A FORMER council leader’s controversial Mosque speech likely ‘swayed’ some people to vote Conservative, it has been revealed in a report that was heavily redacted for years until now.
Most of the redactions of an independent investigation into former Royal Borough leader Simon Dudley and former acting chief executive Russell O’Keefe’s conduct during the 2019 local election have been withdrawn following a three-year legal fight.
Richard Lingard, who conducted the probe in 2019, was looking into a wave of code of conduct complaints about Mr Dudley after he gave an infamous speech at the Maidenhead Mosque on April 26 during the pre-election period.
Mr Dudley, who suddenly resigned after May’s election, said to the members of the Mosque that they should vote Conservative as the council was negotiating with the neighbouring Ivy Leaf Club to surrender their lease and would give it to the Mosque in order for them to expand.
This was factually incorrect as talks with club members ceased in September 2018 due to a lack of suitable relocation sites.
However, Mr O’Keefe was producing a strictly confidential draft agreement for the Mosque to acquire that land if ever the Ivy Leaf surrendered their lease to the council. This was sent to the Maidenhead Mosque’s Islamic Trust just two days before the speech.
Mr Dudley was accused of using private council information he had access to and had ‘conspired’ with Mr O’Keefe to mislead a specific community to obtain votes for the Tories.
Mr O’Keefe vehemently denied he was pressurised by Mr Dudley to produce the draft agreement report before the controversial speech. Mr Lingard found no evidence of the former council leader pressuring the former senior council officer.
But there was an email sent by the Mosque to Mr O’Keefe on April 24 explicitly stating that the draft agreement needed to be finalised by April 26 when Mr Dudley addressed the community.
In one of Mr Lingard’s conclusions, which has been redacted since 2019, he found Mr Dudley’s speech likely ‘swayed’ some of the voters to vote blue – ‘clearly his intention’, he stated.
However, Mr Dudley could not be fully probed because he resigned as leader and as a councillor a week before the report’s conclusions. Mr O’Keefe was also cleared of any misconduct.
Four out of five of Mr Lingard’s conclusions have been redacted for over three years after former councillor Claire Stretton, who submitted a code of conduct complaint against Mr Dudley, submitted a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) in November 2019.
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Initially, the Royal Borough refused as it contained ‘personal data on officers and others interviewed’. A redacted version was later released and saw further redactions withdrawn when the council liaised with the information commissioner’s office (ICO) to see if the exemptions were applied correctly, which the commissioner said they were.
But the commissioner found the council breached the law for failing to provide a final response to Ms Stretton’s request within the statutory 20 working days timeframe. She didn’t receive a final response until February 2021.
Ms Stretton still appealed the ICO’s decision at a first-tier tribunal in October 2021, believing the four conclusions should be revealed because of the significant public interest surrounding the debacle. It ordered most of the report to be released in March 2022 where the conclusions of the report can be viewed in its entirety.
Some parts of the current report remain redacted to protect the identity of junior council officers and others outside the organisation.
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The tribunal believed there is ‘no value for this particular legitimate interest’ in their identities being in the public domain despite later saying there was a ‘weighty’ interest and ‘pressing social need’ to disclose the conclusions and Mr O’Keefe’s name.
In the judge’s conclusions, they said Mr Lingard’s report raises ‘serious questions’ about Mr Dudley’s and Mr O’Keefe’s behaviour but the tribunal is not required to determine any wrongdoings in that regard.
Although the redactions surrounding the conclusions were ordered to be removed last March, the council didn’t immediately do this.
In a statement, the Royal Borough explained: “The council was not party to the subsequent first-tier tribunal proceedings appealing the ICO’s decision and, unfortunately, neither the ICO nor the tribunal informed the council of the tribunal’s decision, handed down in March 2022, to provide a further redacted version.
“However, when the council was first made aware, in July 2022, it prepared the new version and provided this to the requester within a few days. The council has disclosed four versions of the report since 2019 and the extended timescale essentially reflects the two appeal processes.”
Mr Dudley was contacted for comment.
