Blacklist in operation in Adur (and Worthing too)

Despite being incredibly questionable in most legal circles, blacklists are still in use by many local authorities, Adur being apparently very proud of theirs.

They bypass the obvious identification of their blacklist by referring to it as the Customer Of Concern register, and within house they abbreviate this to COC and referring to people placed upon it as COCs. Which isn't very nice is it now?

They claim that this blacklist is there purely to protect their staff from dangerous individuals within the community, when in fact it is simply a list of people that their staff have taken a dislike to for one reason or another. In my case, it is because the staff member concerned didn't like the fact that he was nicked for assaulting me, and so decided to mitigate his situation by making false claims that obviously the police would not entertain due to the simple fact that they were rubbish, however this did not prevent him from being able to make up a nice little story and distribute it freely amongst thousands of people that I have never even met.

This list contains a list of crimes, which the council staff member gets to select by ticking a box and at the point that this form is rubber stamped by their manager the person concerned has been arrested, charged, tried and convicted of these crimes without even being aware that they have even been accused. The only notification given is after the decision to appoint these crimes (ranging from assault to sexual harassment) is a letter stating that the accused is responsible for the accused actions and this allegation is placed on a document which identifies the accused as "perpetrator" and is then distributed to every member of staff within Adur and Worthing Councils and any other outside agency that they see fit to inform, this can range from libraries and GP surgeries to the police force.

Surely there is some form of trial involved before they are allowed to distribute that you have committed a crime? Although this is included in the HRA the council have decided that their staff and mates human rights are more important than the innocent people that they choose to target. The only right the accused (who has already been found guilty) is to ask the council to reconsider their decision. Although this is an option, a FOI request has shown that this appeals process has a 0% success rate, yes that's 0%, nobody who has challenged this blacklist has ever been removed.

This may have something to do with the method adopted to make a decision on this challenge. This is judged by what is essentially a tribunal of 3 senior council staff, one of whom is responsible for the final rubber stamping of the placement on the blacklist, the tribunal hears from the member of staff who made the original accusation, they then take submissions from that person's manager, and then a decision is made. No I didn't miss anything out there, there is no right for any submission to be made by the person challenging the blacklist, and they are not even permitted to know when this tribunal is taking place let alone make any representation. No written records are kept of the tribunal and only the final decision is recorded, no independent persons are allowed to attend either.

Now, we are supposed to have certain rights as a human being residing in this country, however ADC would rather ignore this completely and do whatever the hell they fancy, why change the habit of a lifetime eh?

The DPA allows individuals to question information that is excessive or incorrect, and if you try and point this out to ADC they seem to think that it doesn't apply to them, just like all the other laws to protect individual's rights and freedom from oppression, the DPA also allows the person to correct the distributed information if it is incorrect, however they didn't like that one either so simply ignored it.

I have now taken my position on the blacklist up with the ICO, despite the suggestion made by the council that I should go to the LGO, obviously they suggested this because the lgo only deals with whether they followed their own policy and not the law, so holds no fear to these people.

It appears that the council seem to think that the data laws in this country are irrelevant and they can do whatever the hell they please, they even had the audacity to claim in response to my complaint to the ICO, that as their staff member was found not guilty at court that his victim was obviously guilty of the crime that he was acquitted of, by some kind of magick default process. The fact that he was found not guilty was however not down to the fact that he was, but more to the fact that senior council officials whose employers are responsible for appointing the magistrates stood up in court and gave "evidence" to an incident that they were not even present at, and spent hours slating the victim and witnesses as liars. That's not even going into the witness intimidation by council staff and members both inside and outside of the court.

The fact is simple, blacklists are not lawful and distributing lies about people is both legally and morally wrong, but ADC don't seem to be too bothered about that as they believe that they are above the law and clearly have no morals.

HHH