Click on the image to see the whole letter.

This is the letter Brighton & Hove City Council did not want you to see. (Click on the image to read in full)
 
It was written by an agency employee working in the housing department of Brighton & Hove City Council in 2006, but never sent while the employee still worked for the council because of concerns about their future employment prospects.
 
After leaving the employment of the council the ‘Whistle Blower’ took the letter to the leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Gill Mitchell, as the tenant in question lived in her East Brighton ward.
 
After seeing the letter in August 2008, Cllr Mitchell instigated the Council’s ‘Whistle Blowing Procedure’ to investigate the matter.
 
The council claim an internal review was undertaken by an ‘Internal Audit Team’. The results were fed back verbally to both the ‘Whistle Blower’ and Cllr Mitchell in November 2008.

Both the ‘Whistle Blower’ and Cllr Mitchell were told verbally that the property in question was acquired for the tenant by a housing association at the request of the Council, as part of a new ‘Pilot Scheme’.
 
To date, neither the ‘Whistle Blower’ or Cllr Mitchell have seen any report on the outcome of the internal investigation, neither was there any officers report detailing the ‘pilot scheme’ that went before councillors.

Councillor Mitchell was not satisfied with the response and asked how many other cases were part of this ‘Pilot Scheme’. She was told there were no other cases in the 'Pilot Scheme’ and Cllr Mitchell was also told by the head of Corporate Strategy, Alex Bailey that she should keep the nature of the investigation confidential, until the report was written up.

Cllr Mitchell has never received a written copy of the report.

Cllr Mitchell remained concerned because the tenant had never been classified as being in priority need of a housing transfer, i.e. she had never been homeless. However the Homeless Budget was used to cover the shortfall between the tenant’s Housing Benefit entitlement and the rental value of the Housing Association property that was secured for the tenant by the Council.

The ‘Whistle Blowers’ letter plus a further document containing a trail of emails from an ‘Acquisitions Negotiator’ at Housing & City Support at Brighton & Hove Council, came into the possession of Gscene Magazine in July this year.
 
These documents did not come from Cllr Mitchell. Gscene spoke to her about this issue for the first time on August 27, 2009.
 
The property in question was acquired by a housing association specifically for the tenant at the request of the Council in 2006. It appears everything occurred behind the backs of the Labour administration, who were in their final months in power.
 
Cllr Mary Mears was the opposition lead on housing and her relationship with senior officers while in opposition might benefit from scrutiny. Indeed in one email we reproduce, a Council Officer seeks the approval of Cllr Mears on the matters in hand and asks if Cllr Mears would like to view the newly acquired property with the tenant.
 
No matter how the Council try to explain away the ‘unusual’ process involved in the rehousing of this particular council tenant, whose name has been blanked out from all material produced on our website. The following questions need to be addressed:
 

• Why was Cllr Mears asked to justify the council's expenditure on the property when she was only the Opposition Spokesperson for Housing and had no official control over the budget?

• Why was the council tenant classified by the Council as ‘accepted homeless’, even though the tenant already lived in a council house?

• Why was the tenant not transferred through the Council’s Transfer Incentive Scheme (TIS), through which they would have received a payment from the Council of £2,000 for scaling down from a three-bedroom to two-bedroom property?

• Why was the council tenant’s home visit not conducted by a Homeless Person’s Officer especially as the tenant was being ‘organised’ (rather than ‘assessed’ - see emails) as ‘accepted homeless’ by the housing department?

• Was it normal practice for a council tenant to get to choose the road they wanted to live in?

• Was it normal practice for a council tenant to specify to the council the street number of the house they wanted to live in?

• Why was Cllr Mears, an opposition councillor at the time, so concerned about helping to re-house a tenant not resident in her ward?

• Did the Council’s Chief Executive and Deputy Chief Executive in 2006 know there was a ‘pilot scheme’ in operation?

Simon Burgess, the Leader of the Council at the time, has confirmed to Gscene that he knew nothing about a 'pilot scheme' operating in 2006, neither did Cllr Don Turner who was the chair of housing.
 
The Head of Law at Brighton & Hove City Council attempted last month to 'gag' Gscene, and stop the reproduction of the ‘Whistle Blower’s’ letter in the September issue of the magazine.

In an email followed up by a letter to Gscene he said:
 
“As you will be aware from the response from the Council’s communication team, the matter was investigated by the Council’s internal audit team and there were no findings of impropriety. The publication of the letter attached to your email will therefore definitely amount to the publication and dissemination of potentially defamatory material and I would ask that you do not proceed with its publication. I confirm that I have advised the persons concerned that should the publication go ahead, they should instruct solicitors with a view to instituting proceedings, which I hope will not be necessary.”
 
The leaders of the Green Party, Lib Dems and Labour have confirmed to Gscene that they knew of no such ‘Pilot Scheme’ operating in 2006 and have confirmed no such scheme had been brought to councillors for approval.
 
One of the headline recommendations in the 2007 Equalities Review was that the Council should implement an independent 'whistle-blowing' policy so that concerns of staff at Brighton & Hove City Council about bullying, discrimination and unfairness in the workplace could be reported to an external organisation, rather than be investigated internally by the Council.
 
The present acting chief executive of the City Council, Alex Bailey, has consistently opposed the implementation of this particular recommendation.
 
In the public interest, Gscene has decided to make the 'Whistle Blower’s' letter available online on the Gscene Ltd. website while awaiting a Freedom of Information request to see the Council’s Internal Audit report on the matter and have all outstanding questions answered.

Cllr Mary Mears is currently the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.