Cambs County Council reluctant to come clean about McCarthy & Stone deal to avoid embarrasment

THANKS for your support in the article about Croylands in last week’s Ely Standard.

I have been trying to get county councillors to pressure Mark Lloyd to come clean on the details of Cambridgeshire County Council’s contract with McCarthy & Stone.

This contract is signed, so to reveal the contents of it, cannot affect any commercial interest.

What of course, it is likely to do, is greatly embarrass the county council, thus its reluctance to come clean.

If you look at the guidelines on the Information Commissioner’s website it states clearly that a contract signed between two parties is not confidential unless it contains a patent or a trade secret.

The contract between the county council and McCarthy & Stone is neither, it is essentially a property transaction.

In fact the BBC, another public organisation that likes to keep secret its dealings, was forced to reveal details of a contract it had made because it did not meet these criteria.

I have made a compliant to the Information Commissioners Office but this takes ages to come to fruition.

The more pressure put onto Mark Lloyd to make sure his organisation is open and transparent, the better.

ERIC GODBER

Via e-mail