For far too long the government, local and national have abused their privilege of having the power to tax the people of this fine country. This site has been set up to highlight some of the corruption, fraud, waste, dishonesty, and nepotism that exists at Harlow Council.
It’s not confined to just Harlow though, up and down the country across hundreds of councils the story is exactly the same. They’ve been geting away with it for so long because they are never questioned or held to account for their decisions or their spurious spending. As a result our taxes increase year by year and we get very little in return for the money that is taken under threat of fines and/or imprisonment.
The big challenge though is how do we hold our elected officials accountable? Unfortunately the only effective way we can, is en masse and how we do that is open for debate. The quickest and most effective way is to throttle the source of money into government coffers. Whether that be via a mass boycott of council tax or similar, or other means. Something needs to be done.
One of the ways to get their attention is to start questioning everything, to take the time to interrogate the council’s accounts, people and behaviours and that’s what this site is setting out to do.
There are no political affiliations here.
If you’d like to do something similar for your council, please see a handy guide below:
- Create a list of every councillor in your area. The council should have this published on their website. Make sure to include their contact details – These may come in handy at a later date.
- If available download the Register of Member’s Interests. Some councils require that you physically visit the register. Some councils will also insist you write down notes rather than taking photographs. Make sure to take note of any business interests, associations, charities and committeees the councillor is a member of.
- Make use of the Companies House website to get further information on any of the business interests of councillors (from Register of Member’s Interests). Take it a step further and do a search on every single councillor’s name on the Companies House website.
- Make use of the Charities Commission website for any charities councillors are trustees of. Be sure to note the names of these charities.
- If you know the name of any family members of councillors, do exactly the same with their names.
- By law the council has to publish all of their expenditures over £500. Download these documents. You will spend hours on these documents. Scrutinise these documents. Investigate every company the council makes payments to.
- Get a list of the senior managers of your council. They should be listed on the council website. Councils are also required to publish the pay bands these managers fall into.
- Check the Companies House website to see if any of the senior managers own companies. Check to see whether any of those companies are on the expenditure documents
- Make use of Freedom of Information requests to get the information you can’t find.