agenda items & minutes of the meeting held on 27 June 2018 to review the JCIO website

Dudley Jones made this Freedom of Information request to Judicial Conduct Investigations Office This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was partially successful.

Dear Judicial Conduct Investigations Office,
1) Can you tell me the item number and the wording of that item at the meeting on the 27 June 2018 which reviewed the JCIO website?
2) Could you also tell me what the minutes of the 27 June meeting said about the proposed radical and highly controversial changes to the list of things you could and could not complain about in relation to a judge's conduct?
3) Mrs Kim Webb tells me she can only provide information from the recorded information that's available, Can she tell me then what is the source of the recorded information that enables her to state in her FOI Response (29/11/2019) that the JCIO website was refreshed in - 'and around' [?] June 2018, and again in 'Oct/Nov? Where has this vague information come from?
4) Is it the responsibility of an official directly employed by the JCIO to make the radical changes to the official JCIO website of the list of things you can, and cannot, complain about with regard to a judges conduct OR does the JCIO outsource the responsibility of making these important website changes to an outsourcing company who maintain the worksite on behalf of the JCIO? If it is handled by an outsourcing company what is the name of this company?
5) How are these radical changes to the official JCIO website actioned? Is there a written directive to an official or is it done by an informal chat with an official in, for example, the corridor or canteen? Is it the same official who is always designated to make these changes? If so, are they a junior official or is it someone in a more managerial role? Or is some written directive issued to an outsourcing company official?

Background
I assume the JCIO's record-keeping is neither so casual nor lackadaisical that no records are kept of the agenda items and minutes for such an important meeting as the JCIO meeting on the 27 June 2018? I’m on the management committee of Caversham Lawn Tennis Club and I can 'pull up' a record for the agenda and minutes for all the committee meetings held in 2018. I cannot believe the JCIO is so poorly run, so inefficient and so casual that they cannot do what my local tennis club regards as routine management.
In her FOI Response of 13 Jan 2020, Senior Case Manager Mrs Kim Webb confirms there was a meeting on 27 June 2018 to 'review' (!) the JCIO website but that there 'were no records to confirm that any other meetings took place in 2018'. Really? Is this credible? Mrs Webb has already informed me (FOI Response 29 Nov 2019) that 'the information on the JCIO website was 'refreshed in and around June 2018, and again in Oct/Nov 2018'. Does she seriously expect me to believe that radical changes were made to the things you could complain about and things you couldn't complain about with regard to a judge’s conduct on TWO different occasions in 2018 (separated by 4 months!) but there was no meeting to approve the 2nd lot of changes in 'Oct/Nov'? This would suggest ramshackle organisation – especially since these changes were hugely controversial: during 2018 at some point ‘in and around’ June and ‘Oct/Nov’ the things you could complain about in a judge’s conduct were reduced from 6 to 4 & the things you couldn’t complain about increased MASSIVELY from 8 to 18!
Mrs Kim Webb seems extraordinarily confused. She tells me on the one hand that she doesn’t know what changes were made to the list of things you could & couldn’t complain about re: judge’s conduct in that meeting on the 27 June 2018 but later says: ‘I can, however, confirm that complaints about a “failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest” was removed from the list of complaints that fall within a judge’s remit in LATE 2018’. She appears to have forgotten that she has earlier said (29/11/19) that the JCIO website was ‘refreshed’ (!) in ‘and around June 2018’ and later in ‘Oct/Nov 2018’.
Naturally, Mrs Webb, a Senior Case Manager, charged with the weighty responsibility of responding to an FOI Request, makes no attempt to explain this apparent anomaly. The JCIO is a foreign country it seems; they do things differently there. Whatever the JCIO might say, most neutral observers will have concluded that these radical and hugely controversial changes to the JCIO website were made for 2 reasons: 1) to make judges virtually immune from complaints by ordinary members of the public – it amounts to a ring-fencing of judges and 2) published reports by the JCIO make it quite clear they could not cope with an increasing backlog of complaints especially since reduced funding meant they were under-staffed. Confine complaints to largely complaints arising from court proceedings and you massively decrease their case load and by that time their work’s largely been done for them (plus it probably increases lawyers’ fees). What’s not to like?

Why does this matter?
In early 2019, I wanted to complain to the JCIO about a GRC Chamber President Judge. I’d read Richard Byrne’s article on complaining about a judge to the JCIO in the HMCTS’s online journal ‘Tribunal Edition No 1 2018’. Byrne, a highly respected judge, praises the ‘very helpful official website’ with its lists of things ‘You can Complain about’ and things ‘You can’t Complain about’. He then reproduces the list with 6 things ‘you can complain about’ including ‘failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest’ and 8 things ‘You can’t Complain about’. Having read this article, I complained to the JCIO about the GRC Chamber President Judge’s failure to disclose not a potential but an actual conflict of interest.
Fortunately for the GRC Chamber President Judge, she was saved in the nick of time. She escaped an investigation that would have been highly embarrassing (especially since she had behaved in another very questionable way which might well have been exposed by an investigation) because of these changes to the JCIO website lists.
It’s worth pointing out that the Internal Review of Mrs Webb (notable for its loyal defence of a colleague) by Rehad Miah, refers me to ‘Guide to Judicial Conduct which clearly explains the JCIO’s position of conflict of interest’. Anyone wanting to know whether they can complain about a judge’s conduct won’t go to this website, they’ll go to the official website of the JCIO and look at ‘Things you can Complain about’ and ‘Things you can’t complain about’. Perhaps Mr Miah should suggest to the 2 JCIO officials I spoke to (one of whom was a manager) that they become better acquainted with that website: the officials told me that ‘potential conflict of interest’ was one of the things I couldn’t complain about. Either they were ignorant or lying. ‘Failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest’ is not one of the 18 things listed on their own website as a thing you CAN’T complain about.
If you want to make it crystal clear you can’t complain about this I suggest you avoid any possible ‘confusion’ and stick it on your website list to make the things 'you can't complain about' 19 in total.

Yours faithfully,

Dudley Jones

JCIO General Enquiries, Judicial Conduct Investigations Office

Thank you for your email.  This an automated response.  Please do not
reply.

 

This email address is for general enquiries only.  We aim to reply to
enquiries within 10 working days.

 

We do not accept or respond to complaints sent to this email address.  If
you wish to make a complaint, please submit your complaint on our
[1]online portal.

 

If you have not made a complaint this way before, you will need to
register first before you can submit your complaint.  

 

We do not respond to requests to intervene in court cases, requests for
advice about court procedures or requests for legal advice.

 

We suggest seeking advice from a solicitor, law centre or the Citizens
Advice Bureau. 

 

Before making a complaint, please read the [2]guidance on our website
about the types of complaints we can and cannot accept.  Complaints which
are outside our statutory remit will be rejected.

 

Complaints about judges and coroners

Make your complaint using our [3]online portal.

 

Complaints about magistrates (justices of the peace)

Send your complaint to the relevant local [4]advisory committee.

 

Complaints about tribunal judges and members

Send your complaint to the relevant tribunal [5]president’s office.

 

Your personal data

You can find information about how the JCIO collects and processes
personal data in our [6]Privacy Notice

 

 

show quoted sections

Miah, Rehad (JCIO), Judicial Conduct Investigations Office

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Jones

Please see attached for your attention.

Kind regards

Rehad Miah
Senior Caseworker
Judicial Conduct Investigations Office

81-82 Queen's Building
Royal Courts of Justice, Strand
London WC2A 2LL
020 7073 0287 / 07547 969 862
https://judicialconduct.judiciary.gov.uk/

show quoted sections

Dear Miah, Rehad (JCIO),
What an extraordinarily shambolic organisation the JCIO is!
Mrs Webb, a senior member of this organisation, confirms there was a meeting in her calendar that the changes took place on 'that date' (but then what happened on that 'date' remains extremely vague). The JCIO apparently has no agenda and no minutes are kept of decisions agreed upon at any meeting - or if there is an agenda with numbered items on it, and written minutes are kept (something that would be routine at sportsclub or Women's Institute) they are evidently shredded as soon after as possible. Presumably to ensure that nobody can find out what's going on in this most secretive body? What else does Mrs Webb have that might have disappeared without trace - her shopping list for Tesco? And this JCIO cabal isn't talking about changes to their stationery, and paper clips, they're discussing radical and highly controversial changes to the things you can complain about relating to misconduct by Judges - ensuring, in fact, that it's almost impossible to complain about the misconduct of a judge however bad it might be.

Then Mr Miah/Webb reveals that it's not - as you might imagine - the cleaner who's making these radical changes but 'The JCIO senior management team [who] are responsible for making changes to the website and have their own access to it'. But presumably because they're considered so trivial, they don't know what changes to the website were made or when they were made - apart from vague gesturing towards maybe spring ... or was it autumn?

Clearly the JCIO couldn't organise the proverbial 'p*** up in a brewery. But it's not this. They're not that incompetent. It seems to me it's designed to cover up what they're doing. it's designed to avoid at all costs TRANSPARENCY. We don't reveal, we conceal.

The JCIO is basically a regulator. Like the Gambling Regulator - and just as dedicated and socially responsible.

Yours sincerely,

Dudley Jones

taryn taylor (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Maybe that is IT!!!
They are ALL down the PUB??!!