At their meeting on 20th November 2025 the two original councillors and three temporary councillors voted to rescind a decision made by the full council of elected members on the October 16th Agenda.
In doing so they reinstated Cllr Gough’s proposal to forensically recover data from the old council laptop and hard drive. There was no discussion about how this would be done, who would do it, how much it would cost and what would be achieved.
As there was nothing about this matter on these weeks’ agenda, I took the opportunity to ask for an update by asking several focussed questions. These are the responses from the new chairman. (There was a lot of input from Cllr Gough who whispered to Cllr Waud presumably telling him what to say).
The old and current laptops are currently held by the clerk.
1. Has any attempt been made to forensically recover data from the old laptop?
R Waud. No Comment
2. Who performed the data recovery?
R Waud. No comment.
3. What was the cost of the data recovery?
R Waud. No comment.
4. Did the council formally agree to cover the costs of the data recovery.
R Waud. They did.
5. Can I ask how much was agreed as I don’t recall that being discussed at a previous meeting.
R Waud: No comment.
A member of the public present observed that the council were opening themselves open to the misuse of parish funds. To which the response was no comment.
Interesting to note that Richard Waud was one of the most vocal critics of the previous council which he accused of holding secret meetings, wasting money and being generally dishonest. Now he is in control he isn’t too keen on answering questions about actions and expenditure which are being undertaken on behalf of local residents.
Since the meeting the council seem to realise that their failure to answer entirely reasonable questions wouldn’t reflect well on them. In what looks and feels like a crude damge limitatation excercise they have put the following information on their Facebook page:
“the matter of recovery of data has been carried out following last month’s meeting with authorisation from the Ward Councillors stepping in and the Clerk who took the view that it would be illegal not to recover this data with issues regarding data protection, FOI and the charity commission. Also, potentially there may also be information to aid the forthcoming tribunal.
The cost of this was less than £500.”
They did not state who undertook this work or if anything was discovered.
I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t asked the questions then the council would have remained silent about the progress of Cllr Goughs data fishing excercise.
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