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| You Guessed It - Labour Councillors Voted It Through! |
You guessed it! Labour councillors voted through the extension to the Balfour Beatty roads and pavement contract, also known as the Highways Service Partnership. It was the Conservatives who brought the contract in, fourteen years earlier, during 2010.
There was no media release, confirmed by Southampton Independents' enquiries. We only found out about it via legal procurement channels. An officer confirmed that no media release was put out.
When lead investigator Andrew Pope asked Council officers in procurement about how the extension was approved, they said:
"The approval route for the award of the Southampton Highways Partnership was via a delegated decision made by the Executive Director, Growth and Prosperity and Executive Director Enabling Services and S151 Officer in accordance with delegated authority approved by Cabinet and Council in March 2024.
For ease I have included the links to the relevant March 2024 Cabinet and Council meetings:
Agenda for Cabinet on Tuesday, 5th March, 2024, 4.30 pm | Southampton City Council
Agenda for Council on Wednesday, 6th March, 2024, 2.00 pm | Southampton City Council"
From the Minutes of the meeting, you can see it was Labour councillors only. This INCLUDES the two now Labour MPs, Satvir Kaur and Darren Paffey:
"NOTE: NOTE: FOR THE RECOMMENDATIONS: Councillors Allen, Barnes-Andrews, Blatchford, Bogle, M Bunday, Cox, Denness, Evemy, Fielker, Finn, A Frampton, Y Frampton, Goodfellow, Greenhalgh, Kataria, Kaur, Kenny, Keogh, Lambert, Leggett, Letts, McCreanor, McEwing, Mintoff, Noon Paffey, Payne, Quadir, Renyard, Savage, Shields, Ugwoeme, Whitbread, Winning and T Bunday."
Note that some of the Labour councillors are:
- no longer councillors, or
- have lost elections (e.g. Ugwoeme who lost Woolston then Shirley),
- have been sacked as a Labour councillor (e.g. Whitbread, as exclusively revealed by us),
- have stood down, or
- have quit Labour to another party (e.g. Renyard who is now Green, Greenhalgh who changed her surname and party is now running for the Lib Dems in another ward, Shirley).
They were Labour councillors when they voted this through.
The only councillors who voted against it were Conservatives. Yet in a move of utter hypocrisy, they had originally let the contract in 2010. This includes Peter Baillie who told us that the contract is great, telling us when we asked about Councillor Rob Harwood's perceived conflict of interest in letting the contract as an officer, then turning up as a Tory councillor the next year:
"The Balfour- Beatty contract works far better than any in house solution."
"NOTE: AGAINST THE RECOMMENDATIONS: Councillors P Baille, Beaurain, Fitzhenry, Galton, Houghton, Laurent, Powell-Vaughan, Blackman, Wood and Barbour. "
Andrew Pope says:
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| Andrew Pope |
"The Cabinet of the Council contains ONLY Labour councillors. Nobody else. They voted it through.
Labour has a majority on the Council. So next...
Labour councillors majority-voted the contract through Full Council, which is the second committee mentioned by the officer.
Labour ward councillors would regularly receive complaints about the failures of the contract. Yet they voted it through anyway, like the party puppets that they are. And this includes the two councillors who are now Southampton MPs - Satvir Kaur and Darren Paffey.
So let nobody be in any doubt, it was Labour councillors that voted through the extension to the failed Balfour Beatty roads and pavement contract.
This is why our City needs independent representation again, by councillors who actually put the priorities of their local residents first, instead of doing what their party tells them to do."
Please Note - Our Story, Our Exclusive
We gave information on our investigation to the Daily Echo's Editor Ben Fishwick about this in mid-February, and to the Local Democracy Reporter Jason Lewis, who is funded by the BBC. We had hoped they would cover it in the public interest.
An article was eventually published by the Daily Echo with the £60 million figure that we gave to them. We were never credited. We were never quoted.
When Andrew Pope complained to the Editor, we were promised a follow-up article. In good faith, more information was given to them.
It is now over two months later.
No follow-up article. No quote. No credit.
So we are publishing our investigation ourselves, in the public interest.
We are volunteers. Once again, we are doing more work than those who are paid to investigate. Because it is in the public interest.
