Black Hole in Council's Accountability

A Black Hole of Accountability

What Telford & Wrekin Council’s Silence on Disability Safety Really Means

Let’s cut straight to the chase. When a council proudly stamps its correspondence with “Protect, Care and Invest,” you’d expect a certain baseline of transparency, especially on a matter of life and death. Instead, what we get from Telford & Wrekin Council is a masterclass in bureaucratic evasion, wrapped in polite, redacted paperwork.

The story is simple, and damning. A concerned disabilities officer writes to the Council Leader, Lee Carter, in March 2025. 

His subject? The urgent, glaring, and morally indefensible lack of proper Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) for disabled residents in high-rise buildings. He invokes Grenfell. He names local towers. He begs for action, specifically for Carter to lobby local MP Shaun Davies. It’s a cry for basic safety, born from a tragedy that should have changed everything.

The council’s response? A slow, circular waltz of internal emails deciding who should reply, a delayed draft, and a final response that essentially says, “It’s not really our law to enforce, but we’ll mention it to the MP.” It’s the definition of passing the buck. But the real kicker, the moment that shifts this from disappointing to deeply suspect, comes when someone files a Freedom of Information request to follow the paper trail.

The request asked for three very specific things: any letters or emails between Council Leader Carter and MP Shaun Davies about this issue, and any communications between a senior council officer, who specifically promised to raise the issue with the MP. 

The council’s reply? They sent back the original email from the disabilities officer… and their own internal chatter about how to answer him. That’s it. 

The entire, crucial part of the request—the evidence of whether Carter actually did what he promised, and lobbied Shaun Davies—is missing. Completely absent. The response document is a 10-page monument to what they didn’t provide.

So, let’s ask the obvious, uncomfortable questions the council hopes we won’t:

1. Did the Leader ever actually contact the MP? He told a constituent he would. The FOI request asked for proof. None was provided. The most logical conclusions are either that he didn’t, and no record exists, or that he did, and the council chose to break the law, and not to disclose it. Neither is acceptable. A leader’s promise shouldn’t vanish into a bureaucratic black hole.

2. What are they hiding? The only exemption they cited was for “personal data.” Fine. Redact the phone numbers and personal email addresses. But entire chains of correspondence about public safety policy between elected officials don’t just evaporate. This isn’t about protecting someone’s privacy; it smells like protecting someone’s inaction.

3. Who are they really protecting? This isn’t a request about parking permits or bin collections. This is about whether disabled people in high-rises have a plan to escape a fire. Grenfell exposed how “stay put” policies can be a death sentence for the vulnerable. Every moment of delay, every obfuscated email, every unmet promise isn’t just administrative failure—it’s a tacit acceptance of preventable risk.

Telford & Wrekin Council’s motto is “Protect, care and invest.” On this evidence, they are failing on the first count, paying lip service to the second, and investing mostly in their own defensiveness. They have taken the profound fear of disabled residents—a fear etched in the memory of Grenfell—and processed it into a bland, unactionable email chain that leads nowhere.

True protection requires courage and transparency. True care demands urgency and advocacy. Investing in a better borough means first investing in the truth. On all fronts, regarding the safety of its most vulnerable residents, Telford & Wrekin Council appears to be bankrupt.

The people of Hadley, Ketley, and every high-rise in the borough deserve answers, not a runaround. They deserve to see the paper trail. Until the council provides it, every promise they make is just more empty words, waiting to be redacted.

We will not allow the authorities to slope their shoulders, and pass the buck, for the sake of every disabled and vulnerable resident and their families, we will continue, and we will get results! 

Mark Webster

Disability Officer

The Green Party

Telford and Wrekin