Eastleigh Borough Council leak secret list of 'undesirables’

According a news report sent through to the BBW team this morning by a supporter in Hampshire, Eastleigh Borough Council have been compiling a secret list of "undesirable" local residents which is made available to councillors, council staff and private contractors.

Following an administrative blunder, however, the list is no longer a secret!  Father-of-five Matthew Myatt, a regular contributor to the Eastleigh News, has been handed a copy of the list of "potentially aggressive clients" which council chiefs feel its staff need "protecting from".

Mr Myatt is understandably upset to have been included on the list - especially given that he has no criminal convictions and whose only 'crime' appears to have been a disagreement with a council official several years ago.  Quite rightly, he is angry that his name has "been circulated to private contractors who could decline to offer him goods or services because some faceless council official". 

The council have written to Mr Myatt demanding he return the list to them, yet have not offered him any form of explanation or apology. 

We have written to the Chief Executive of Eastleigh Borough Council, Bernie Topham, demanding the council issue a full and public apology to Mr Myatt and all those included on this list.  You can ask her yourself, by e-mailing bernie.topham@eastleigh.gov.uk or 'phoning 02380 688257.

You can view the whole story here. 

Comments

[SadButMadLad]

If your name is on one of the council lists you can sue the council for libel. I'm not 100% sure of the name but I think it was a Jane Clint who is mentioned in Heather Brookes book who managed to sue her council for being placed on such a list for complaining about the lack of action by the council after reporting anti-social activity and being fustrated about it. Took a long time but she was awarded costs as well.

[David]

The potential for this to be used as a blacklist against people not convicted of any crimes is chilling and re-enforces my stance of not giving out personal info to anyone unless it is unavoidable.

[Paul]

All councils have lists like this.

Here's a case where someone sued their local authority after it disclosed his criminal convictions to his business clients: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2011/403.html

Here's a case where someone sued Slough Borough Council after they put her on their list: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/1484.html

[Patsy]

I can assure you, as a data protection officer of a council not ALL councils do this! We have very strict policies in place about any red flag system that may be needed to prevent attacks on staff. We are also painstakingly careful about who we share that data with, so that we absolutely do not breach people's rights or privacy and break the law!

[Paul G]

In my experience, council staff sometimes add names of both individuals' and companies' to such lists for personal or malicious reasons. The small company I used to work for depended to a large extent on local government social services contracts. We started to have problems with first one and then three other councils after we fired a very lazy member of staff whose paperwork was rarely in order and who had had numerous unexplained absences from work. Soon afterwards our invoices started being queried as a matter of routine and then we found that new contracts were being issued to other companies for the very work we were contracted to do. After we were almost forced out of business we managed to discover that our former staff member's partner worked in the social services department and had spread rumours about about us alleging poor practice and inefficiency as revenge for her partner being sacked. Rather than these claims being properly investigated they were accepted as fact by her department and then staff at the other councils we had contracts with were told. At no point did they think to contact us to ascertain the truth of these rumours and instead decided to stop making referrals to us and farm our work out to other companies. We eventually managed to take one of the councils to court over this and won our case but the council failed to issue the promised apology or pay most of the the damages which were awarded. They also effectively blackballed us from getting any further social services contracts anywhere in the West Midlands, meaning we had to go much further afield for contracts and spend much more on travelling to distant locations to carry out our contracted duties.

[ME]

The more correct URL to the newspaper article in question is below.

Council brand Eastleigh News tog as ‘violent’

http://www.eastleighnews.org.uk/news/2011/04/26/council-brand-eastleigh-news-tog-as-violent/

[Peter Martin]

This Blacklist goes a lot further than anyone could imagine. It`s the stuff of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Go to my blog: ciaandbritainssecretdeathsquads.blogspot.com
Then go to a blog by Professor Claude Fischer: A crime puzzle; violent crime declines in America See how the two accounts mirror each other. This is the CIA assasination programme that Obama discovered: the programme Dick Cheney said was only make believe and only since 9/11.

[louboutin]

Go to my blog: ciaandbritainssecretdeathsquads.blogspot.com
Then go to a blog by Professor Claude Fischer:

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