Alan Draper: Complicit, Incompetent or Both?

There has been a lot of criticism of Hemsworth Town Council’s Town Clerk and Proper Officer, Mr Alan Draper, for his conduct in his official position by members of this community, including Ferret.

We are, as individuals and as a Community fully entitled to question the actions of anyone who is a either employed by or elected to a Local Authority.

After all we pay his wages and he should be looking out for our best interests.

The Town Clerk is accountable to the Council for the effective management of all its resources and will report to them as and when required.

The Town Clerk is expected to be fully involved in the Strategic Planning Process of the Council.

Here is the overview of a Town Clerk’s Job Description:

“The Clerk to the Council/Town Clerk will be the Proper Officer of the Council and as such is under a statutory duty to carry out all the functions, and in particular to serve or issue all the notifications required by law of a local authority’s Proper Officer. The Clerk will be totally responsible for ensuring that the instructions of the Council in connection with its function as a Local Authority are carried out. The Clerk is expected to advise the Council on, and assist in the formation of, overall policies to be followed in respect of the Authority’s activities and in particular to produce all the information required for making effective decisions and to implement constructively all decisions. The person appointed will be accountable to the Council for the effective management of all its resources and will report to them as and when required. The Clerk will be the Responsible Financial Officer and responsible for all financial records of the Council and the careful administration of its finances”.

On first reading it doesn’t read well for Mr Draper, in fact is there anything at all that Mr Draper can say, with his hand on his heart, that he has complied with?

In fact it’s a very damming condemnation of his conduct since May 2019 and the election that led to the Independent control of Hemsworth Town Council.

To just use one example and it was one of the first decisions taken by Councillors’ Kenyon, Womersley, J Eccles, G Eccles, Hirst, Hardacre, Holmes, Bugge, Pringle and Mitchell was the decision to convert the Lakeside Café to a public house.

This was against a background of pub closures that had been going on for many years in this Country

Between January and June 2017, more than 20 pubs shut every week, 525 in total during this time.

The figures for pub closures in the subsequent years:

• 914 in 2018
• 473 in 2019
• 446 in 2020

In fact on researching, the decline in use of pubs nationally and locally was the main reason the Windsurfer pub at Hemsworth Waterpark was originally closed, by the then Hemsworth Town Council back in around 2008.

So Mr Draper, when the council made the decision to convert the lakeside café and children’s’ play area back into a pub your duty as the Town Clerk was:

“The Clerk is expected to advise the Council on, and assist in the formation of, overall policies to be followed in respect of the Authority’s activities and in particular to produce all the information required for making effective decisions and to implement constructively all decisions.”

It must have been really good advice you gave to the Councillors for them to reconvert the café back to a pub, with no regards to cost in doing so and no business planning and budget provision in place.

Worse still, against an history of decline in the pub and club business that had been ongoing for well over a decade.

You could even have asked Jim Kenyon how well his pubs did for example, the Beeches in Hemsworth and Jubilee at South Kirkby but then again being local you would have already known they had gone bust wouldn’t you?

From this disastrous negligent start things just got worse, well for us, if not for you; with you allowing free reign in the use of cash payments and petty cash, little or no control how our assets were left to decline due to lack of maintenance and financial mismanagement.

Where was your advice when the absurd decision was taken to rescind the sale of the Kirkby road site to Saul Construction?

You had in your possession the legal advice from Queen’s Counsel, no less, that said it wasn’t a realistic option and they blundered on, hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted, thrown away.

Why?

The list is seemingly endless, blunder after blunder, time after time and you remain silent, even now.

Can you answer Yes to any of the following requirements of your job description?

• Effective management?
• Produce all the information required for making effective decisions and to implement constructively all decisions.
• Effective management of all its resources
• The Clerk will be the Responsible Financial Officer and responsible for all financial records of the Council and the careful administration of its finances.

Complicit, Incompetent or Both?