Richard Baum

There’s a scene in “The Godfather III” where mafia kingpin Michael Corleone, desperate to escape a life of crime and become a legitimate businessman to protect his family, is forced back into the criminal world to sort out a dispute amongst his colleagues. Michael cries “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” before suffering a diabetic stroke and collapsing into a coma.

I feel much like Michael Corleone today, and have the hospitals on stand by just in case. Although I don’t run a gigantic criminal empire or live in a sprawling estate on Lake Tahoe like he did, I do consort with people who wield quite a bit of power, namely the Executive of Bury Council. And, like Michael, just as I thought I’d escaped the problems they cause, they haul me back in. Because today, almost unbelievably, I have discovered yet another mass mail-out calamity presided over by the laughable Tory shower masquerading as the Council’s leaders. This is the fifth (FIFTH!!) one in the last twelve months, and the second one already in 2009.

This time they have sent out 800 letters to customers of Abbey in Whitefield, threatening them with legal action for non-payment of Council Tax.

Abbey have made an error, cancelling the direct debits for Council Tax that should have been paid earlier this month. This is Abbey’s mistake, and they should be made to put it right swiftly. I don’t mind at all that the Council is working very hard to make sure this happens. Hopefully there’ll be some strong words sent in Abbey’s direction for keeping back thousands of pounds of money from the Council’s coffers.

Unfortunately though, Abbey’s innocent customers have been on the receiving end of the standard letter the Council sends to all non-payers. It’s got all the usual nuance of a Council communique, i.e. it’s about as subtle as a breezeblock to the skull. The letter threatens them with court action in 14 days unless they pay up. So the innocent people (all 800 of them) caught up in this mess through no fault of their own got the same letter as the person defrauding the Council and living the life of Riley in a solid gold yacht. There was no distinction drawn.

The letters are sent out automatically, and so even when massive anomalies in the amount sent out come about, like here, there’s no procedure in place to stop them. 800 people living in the same area all deciding simultaneously to stop paying their Council tax should have set alarm bells ringing. Instead, all it did was set printers printing.

What should have happened is that the Council should have remembered its public service ethos and sent out letters explaining the situation and offering help and solutions. Instead, it relied on inadequate modes of communication and yet again alarmed and worried hundreds of people for no reason.

The Council have been quick to notice the error, I’ll grant them. There’s a recorded message on the helpline, and they spotted the problem before Abbey did.

But just because Abbey are culpable doesn’t mean that Bury Council should get off the hook. They realised their error, sure, but the fact remains that they still sent out the letters, once again getting the tone and content of them completely wrong.

I have tried to contact the Conservative Executive Member for Resources, Cllr Peter Redstone, to get his explanation. I am told that he is in London. He should get back to Bury and start doing the job we pay him for, which is to run the Council’s finance department properly. In his absence I spoke to the top Council finance officer on this, and he told me that the process for letters is automated. This is efficient for regular non-payers, but as has been shown here is completely inappropriate for when unexpected problems emerge. There needs to be a system in place where patterns can be detected and spotted before threatening letters are sent out. That there isn’t is the fault of the Executive member, who has let this happen on his watch.

Once again I find myself saying that lessons need to be learned from yet another mass mail-out debacle. Once again I find myself apologising on behalf of the Council for offence and worry caused for no good reason. And once again the blame lies fairly and squarely at the feet of the Conservative Executive, and specifically Cllr Redstone. He presided over the scandal last year when hundreds of single people received inappropriate letters questioning their right to a discount, and he has presided over this, another example of the Council scaring hundreds of innocent people for no good reason. Eight hundred more residents thinking that the Council don’t care and are more interested in money than people.

This Tory Executive has presided over problems with Job Evaluation, where letters were sent out and then recalled over questions of legality, and over graffiti and gardens, both of which were exacerbated by letters making our citizens feel like criminals.

On September 10th last year Cllr Redstone told Council publicly that “any future letters dealing with sensitive or contentious matters would be raised at the appropriate level to include where necessary the Executive member.” He has clearly broken this promise here, and his Executive have broken the promise on three other occasions. How much longer will the people of Bury have to put up with these mistakes? Cllr Redstone should consider his position, since he is clearly incapable of running the Department we have entrusted him to run.

Rick