Consider a letter which starts:
Dear Fellow Residents
Working for you all year round
The communities that make up Greenhead Ward deserve a team of experienced, hard working and effective Councillors, who will represent you and always put your interests first. As your Labour team in Greenhead Ward, we endeavour to work all year round on the issues that affect you and are a priority for the local communities.
A fairly standard piece of election direct mail you might think. Substitute a word or two here or there and it could easily be a letter from pretty much any party in any part of the country.
Except that this letter was produced, paid for and posted out by Kirklees Council, date stamped 18 April – and yes, the ward had an election on 1 May in which one of the three Labour councillors was up for election.
Not really appropriate don’t you think?
You can see the full item for yourself: page 1 and page 2.
This leaves some interesting legal questions. As the letter is from the Labour candidate (and two colleagues), complete with their signature and two photos of them, it would be hard to argue that the Labour candidate didn’t know about the letter. So will the letter appear in their election expense return? And as it was paid for by the council, will the costs appear as a donation in kind from the council on their expense return too? This could be a fun set of paperwork to read in a few weeks…
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15 Comments
Did any other candidates send out these letters? Of any other party? Could this be a Kirklees thing?
Did the council know what they were sending out? Councils tend to use window envelopes rather than sticky labels. Sounds like an over selous campaign!
John: not as far as I’m aware, certainly no Liberal Democrats.
Susan: as mentioned in the posting, the council actualy produced the mailing so they did know the contents.
Even if it was a facility offered to all parties then it shouldn’t have been done at this time as the code of publicity requires taking account of the proximity of local elections etc.
Mark, will you reassure us that you have reported this to the relevant authorities? Thanks.
One of my council colleagues in Gateshead who was due for re-election in May wanted to put out some street letters during the local elections, one with a print run of 9 and the other with a print run of 120. I advised that as he was in an election period, the letters, even though they were about local (and not election) issues, should go out on party headed notepaper, carry the necessary imprint and be hand delivered. They would have to be declared as election expenses. It seems to me that the same advise should have been followed by these councillors in Kirklees.
I would be staggered if the council, even outside an election, would have allowed this mailing to go out via the post. I suspect a large number of letters were produced by the councillors or someone acting on their behalf which were then put into the post without the necessary authority being given for the use of the post.
When I have a mailmerge letter to send to my own constituents about a specific issue, I send a copy to the chief exec’s dept and get their approval for it before I have them printed and posted. And it only goes to those constituents who have raised with me the issue to which the letter relates. No council postal system can afford to let councillors use it as a free (for the councillors) mailshot delivery system.
It seems therefore that Kirklees Council needs to investiage whether or not their postal system has been inappropriately used by someone.
Quite how it is accounted for in election expenses is best left to the courts! Presumably if the cost of this mailing was more than £20, a receipt will be required. I wonder whether Kirklees will be prepared to give one.
Seems like this is clearly election material to me so not only should they get in trouble for miuse of council resources and funds but although I am no expecrt surely if it is election material it should have an imprint
Yes, I noticed the distinct lack of an imprint on the two scans linked to…
Yes – good use of the Oppostion Watch tag – can we stick to this kind of thing.
Agreed. This is a good use of this site to expose wrongdoing, rather than tedious stories about how some councillor fell out with some other councillor and alleged some lame activity that noone really cares about.
I’d just like to third what Steven and Mark said.
Stuart: yes, our councillors there are taking up this issue.
Jonathan (and others): it looks as if the content of this letter was approved by at least one council officer, so I think “the council” was fully aware of what was happening.
I think there are aspects of the text that are objectionable and especially during purdah with a sitting councillor up for relection. It shouldn’t have gone out. However having served on neighbouring Leeds I think some people would be surprised at what you can get away with on direct mail. In my eight years on leeds my ward would get anywhere from 8k to 16k direct mail shots from our group office on headed note paper, council postage all having two references to the party name with the party group office as a return address on attached surveys, quarterly news letters etc. While the text had to be neutral you could blantantly potray your self as doing a good job.
All of these shots could be proactive and our group office would mail merge any responses into a second follow up letter. In my 8 years I’d guesstimate my ward got 100000 letters.
all parties do it and its above board. if you add in 2000 bussiness cards per year colour coded in party colours and glossy colour coded surgery posters its quite a boost to incumbency.
An decent officer should have stamped on this mailing but you’d be surprised how few changes would be needed to make it legitimate.
As others have said i think this is more sober and appropriate use of opposition than usual.
“all parties do it and its above board.”
The second does not follow from the first. This is similar to the way in which MPs – ours included – (ab)use the Additional cost allowances in Westminster to produce taxpayer funded focuses (sorry neutral annual reports).
If we had some principles we’d oppose the practice and expose it – but we’d rather play within the system.
Hywel.
yes. When Labour were in power we went bonkers when they changed the rules to allow party names on Council headed note paper. We then promptly did it our self saying however regretable we had to fight fire with fire. Now we are in power we haven’t changed it back.