Rank Council hypocrisy?
(or Why won't the Council apologise?)

Please note
We would, as always, be very happy to receive a response to this article,
or any other, from the Council!
Any communication will be published in full without alteration.

In June 2008, this appeared on the front page of the Stoke-on-Trent City Council website:

If you followed the instructions, a Press Release used to appear:

185-08

" ___ "

Issued: 5 June 2008.

Unfortunately for the Council, this Press release no longer appears on their website.

The BBC informed the Council that it was considered to be libellous, and it was removed after two days.

The BBC also contacted HAVOC, and very graciously asked us to remove the offending piece of garbage - which we have willingly done.

HAVOC finds it rather ironic that the same gentleman who was responsible for creating Press Release 185-08 was also responsible for threatening the Hands off Haywood High campaign with legal action for libel.

Rank hypocrisy?

Possibly, it presents us with a fantastic opportunity to give a bit of gratuitous advice
to the Council's PR Department:

Do as you would be done by!

Even though you can no longer read what the Council's PR Department put out in June, what we wrote on this page still stands:

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While the Council is perfectly within its rights to demand an apology for inaccuracies, we would suggest that they get their own house in order first.

Try entering "apology" in the search box on the City Council website. There are ten items to be found. The first three are about Victims, Restorative Justice, and something to do with the Waterside launch in 2006.

The fourth is the Elected Mayor's speech at the 1st November 2007 Full Council meeting about an apology received from Channel 4 about the Location, Location, Location programme and "its assessment that Stoke was not one of the best places to live in the UK".

The other six items are irrelevant to this discussion.

Now search for the word "sorry". There are eight items.

Finally we strike gold! First item is Steve Robinson apologising in the City News Special Summer 2007: "I’ll be the first to say that in the past, we haven’t always performed to the best of our ability and mistakes have been made. But I also want to say that we’re sorry, we’ve learned valuable lessons and we want to move forward."

The other seven items containing the word "sorry" have no relevance here.

So, according to their own website, the City Council and its officials have publicly used the word "sorry" only once, and the word "apologise" to no one.

Amongst other matters, we suggest that the Council ought to seriously consider giving proper, sincere apologies for:

its conduct of the "consultation" on schools. This exercise was a total PR disaster. Had the public actually been consulted before the "transforming schools" glossy green document was produced, the outcome would surely have been different. Had Council officials, both elected and unelected, really listened to what the people were saying, we might already have had a workable, forward-looking plan being enacted for schools in Stoke.

Everyone who was insulted by the attitude of Council officials,
elected or not,
during the consultation process deserves a sincere apology!

for being so inept in the Social Services Department that our schools got taken over by a private company. A great deal of the resentment felt by the people of Stoke about the Schools transformation process is due to the fact that they feel they have no control over a huge multi-national company that can only have the interests of its shareholders at heart. Had the process truly, and visibly, been controlled by the Council, the people would have felt more secure.

The people deserve a sincere apology!

the Dimensions fiasco. This is now supposed to have been "under review" all along. Why was the public not told this from the beginning? The budget proposals state on page 37 "The proposed saving of £60k is the base saving included within the budget arising from the closure of the splash pool at Dimensions. It comprises direct running costs such as staffing costs, pool chemicals, etc (£44k), and the annual financing cost of £16k for a required refurbishment of the pool due next year, which is capital expenditure, and is estimated to cost in the regions of £160k in total. This will be followed by a business plan review of services, estate and facilities provision to determine what value they give, and what impact they have on our key indicators, which will result in likely service changes." We, and probably the rest of the citizenry of Stoke, fail to see that "The proposed saving of £60k is the base saving included within the budget arising from the closure of the splash pool at Dimensions. ... This will be followed by a business plan review of services, estate and facilities provision to determine what value they give, and what impact they have on our key indicators" means anything but the closure of the pool and a subsequent review.

At the very least,
the staff at Dimensions are owed a massive, sincere, apology from the Council
for having to endure months of uncertainty over their jobs!

City Life. For those who have never seen this publication, it is the City Council's propaganda sheet. It is filled with "good news". In the last issue, the following five unattributed comments were to be found under the heading "Our City prize just the tonic for lucky reader":

Very bright and colourful and easy to read. Love the layout, it beats the local papers and has some interesting stories and certainly makes you feel proud to be living in Stoke-on-Trent.
A great magazine - it shows our city is moving forward in the right direction.
Bright, colourful and an enjoyable and informative read.
Thank you for a really good magazine. I was really impressed by the content and presentation.
It is refreshingly positive in contrast to the local press. I found it to be a celebration of our upwardly mobile city.

Unfortunately, the Council's PR department, full of very highly-paid operatives, "forgot" to tell us who these terribly impressed people were. This is an exceptionally elementary mistake, and opens up all the published comments to doubt. The PR department should stop deluding itself that all is right, get out of its office, and find some properly attributable statements.
Numbers 1 and 5 contain attacks on the local press. The Elected Mayor has recently been in dispute with The Sentinel. Such comments can only arouse suspicion.
Numbers 2 and 5 are very reminiscent of things that the Elected Mayor has recently said.
Number 3 and 4 are misleading. The content of the magazine is not informative, except in the way that it shows just how desperate the Council is to present itself in a good light. It does not present any facts that can even remotely show that the City Council might be failing in its remit. If we may quote the Elected Mayor from Press Release 185-08 above: "We at the city council will always be vigilant to make sure that we, and the people of the city, receive fair coverage." This magazine cannot in any way be construed to be giving fair coverage. It is a propaganda sheet, and vividly shows up the hypocrisy prevalent in the council.

The people of Stoke-on-Trent deserve a sincere apology!

Renew. Renew has badly failed the people of Park Estate, Burslem. In a series of public meetings, the public repeatedly told Renew what they wanted and what they did not want (which was, coincidentally, almost exactly what Renew was proposing!). Renew ignored the people and has done exactly what it wanted to do, to the detriment of the estate. So much for listening!

The Residents of Park Estate deserves a sincere apology!

its failure to deliver basic public services, such as drainage and street cleaning. In the Haywood area, we cite the example of Hamil Road. The drains have been washed out exactly twice in the last six and a half years! Admittedly, they were cleaned on Friday 6th June 2008. But this happens to coincide with a walkabout by a Ward Councillor, together with various Council officers, in the area. The litter picker walks up Hamil Road to its junction with Park Road, then sets off back downhill. The pavements of the upper part of Hamil Road are constantly dirty, not least due to the fact that the wind generally blows uphill! These facts were pointed out to the Elected Mayor in his "Meet Mark" session on 15th November 2007. What was done? Precisely nothing! We, the people, fail to see how Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been awarded three stars for its delivery of public services when it is visible to all residents that it is obvious that it is failing in its basic tasks.

We deserve a sincere apology!

taking the people of Stoke-on-Trent for granted. The Council has for too long had the attitude "What we think is right for the City is right. What everyone else thinks is wrong". Every Council official, elected or not, must learn to live and work in accordance with the City Council's (former?) motto "Putting People First"! It is time that the Council took into account the views of its Citizens before acting.

If for nothing else, for all the money wasted by the Council,
we deserve a sincere apology!

The Council leadership seems to gloat over the apologies from the media (however spurious they may be), yet has shown no inclination to apologise to its own Citizens for blatant mismanagement. Instead every possible avenue is explored in order to blame others.

We would like to paraphrase Mr Meredith. We will alter his words (as were quoted in Press Release 185-08) slightly and challenge him to live by them:

"I am greatly pleased that the City Council leadership has acknowledged that there have been failings in its management of this City. This admission is of vital importance to the future of everyone in Stoke-on-Trent. I fundamentally believe that many in the local Council strive to be open-minded and competent, and I am saddened that the public had to make these complaints. The Council must be extremely careful when dealing with such a sensitive issue as the reorganisation of the city's schools where feelings run very high and a level of objectivity and openness is vital to properly democratic outcomes. We hope that the people of the city will always be vigilant to make sure that we provide competent management."

We, the Citizenry, would dearly love to hear the Elected Mayor say words to the effect of those below. We have decided not hold our collective breath ...

"On behalf of the whole City Council,
I would like to apologise to the Citizens of Stoke-on-Trent for ...
You have encouraged us to look long and hard at our performance and it has been a comprehensive self-examination - occasionally painful - and personally a very useful exercise."