ISUS and Wirral Borough Council

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

In Autumn 2013 your investigator was sent to Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd following an investigation by Grant Thornton that reported to Wirral Borough Council in March 2013 regarding abuses of the Intensive Start Up Scheme ISUS.

Regardless of the fieldwork being complete by December 2013 the report-which is known to me to be written-has not been released

I request a copy of the report

Yours faithfully,

Nigel Hobro

James Griffiths left an annotation ()

Please feel free to send answer by TAXI.

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

You ought to have responded to my FOI by yesterday, 30th January 2015.

I seek an internal review of your non-response. I remind you that the Inland revenue are likely to fine nearly a million persons for not filling in Tax Returns by midnight tonight . Government departments sould be under the same stringent reules

Yours faithfully,

nigel hobro

James Griffiths left an annotation ()

G'day "Highbrow"

Timmins Norman Garry Wilkie Burgess "The Football Shirt" "The Pretend Friend" "Phil the Dill" "The Dunny Chain Wearer""The Chamber Potty" and her advisor "The Shyster"

What do they have in common?

Ooroo

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

in a weeks time this will go to the Information commissioner as you having failed to respond firstly within 20 days, then follow request for internal review , having failed to respond within a further 40 days
Yours faithfully,

nigel hobro

Anna Canning,

                            
Our reference: 768042             Information request

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Dear Mr Hobro

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (reference 768042)

I apologise for the delay in the response to your request for a copy of
the investigation report in to the abuse of the Intensive Start Up Scheme
and the lack of acknowledgment to your internal review request. I have
taken up your case and will try to get a response to you as soon as
possible.

Please quote the reference number 768042 in any future correspondence
regarding this request.

Yours sincerely

Anna

Anna Canning
Knowledge & Information Access Team
Department for Communities and Local Government

James Griffiths left an annotation ()

G'day "Highbrow" I think they are hiding this one in the pile.

Ooroo

James

nigel hobro left an annotation ()

anna

You remain as having not answered this request so come next Monday it is going to the Information Commissioner

James Griffiths left an annotation ()

Still no answer mate

James Griffiths left an annotation ()

G'day Ecca

Clean this up Gra Gra couldn't.

I won't mention Wirral Gate if you fix Big, ISUS and Working Neighbourhoods.

Ooroo

James

Anna Canning,

                            
Our reference: 768042             Information request

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Dear Mr Hobro

I am writing to apologise for the significant delay in responding to your
request for a copy of the investigation report in to the abuse of the
Intensive Start Up Scheme. I am currently reviewing the information we
hold and will endeavour to get a response to you as soon as I can. I
appreciate you should have received a response by now and am sorry for any
inconvenience caused.

I have informed the Information Commissioner of our position in responding
to this request.

Yours sincerely

Anna Canning
Knowledge & Information Access Team
Department for Communities and Local Government

nigel hobro left an annotation ()

and nearly a month later still no response. This report was written before February 2014, or the erdf auditor was telling me an untruth!

Anna Canning,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 768042             Information request

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Dear Mr Hobro
 
Please find attached our response to your request for a copy of the report
by the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) on its investigation into
the allegations received in relation to the Business Start Ups 2 Project
(BSU2).

I'm sorry that we failed to respond to your enquiry within the statutory
timeframe. I will send the Information Commissioner a copy of our response
in relation to your complaint reference FS50575424.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Canning
Knowledge and Information Access Team
Department for Communities and Local Government

 
NOTE: Please do not edit the subject line when replying to this email.

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Communities and Local Government's handling of my FOI request 'ISUS and Wirral Borough Council'.

First of all ,and I have to repeat this every time an official body "apologizes" , I take apology as meaning a defence of ones actions which of course you do not provide. No rationale as to why you breached statutory limits in providing any answer at all. If you were to use s36 of the Act you could have done so some months ago; myself nor the followers of this request remain in the dark as to why you did not do so. I can only assume in the absence of any "defence of your actions that you wished to extend your breathing space since you now have obtained a further 20-40 days of Internal review time on top of the extended period you have already enjoyed.

Since s36 relies on a detailed balance of public interest to disclose v public interest to withhold, all does depend on your "reasonable" estimation. I would like you to consider how effective your audit function appears to the public when it takes your department's inadequately staffed audit department-one employee to cover the North West region- so long to remedy long-standing abuses. If the public, and indeed whistle-blowers , who risk their careers to expose financial wrong-doing must wait so long upon your department to even report on your findings then the effectiveness of your audit department is seriously undermined. I cannot imagine any whistle-blower being encouraged to speak out to you in the future. This latter effect is determinedly not in the public interest since it neuters your audit department, and encourages companies to risk abusing public contracts.

I cannot see how a draft report on so relatively minor a matter should need you to deliberate from December 2013 until June 2015 and beyond, a period of 18 months so far, and I suggest that you get on with it. I certainly am going to make representations to the court of Auditors in Europe about this matter.
If it be claw-backs that you are discussing levied on any negligent local authorities then why were you able to make conclusions against Social Enterprises North West in Liverpool-a £4m claw-back,which no doubt you wll never collect-in so rapid an order-the project starting in 2012 and concluding in December 2014 wuith the claw-back? Is it because local authorities are public authorities and Social enterprises North West was a private company? It is not in the public interest for your department to appear to "manage" scandals where public authorities are involved but to slam down hard on small priate companies.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/i...

Yours faithfully,

nigel hobro

Martin Harding,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 768042             Information request - internal review

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Dear Mr Hobro

Please see the attached letter, acknowledging receipt of your email
received on 22 June.

Yours sincerely
 
Martin Harding
Knowledge and Information Access Team

[1][email address]

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]

Martin Harding,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 768042             Information request - internal review

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Dear Mr Hobro

Further to my email of 24 June, please see the attached response to
yours received on 22 June.

Yours sincerely
 
Martin Harding
Knowledge and Information Access Team

[email address]

nigel hobro left an annotation ()

This is going to the Information Commissioner.

The s36 defence is overblown and is a miniature Chilcot/Maxwellisation defence.

In the public domain nearly all newspaper commentators express that Maxwellisation has gone too far; as to a space for civil servants to deliberate let me outline the course of this investigation:

My first report to the WBC was in July 2011though for some reason they actively did not want to hear about ISUS-maybe so that they did not have contractually to report it to the DCLG!! By December 2011 abuses of ISUS were reported in detail to two Wirral Borough Council internal auditors and were recorded and sent to me; in the meantime one of the culprits in the affair-A4e had managed again by reporting a clean slate to permit non-reference back to DCLG.D Garry's interminable investigation between august 2011 and September 2012 may indeed have worked the same furrow to avoid reporting to DCLG the abuses and he came up with a clean sheet.

As to DCLG and its investigators, they waited until Grant thornton's entirely differentand detailed exposure of abuse of the ISUS contract before contacting me and "APOLOGIZING" for the delay. Itthen took some months before we met an investigator at the house of ISUS1 (GT report).We spent several hours then with the investigator and the investigator contacted myself repeatedly for assistance and took electronic data from myself. Essentially wee afforded the investigator as much assistance as he required which was not inconsiderable. Yet he did not finish his report till December 2013!

So I have outlayed considerable time and effort; have exposed myself to ostracism in the workplace; been let down by local government and still DCLG expresses it is not in the public interest to release a reoport written after enormous delay nearly 2 years ago.

No DCLG has not even given me a copy of the results of mine, nor to ISUS1 of his , testimony. This just will not do and must IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST be reviewed in an information tribunal.

Richard Taylor left an annotation ()

The Information Commissioner has upheld the refusal; the decision has been published at:

https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak...

ScarletPimpernel left an annotation ()

@Richard Taylor

Yes, decision notice FS50594521 upholds the decision of DCLG to refuse is on s.36 grounds.

However if you check the list of First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) cases, see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/sy... .

The sixth case down in that list, EA/2016/0025 is an appeal of decision notice FS50594521 .

So even if ICO has upheld DCLG's decision in a decision notice, it's down to a future decision of the Tribunal as to whether that decision notice is accepted or modified.