DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL WITHOLDING INFORMATION

We must apologise for this long awaited update but obtaining information from the Derbyshire County Council (DCC) about anything to do with Elvaston Castle is like getting blood from the proverbial stone! Readers of this page will be aware that the piece below this one, taken from the pages of the Derby Evening Telegraph, highlights the difficulty in finding facts to which the public is rightfully entitled, from the DCC. The Council has stonewalled and blocked most of our enquiries, legitimate questions regarding its expenditure on the marketing of the Estate, the current value of the Estate and its built assets.

When the replies eventually came, one of them having taken almost 40 working days and easily breaking Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act, which states that answers to questions, or instances where the research necessary to do so incurs a charge, must be provided within 20 working days, revealed some astonishing facts. The Derbyshire County Council has spent around £100,000 at Elvaston Castle in the financial years 2005 - 6 and 2006 - 7. Just over 12% of this is listed as having been on public consultations, the rest on 'professional fees.' It is frustrating that the Council claims not to be able to afford the restoration and funding of the Estate and yet it can spend significant amounts of taxpayer's cash on professional fees. Obviously, the amount spent on public consultations was a complete waste of money as the Council has completely ignored the public response which has huge numbers of people rejecting any disposal of Elvaston Castle Country Park.

The reply from the County Council emphasised the fact that the authority is very reluctant to answer any more questions of this nature. Here are two passages from the email, signed by the Assistant County Secretary, Ms. Kay Riley;

You should be aware that the Council is considering which of your requests for information concerning Elvaston Castle and Country Park come within the ambit of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. If some of your requests come within the EIR provisions the Council is entitled to charge you for all information provided in response to those requests. However as we did not make you aware of this when you first submitted this request, if it is decided that this is an EIR request we will not charge you for the information we have already provided including the information given above.

And;

You should also be aware that in view of the number of requests you have made to the Council in the past few weeks requesting information about Elvaston the Council is recording the cost of responding to all your requests and if it is decided that these requests fall to be dealt with under the FOI Act the Council will consider whether to aggregate the cost of responding to those and any further requests you make.

This tiresome response is Derbyshire County Council's way of responding to an act designed to get rid of exactly this type of reluctance to pass on information to the people whose tax money keeps such secretive organizations in business. The number of requests to which the passage refers numbers three or four, hardly swamping the boat we would have thought. Our question asking for the current value of the Estate and its built assets was answered by the County Council with the 'historic cost' value of the Estate in the late nineteen sixties, £128,000, which; 'Is the value the Council is required under accountancy regulations to record.'

 Similarly, although the question was not asked under the Freedom of Information Act, a request for the minutes of meetings between the Derbyshire County Council and the Southern Derbyshire BME Consultative Forum, where Elvaston Castle was a topic for discussion, was turned down by the County Council which claims that;

Although the county council supports the BME forum, it is the BME communities themselves who in essence 'own' it. Therefore we would not make the minutes from the forum available, without prior agreement from BME forum members.

Whilst it is stated that the matter would be put to a future meeting for discussion we are far from satisfied with this withholding of public information and a report has been passed by us to the appropriate authorities regarding these and other complaints about the deliberate attempts to prevent the community from finding out what is being discussed, arranged and paid for, out of public money, in the attempt to dispose of Elvaston Castle Country Park to a private developer, something which the Friends and the community will not stand by and allow to happen without a fight.

The Friends of Elvaston Castle has accused Derbyshire County Council of withholding information to which it claims it is legally entitled. The group has been fighting to keep the Grade II-listed mansion and grounds open to the public after plans to sell them were announced eight years ago. Derbyshire County Council has owned the castle and country park since the late 1960s but has said it can no longer afford the maintenance costs. It has estimated that the 60-room castle needs repairs totalling £3m in addition to annual costs of £500,000. Developer Highgate Sanctuary was chosen to take on a 150-year lease for the castle and part of the grounds, which would be turned into a hotel and golf course, in June, 2006, but has yet to sign the lease.

In October, the Friends of Elvaston Castle wrote to the council and, using the Freedom of Information Act, asked how much money had been spent on the advertising, marketing and disposal of Elvaston Castle Country Park, including all public consultations in connection with the disposal, since 1999. The request was acknowledged by assistant county secretary Kay Riley on November 2 and forwarded to the council's access to information officer. But the group had not received a response by November 30, when the 20 working days allowed for feedback was up. The group sent two e-mails in the following weeks but still received no reply and says it believes the council is deliberately withholding the information.

A spokesman for the Friends of Elvaston Castle said, "We believe that the latest problems which we have encountered in obtaining information from the county council about the Elvaston Castle disposal only goes to highlight the long-standing lack of transparency which has dominated and overshadowed the matter from the beginning. If the disposal is as advantageous to taxpayers as the council alleges, then why avoid revealing the details to them? We can only take this to indicate that there is much which the council does not want made public about the amount of taxpayers' money it has already spent in disposing of Elvaston Castle Country Park."

A spokesman for Derbyshire County Council said, "There is no mystery surrounding the situation. It was simply a case of human error. We have had quite a number of requests from the Friends of Elvaston Castle in the past and this one slipped through the net. We apologise and are hoping to get the information to the group as soon as possible." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Jan/08)

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