Neil Wilby Media

 

The antics of a disgraced local council, often described elsewhere as ‘one of the most corrupt in the country’, has finally snapped the patience of the only journalist in the locality to routinely hold them to account.

Neil Wilby, the author of this article and a substantial number of damning exposés and exclusives over the past three years, has issued legal proceedings against Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council over industrial scale law-breaking, arising out of two data subject access requests made earlier this year.

The County Court claim has been brought by way of sections 168 and 169 of the Data Protection Act and Article 82 of the General Data Protection Regulations and it is alleged that the Defendant (Oldham Council) has calculatingly, repeatedly, and persistently breached both that Act and those Regulations with the principal purpose of causing distress to the Claimant (Neil Wilby). The latter is seeking damages, aggravated damages and costs, plus a court order compelling the Defendant to comply in all respects with the Data Protection Act (DPA) and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) on pain of contempt of court.

Court sanctions against the Defendant have also been sought following the determined refusal of their lawyers to comply with Civil Procedure Rules, Practice Directions and Pre-Action Protocol. They are also on notice of other action by way of a complaint to the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority and a committal application. 

Even to those well used to the routine laziness, discourtesy, disrespect, ineptitude, opacity, unethical and unprofessional conduct, dishonesty and cover-ups of ‘Odious Oldham’, as GB News dubbed the Borough Council last year, the recent and appalling misdeeds of this bandit authority will shock and distress them – as will the Council’s intention to waste tens of thousands of pounds in a futile defence of the journalist’s well-evidenced claim that, on any objective view, is certain to succeed.

The Council is currently operating in a power vacuum, with a Leader in name only, Cllr Arooj Shah, bumbling her way from crisis to crisis and facing a loss of confidence from within her own Party ranks. At a recent Oldham Labour Group gathering she couldn’t handle criticism of her performance, broke down in tears and had to hand over the running of the meeting to her two Deputy Leaders, Cllrs Elaine Taylor and Shaid Mushtaq. 

Cllr Shah, described by one senior politician in the Region as ‘the worst Council Leader in living memory’, was kept in the loop as the legal dispute deepened between battle-hardened journalist and hapless, hopeless local authority – and was approached, directly, earlier this month with a request to intervene in what is now certain to be a lengthy, costly and highly damaging process to her Labour administration. The current estimate of defending the claim, with no hope of recovering a single penny, is £40,000. 

As is the custom these days, down went the Leader’s head, firmly into the sand, hoping the crisis would pass without any of the brown stuff sticking to her designer outfits. 

But fat chance of that, on this occasion, Ma’am: You are in up to your neck and will be called upon to give evidence at the final hearing. By witness summons, if that becomes necessary.

This is just one paragraph (out of 24) from the Particulars of Claim upon which Cllr Shah will face cross examination, on oath, over a litany of obfuscation, deceit, profligacy, contempt and law-breaking. 

“The Claimant will exhibit within these proceedings, alongside his witness statement, clear evidence that the Defendant has deflected every attempt by the Claimant to narrow issues and mediate or settle the claim without resort to court action. Civil Procedure Rules, Practice Directions and Pre-Action Protocol (and the Claimant) have all been treated with utter contempt. The Defendant’s essential position, at the conclusion of that phase, gives the appearance to the Claimant of: ‘The facts are against us and we have no sustainable legal arguments with which to resist the claim, but we do have unlimited public funds (and/or insurance) and will wear you down, mentally, physically or financially (or all three) with repeated threats of large costs bills arising from a strike-out application’. The distress arising from this conduct towards a freelance journalist, and lay litigant, is self-evident and, it is submitted, calculatingly and deliberately caused”.

A strike-out application is a tactic routinely used by public authorities, particularly against lay litigants, where the threat of a five figure bill for costs often leads to a claim, irrespective of its merits, being abandoned as a result of that grim possibility.

In this particular claim, as the Defendant has been told numerous times in writing, such an application and would be robustly opposed and has no prospect, whatsoever, of succeeding

The best lawyers in the world cannot fix industrial scale, prima facie law-breaking. Yet, they persist with the notion, now aided and abetted by the Leader of the Council. Whom wouldn’t, in a million years, risk a penny of her own money on such an ill-starred legal misadventure, but is more than content to waste hard-pressed local taxpayers’ money to save her own face and those of the incompetents, sycophants and fantasists with whom she surrounds herself these days. 

These are three other paragraphs from the same Particulars which give added context to the conduct of the claim so far by Oldham Council, with its Leader nodding along in the background:

“Further, the Defendant has steadfastly refused to provide any of the disclosure requested of them. Firstly, in the Pre-Action Protocol Letter before Claim and, later, in the course of extensive pre-action correspondence between the parties. They have provided no cogent argument against such refusals. The inference drawn from that is the Defendant has weaponised the disclosure process, at least partly, to compound distress to the Claimant.”

“The Claimant will argue, with considerable force, that such disclosure would, on its own, defeat any contemplated defence of these proceedings and uncover further wrongdoing by senior paid officers employed by the Defendant”.

“The Defendant frequently breaks the law in finalising requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. Specific data has been sought from the Defendant.
 – The law-breaking by the Defendant is known to be on a larger scale when it comes to finalising data subject access requests (DSARs) made via the Data Protection Act, 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
 – On its own admission, the Defendant, in a single twelve-month period (November, 2021 to October, 2022) broke the law, on time limits only, on no less than 69 occasions. Representing 27% of all DSARs received in that period. The Claimant will argue that the law-breaking would be on an industrial scale if all those DSARs finalised were the subject of informed analysis.”

However shocking that litany of wrongdoing appears, we are at the beginning of this journalistic investigation, not the end: Oldham Council, as an organisation, now resembles Greater Manchester Police prior to the ‘Rotten To The Core’ force being placed in Home Office ‘Special Measures’ in December, 2020. Where, completely absent of political oversight from the Region’s Mayor, a close friend of Cllr Shah, inept, lying, corrupt, over-promoted senior officers were drawing vast salaries whilst service to the public crumbled and their safety placed at high risk. Hidden only by a chief constable, very arguably the worst in the history of the police service, cronyism and a communications team that, against every ethical and professional standard, consistently pushed out the message that all was well, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As was the case with GMP, Oldham badly needs a change of leadership, both politically and in the senior paid officer ranks, whatever the financial cost in the short term it will be a bargain in the medium and longer term if capable managers are brought in, either by the Government or Labour Party HQ, clear out the present rot and begin to set clear objectives in terms of acceptable performance, ethical and professional standards, and, of course, complying with the edicts of Parliament.

Hopefully, this legal challenge, and the wider public scrutiny it will bring, will be a catalyst for such change within the Civic Centre at the heart of this famous old East Lancashire mill town. 

As a lay litigant, Neil Wilby has previously defeated Durham Constabulary and the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner in the County Court over data protection breaches involving only late delivery of requested disclosure. Both armed themselves with high powered lawyers and barristers whose instructions were ‘to concede nothing’..

The case against Oldham Council is much more dense and the breaches far more numerous and serious. Durham spent around £10,000 defending the claim in 2019/20, the NYPCC over £20,000 in 2016/17. The PCC, too, tried the ‘strike-out’ route threatened by Oldham – and failed miserably. In that light, Durham, sensibly, decided not to risk it.

The £40,000 estimate of OMBC’s costs is a conservative one, based on those previous cases. 

There is a meeting of Full Council this evening at the Civic Centre in Oldham this evening (1st November, 2023) and it will be interesting to note whether the matter of this legal action is raised under Agenda item 5: “To receive communications relating to the business of the Council”.

UPDATES: Despite the Mayor’s Office and the Borough Solicitor being specifically requested to do so via email, the civil proceedings were not mentioned.

Cllr Josh Charters, who is Secretary of the Oldham Labour Group, has contacted Neil Wilby with a different version of how and why Cllr Shah became tearful and left their recent Group meeting. He also contends that there is no loss of confidence in her as Council Leader.

The matters raised by Cllr Charters, when fact-checked, will be the subject of a follow-up article. As pointed out in a series of questions put to him, none of Cllrs Shah, Mushtaq or Taylor exercised their right of reply to this article.

Follow Neil Wilby on Twitter (here) and Neil Wilby Media on Facebook (here) for signposts to any updates.

Page last updated: Sunday 5th November, 2023 at 0855 hours

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