a rogue council under the leadership, or as some commentators may say, dictatorship, of the £116,389 a year Chief Executive Lorraine McMillan.

Is it time for her to go?

 
Rogue council fails to respond Print E-mail

Three senior members of East Renfrewshire Council staff have failed to respond to requests to attend a meeting to be held this evening in Newton Mearns to discuss the impending community council scheme.

Chief Executive Lorraine McMillan, Head of Democratic Services Jim Sneddon and Community Planning team leader Tracy Butler were invited to this meeting but each one has failed to respond, even in the negative.

They have simply blanked the organisers request for a yes or no as to their attendance.

Unlike Kirsteen Oswald MP, who responded, and MSPs Jackson Carlaw, Stewart Maxwell and Ken McIntosh all of whom responded, and Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment Marco Biagi MSP.

The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman defines Maladministration to include 'failure to reply'.

This meeting will see members of all ten East Ren community councils in attendance.

 
The war drums are beating ! Print E-mail

All ten of East Renfrewshire's Community Councils are coming together for the first time in a number of years to discuss and formulate a response to what they see as East Renfrewshire's dictatorial and draconian new scheme for community councils.

ERC would joyously highlight that the East Renfrewshire Joint Community Council Forum (ERJCCF) only consisted of seven community council representatives.

However the recent actions of what many see as a rogue council and a number of its inept councillors has now brought all ten together in their belief that ERC are acting illegally in addition to attempting to impose their flawed will on a statutory body.

A meeting is being held on Tuesday 11th August 2015 where it is believed that plans will be discussed as to how all East Renfrewshire Community Councils can fight what are seen as very undemocratic proposals.

Members of Busby, Giffnock and Barrhead community councils are meeting with the other seven CC's at Abertslund Hall where members of the Scottish Government and MSP's have been invited.

 
Lorraine McMillan should do the decent thing and resign Print E-mail

Published 4th July 2015

The latest ‘incident’ is more evidence that the Council's Chief Executive doesn’t seem to care about the rights of the public of East Renfrewshire. She should go.

lorraine-mcmillan-ciorstan-_2015-07-04.jpg

Chief Executive 
Lorraine McMillan


East Renfrewshire Council has lost almost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money.

Lorraine McMillan East Renfrewshire Council's Chief Executive attempted to hide from public view the fact it has made more than £1.2 million in over payments to external companies, and has so far only managed to recover part of the cash.

It has now been forced to mark £213,658 of cash as “irrecoverable”.

A report was prepared for the elected members but a 'gagging' order was placed on them by Lorraine McMillan.

She used legislation that was created to protect disclosure of 'legal advice' when a council is considering legal action, or criminal action is being deliberated by the police. However neither of these apply in this instance.

This is not the first time that Lorraine McMillan has invoked this legislation in circumstances that many thought to be dubious to say the least.

On being questioned in the chamber, where the press and the public were excluded, the chief executive admitted that there was going to be no civil action and she was not going to involve the police.

Therefore the 'gagging' order was wholly inappropriate and could only have been put in place to prevent the public from becoming aware of the shortcomings of the council.

What Lorraine McMillan wished to conceal from the public was that ERC had overpaid £1.2 million pounds to three companies.

Now £213,658 of tax payers’ money has been required to be completely written off by ERC.

This is not the first time that Lorraine McMillan has been accused of disregarding the public of East Renfrewshire.

Refusing requests from an elected member, a community council and residents to instruct her staff to prosecute an individual who was operating an unlicensed house of multiple occupancy, giving rise to accusations of partiality.

Instructing staff not respond to or recognise a group of community councillors who set up, as per Scottish Government guidance, a community councillors forum.

Instigating actions that allegedly denied a resident their human rights.

It’s become tedious, this saga of Lorraine McMillan treating the public with apparent disdain.

The £123,257 (2010 / 11) salaried Chief Executive should do the decent thing, and resign.

 
ER Community Councils - Disbanded Print E-mail

At a full council meeting this evening after a vote of 12 to 5 the council agreed to disestablish Community Councils in August 2014 and to hold elections in September this year under the new scheme that they have approved. (New boundaries, new rules and a disciplinary code)

As CC's have all met already in June and most take July and August off in keeping with the council, the existing Ccllrs are in reality no more.

Those voting for the new scheme were

Proposed by Mary Montague

Seconded by Kenny Hay

Supported by Jim Fletcher

Supported by Vincent Waters

Supported by Tony Buchanan

Supported by Alistair Carmichael

Supported by Elaine Green

Supported by Danny Devlin

Supported by Tommy Reilly

Supported by Paul O'Kane

Supported by Alan Lafferty

Supported by Ian McAlpine

 

Those voting against

Ralph Robertson

Gordon McCaskill

Stewart Millar

Jim Swift

Charlie Gilbert

 
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