Another hat trick of incompetence by Folkestone & Hythe DC.

No matter what one does, the same basic mistakes are being made time and again at Folkestone & Hythe District Council. And the Council have scored another hat trick of of own goals.

Today the Council published, so they allege, their Purchase orders for December 2022. In one out of three cases that is true.

The Council publish the purchase order data in PDF, XLSX and CSV formats. It is only the PDF data which is correct. The XLSX and CSV data are wrong, as they’ve uploaded the Payment to Suppliers data for Dec; which is a completely different data set altogether.

and the CSV file says the same

It is clear that nobody is bothering to check what is being done. But it is not just officers in the middle or lower down the food chain who are failing to check their work before presenting it to the world.

At the Prospective Councillor Information event held in the Council chamber on the 26 Jan 2023, the  Assistant Director for Governance, Law and Regulatory Services Amandeep Khroud, presented the following slide to two persons who turned up for the event

For those of you who cannot see the glaring error, one of the seven principles of public life is missing from the slide. It is leadership. Again it shows somebody did not bother to check the work they were presenting to the world.

Leadership is defined in the 7 principles of public life as:

Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour and treat others with respect. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.

Present at the meeting was Cllr Jim Martin (Green), Cllr Laura Davison (Lab) & Cllr David Wimble (FHIG). They all witnessed this mistake as did the officers present, and the two members of the public who turned up.

The consistency of the incompetence is outstanding, worthy of a Local Government Award. It is officers who are creating more reputational damage for our Council than anyone else.

It is a sorry state of affairs that such continuing incompetence is not cracked down upon by the leadership of our Council. But that probably isn’t happening, as there is no leadership, according to the slide presented by Amandeep Khroud.

It’s clear the Peter Principle and the Dunning Kruger effect remain alive and well at Folkestone & Hythe District Council.

The Council is now just one hat trick away from Erling Haaland’s four hat tricks he has scored for Manchester City. Let’s hope and pray that before the end of the football season, our Council do not equal or surpass his record.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right –

William H. McRaven

The Shepway Vox Team

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