A couple of hours after VB ran an article about Chris Whitehouse’s claims that the council had failed to provide legally required documents in relation to the consultation on discretionary concessionary fares to faith schools, Chris received a reply from Roger Edwardson, Head of Learning & Achievement at the Isle of Wight council.
In the emailed response, Mr Edwardson revealed that he is now taking legal advice to ensure the council fully comply with the previous Government’s legislation.
Once again, he points Mr Whitehouse to the “A Sustainable Travel to School Strategy” document, but as set out in previous correspondence, this is not the documentation Mr Whitehouse is seeking.
Chris kindly copied VB in on the correspondence in order that we can share it with you, dear readers.
Dear Mr Edwardson,
Whilst I thank you for finally responding, I fear you are either deliberately or unintentionally missing the point.
The document to which you provide a link simply cannot meet your statutory requirements because it admits in the section which I have already referenced (Page 10, Section A4) that it does not meet the statutory requirement, stating:
“there was insufficient time to carry out the full consultation, assessment and audit required. This document therefore represents the first stage of the Strategy; the delivery programme, Phase 2, will be developed following the fuller consultation process, assessment and audit.”
Where is that fuller consultation process, assessment and audit? If it exists, please send it to me. If it does not, then you are in breach of your statutory obligations (as you were in any event in 2007 for failing to meet the August 2007 deadline as admitted by the section above!).
Where are the annual updates of that strategy which are required to be placed on your web site by 31st August each year?
Where is the required statutory reference which I have been seeking guidance upon now for many weeks in the Children and Young People’s Plan? (whilst the document you cite is mentioned in one of the volumes, since that document does not meet your statutory requirements, the reference cannot do so either).
That you are now considering wasting local council-tax-payers’ money on a legal opinion on these matters when the documentation is so clearly flawed in terms of your statutory obligations is frankly outrageously profligate.
Again, I remind you, these requirements are cited in the appropriate Guidance Notes (Home to School Travel and Transport Guidance issued in 2007) as follows:
Publication of Sustainable Modes of Travel Strategy
42. The Education (School Information) (England)
Regulations 2002, amended with effect from 1st June 2007, require local authorities to publish their Sustainable Modes of Travel Strategy on their web-site by 31 August each year.I find it bizarre that in your email of 16th May (below) you indicated you had no recollection of ever being asked to produce such a Strategy when it is a statutory requirement that you do so, and you are paid, forgive me for mentioning it, a staggering £117K pa fee (Freedom of Information Act request for copies of the documentation relating to this contract with Roger Edwardson Education Services Ltd remains outstanding) to be an expert on these issues.
When can I, as requested below, expect a response from Cllr Pugh to my detailed note of 16th May (attached yet again for ease of reference) detailing a whole series of irregularities, errors, omissions and other flaws in your consultation process?
When can Mr David Lisseter, the Chairman of the Governing Body of Christ the King College, also expect a response to his own letter to Cllr Pugh, also of 16th May, (attached to my own email of 16th May, and hence reattached for ease of reference) in which he highlights the flawed statistical, financial and other assumptions upon which your policy options have been precariously based?
If there is something unreasonable or discourteous in the way I have phrased these requests, then please do point it out and I shall happily represent my request, but if there is not, then why can you not simply give a straight answer to a series of straight questions?
These are not minor or irrelevant points, they are fundamental to the way in which this deeply flawed consultation has been conducted since the outset.
What is at stake is not just the ability of struggling families unable to afford the fares you are proposing to impose, but the very sustainability of faith education across the Island, and it merits a more professional response than that delivered to date from the officers of the Council. Schools will close as a result of your proposals, and yet this is not even mentioned in your consultation documentation.
I look forward to hearing from you, hopefully with a straightforward series of answers to the above and attached points without further delay.
With kind regards and all good wishes.
Chris Whitehouse
Image: The Real David Francis under CC BY 2.0
