Talk:Surrey Heath

Justifications for removal of politics content - please discuss here before re-instating

I've made a number of removals from the politics section, the justifications of which are below:

• The statements about the offshore trust - removed because this information is not in the cited sources, and has presumably been inferred from sources other than those cited.
• Property investment assets loss - this isn't clearly taken from the sources cited, there is probably a secondary source that may make this justifiable to re-insert.
• Removal of Councillor Gibson - no sources
• Removed the parish election results for two parishes and no others - not really related to Surrey Heath generally and might be more appropriate for the parish articles
• Removal of the pay investigation and report paragraphs - lots of speculation and weasel wording. This is potentially appropriate to reinstate, but only with more reliable sources.
• The wikipedia editing paragraph - original research

-- Mrmatiko (talk) 18:30, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I've reinstated the CEO pay investigation details after a removal today, as these have been expanded with additional sources (eg. Companies House, Local Government Chronicle, Private Eye). There have been a couple of removals of this information recently (which I've reinstated). Would like to try to gain consensus here if we can? Jonathan Deamer (talk) 22:28, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

And my apologies for not spotting this notice before reinstating :) Jonathan Deamer (talk) 22:35, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Surrey, User talk:109.152.230.210. Jonathan Deamer (talk) 23:28, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Having done some research through the Surrey Heath Borough Council's official press statements, I believe the CEO pay investigation removals are most likely due to the skewed nature of the content on the page. There are some very clear inaccuracies and hearsay that have been stated as if they were facts. For example, the first sentence states that it was "revealed in January 2019" but the earliest linked article is from August 2019 and the first reference to this by the council was on the 2nd August 2019.

The first sentence also says that it was "revealed the then Chief Executive, Karen Whelan, had had her base salary increased by over 30% to £158,000, making it higher than that of the then Prime Minister, Theresa May." Whilst the 'getsurrey' article does indeed state this, the official Surrey Heath press release and financial report confirm that the base pay was £120,687 plus the £15,000 increase and that the only reason these figures had been misquoted by getsurrey was because they had failed to understand that the Chief Executive's pay had been backdated to 2016. In addition, the word "revealed" suggests that these figures and claims are fact but they are very clearly disputed by the official source. The inclusion of the reference to Theresa May's pay, is completely irrelevant, clearly showing some biased opinion against the Chief Executive, and, based on the official figures, this claim is also untrue.

The next point of a suggested bias against the chief executive is that the the word "approved" is in quotation marks, which quite clearly implies that it wasn't approved by Cllr Moira Gibson. In the previously referenced Surrey Heath press statements, they clearly state it is approved but whether that approval was valid is up for question. However, I believe the phrasing here just leads to a vague inference that the CEO could have been lying/could have faked the approval. In addition, this entire first paragraph only makes reference to a singular article that has incorrect information when compared with the official sources. I don't have additional time to go through the rest now, but would be happy to continue tomorrow evening! I do believe the multiple removals of this section are not as an act of page vandalism or local government cover-ups but as an attempt to protect Ms. Whelan from what appears to be quite a deliberate attack on her and her character with poorly researched and incorrect information about her pay. This whole section appears to be very biased and skewed unfavourably toward her by attempting to pass some incorrect news reports into apparent fact by posting it on Wikipedia. I would suggest that it is best to remove this section for this reason - or at least consider rewriting in full to hopefully give a more balanced and objective synopsis of the situation.

Danbrown765 (talk) 23:05, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to wikipedia Dan, good to see your first ever edit, to help I've had a google and found some interesting sources to add on the Surrey Heath Council ones, Local Government Lawyer has a detailed article that has further details on the matter. . Private Eye Magazine also has extensive coverage over a number of months on the matter that have been used within the quotations (can't find an online link so one assumes there's an easy way to reference it from the paper copies). There is also the report of the independent investigation There is an on going effort to remove cited information relating to the council in general over the past few years (including from within council IT systems), it would be better to correct promptly rather than remove the whole section. I'll have a go with these and see what I can do to improve the areas you high light, perhaps we should explore protecting the page from anonymous edits? Robidy (talk) 22:56, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Robidy, the changes you’ve made are a good start but I believe there are still some inaccuracies. The Surrey statements quote different figures for Ms. Whelan’s base salary, the financial report naturally includes the additional costs of NI contributions, other expenses etc. so to quote that as her pay seems wrong. I have amended accordingly. Danbrown765 (talk) 10:59, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Given Karen Whelan was CEO at Surrey Heath Borough council and those producing the statements would ultimately have a reporting line to the CEO, Karen Whelan would have been in a position of influence over those statements. It is less likely she would have been in a position of influence over the media sources cited. Equally Karen Whelan has a right of challenge to IPSO if she feels those media reports are incorrect. I've not see any cases brought against Private Eye or others through the regulator or any other form of re-dress, they may also have other sources for their information they wish to protect. Robidy (talk) 11:15, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I've added a BBC News source for the salary. Robidy (talk) 11:22, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

References