Thanks

I could do with a conversation on Monday about Mr Sheridan.  I be grateful of you could put a  bit of a plan together about closing out his allegations as well as where we now go with staff.  It is clearly very destructive to think that any communication we issue in that service will go straight to the press and politicians via the source.  I think we do need to make efforts to identify the individual(s) involved.

Neil

From: Mason, Andrew
Sent: 30 October 2013 14:56
To: Evans, Neil
Cc: Jaye, Emma
Subject: Sunday and evenings plus parking issues

Neil

Think you have now signed off the media release prepared by Amanda Burns. She has just phoned me to advise that the people who objected to the order would normally get a letter advising them of the outcome of that objection – obviously noted but not acted on in this case. Legal apparently send standard letters out to tell objectors and so the relevant person in Legal is being chased to get them out today.

Re the John Sheridan issue I have now emailed ‘him’ asking for a meeting or conversation to seek to get more information in relation to the where he has got the information he has about the on-going disciplinary investigation and also his contention that tickets properly issued to staff (Mark Jefford and Robert Floyd) have been cancelled without justification. I have told him I regard these issues as serious and will act if provided with more information.  I know Helen has already tried to get a meeting but I think it sensible to try again so that we can show we have tried hard to get to the bottom of this. Via Emma Jaye we have got some advice back from Mark Turnbull on defamation and I have copied the relevant bits of his email below.

My summary of Mark’s advice is that officers and Elected Members can take action for defamation but only as individuals and must do so at their own expense in terms of the actual proceeding. Mark does appear to say that getting advice on whether defamation proceedings are appropriate would appear to be covered by the Council’s indemnity scheme. Mark has also said that an important pre-cursor is to be clear with the alleged miscreant that actions being complained of are actually legal and appropriate – something we have done in terms of telling Mr Sheridan that tickets have been correctly issued due to the existence of valid TROs etc. You may want to discuss this further possibly with Mark though I understand he is now out of the office until Monday 4th.

Re the conduct of staff we have not as yet any definitive proof that any member of staff is directly implicated either by doing this themselves or by supplying information to a friend of partner. Andy Machin’s advice is pretty clear in that unless we can identify any one person we should address our concerns to the wider workgroup. I suggest we do this by letter to all staff being clear of the consequences of doing this, the ability to raise concerns via the Whistleblowing procedure and also the general duty in terms of conduct and confidentiality in relation to information they come across during their work.

Hope this is OK.   

As regards defamation, central and local government bodies can’t bring proceedings for defamation, but individual officers and Members can. However, the Council’s indemnity reflects the specific restriction in the Local Authorities (Indemnities for Members and Officers) Order 2004 to the effect that no indemnity may be provided in relation to the making of a claim of alleged defamation of a Member or officer, so any Member or officer wishing to bring court proceedings will need to do so at their own expense. However, the indemnity could cover the expense of seeking legal advice as to whether they had a claim in the first place, or the expense of a formal letter threatening proceedings.

As you will appreciate, defamation isn’t therefore an area we advise on regularly, but we do have a number of external firms on our call-off contract who would be able to assist if Neil or other colleagues wanted to get further advice on this, and as mentioned above this would be covered by the Council’s indemnity.

In relation to whether defamation proceedings would succeed, my view is it’s clear that if someone publishes a defamatory allegation of corruption, they would have a defence only if they had taken reasonable steps before publishing to verify that the allegations were true and if they reasonably believed there were grounds for believing that the allegations were true. This takes us back to the point I mentioned above about clearly addressing in writing to them the issues which this person has raised so that it’s clear they could not reasonably believe the allegations they are making. In addition, the references to Robert Floyd being a “bullyboy” and a “hound dog” are potentially defamatory. The possible difficulties with this are that this person will no doubt claim their e-mails are “political expression” for the purposes of Article 10 and so should attract the highest level of protection. Also, elected politicians and to a certain extent officers, are expected to have thicker skins than others when it comes to free speech.

Andrew Mason
Environmental Health Manager 
Leeds City Council
Environmental Action Service
Millshaw Park Way
Leeds LS11 0LS

tel 0113 39 51501
mobile 07891 276 767