Scrutiny Board Meeting

Sheffield City Council (SCC), Sheffield Wildlife Trust (SWT), and Disposals and Leasing of Public Land

I've left more than a week for a response to my post of 18th April. Now that I’ve had no approach from SWT’s Director (he may now be styled Chief Executive?), I won’t hesitate any longer to describe the Sheffield Council Scrutiny Board meeting of 17th April. The background to this is as follows: In September last year I asked a question of the board having first let some board members know that serious incidents regarding SWT highlighted problems connected to the council’s disposal of publicly owned land to outside organisations. (links on this blog to here, and here).

My question (paraphrased) was this. It led to a discussion among members of the board and a resolution being passed asking three council directors to respond with proposals to deal with my concerns. Eventually (seven months later) a report was produced to be tabled at the April meeting. Having seen the report (a copy is here) I duly went along to comment on it at the meeting. My comments, only slightly paraphrased, are here. The point I wanted to emphasise was that problems between the public and the partner organisations who leased or managed council land were a serious and near inevitable consequence of the council's policies and practices.

The SWT Chief Exec was there as an observer, obviously alerted that Blacka Moor was mentioned in the report and likely to be discussed. He was asked by the chairman to respond to my comments which he did. He said, among other things, that he had already apologised to me for the offensive and defamatory comments in the email of July 13th. This was untrue; he had given me no apology. All were aware that I shook my head whereupon he had no alternative but to make that apology in public and on the spot. Unfortunately this kind of slipperiness about facts is typical of dealings with SWT and if nothing else was achieved this was exposed in public. How many of the councillors drew the right conclusions from this I don’t know. Perhaps it’s considered par for the course these days to misrepresent, peddle half-truths and even to defame those who have different views from your own.