Rob Shorrock

One of the bizarre elements of the Freedom of Information Act  is that it is trumped by the much earlier Data Protection Act. With some garlands of privacy and nods to Human Rights legislation thrown in this means that you and I as tax payers are not allowed to know how much of our tax pounds are paid out by public authorities under severance or redundancy arrangments when it would be possible to identify the individual involved. Therefore to find out how much was paid to terminate the Chief Executive's contract at SKDC is impossible as there was only one Chief Executive and at the time he was Duncan Kerr.

Essentially, it becomes impossible to find out what the full outgoing package is for any senior official in a public authority. Yet, a council committee can pledge in secret a significant sum of taxpayers money through a closed negotiation that they do not have to be publically accountable for. Ask questions. The answer comes back - that information is confidential. What perplexes me is how do they hide this on their balance sheet, which of course is publically available?

I await the answer on that one. 

However, in the case of SKDC I have discovered they paid out, so far, £5000 plus in legal costs for this whole exercise. But beyond that we know nothing and the pack mentality of the elected members supposedly representing the people will honour a foetid deal, which should not have been made on these terms, rather than hold themselves accountable to the people.