David Vs Goliath and David Won

Today was the case were Cllr Steve Jones went to the High court and asked a Judge to allow him to apply for a Judicial Review. Also at the same meeting he asked for the Bryn By Election.

The hearing should have lasted just 30 minutes however it went on all day. During the day We argued that Cllr Steve Jones has said he was going to resign in the future, ie about 8 weeks away. He did this whilst suffering a massive spike in his depression. After time to get over that and get a massive wave of support from residents he informed the council that he would not be resigning in the future. Wigan Council went bad and said well we are saying you have resigned and called a by election, effectively sacking him as an elected member.

Wigan Council always said we were wrong with how we were interrupting a number of laws including the Local Government Act 1972. We contested that and I sent the head of Legal Services a letter just days after the matter arose and said lets try and sort this out and don't call a By-Election. They ignored me. In that letter on the 14th I warned them that if they did not respond then we would take them to court.

So today Wigan council must have known they were going to lose as their tried on so many points to get the Mr Justice Tim Kerr to throw the application out. The judge responded to this by saying that I had written to them on the 14th January and not only did they carry on the election they accelerated the process and now the Council are trying to hide behind the fact people have started voted. So the Judge as said he will not stop the by election HOWEVER he has granted permission for Steve Jones to have a judicial review and if he had to rule on it today he would find in favour of Steve Jones - affectingly telling Wigan Council he is still a Cllr.

Wigan Council said that the judge couldn't stop the election because Donna Hall was acting not as a Chief Executive but as a Returning officer which is a separate position to her role as Chief Executive and we were claiming against Wigan Council. After thought and discussion the judge said that Donna Hall should come to court and because the time was so close to the By election he would not order her before then as it was to close but would want her there on the judicial review. I really wouldn't want to be Donna Hall facing this High court Judge.

At the end the judge said that the election should not have been started and or stopped earlier.He said that Wigan council choose to spend the £10,000 so far on this by-election knowing that it was coming to court. They choose to ignore the high court application. I guess they did this at their peril because the Judge said a council and returning Officer should only ever advertise when a vacancy has come available and in the case of Steve Jones in his opinion he hadn't resign. He came to that conclusion after reading all the emails and dates to and from Steve Jones and Wigan Council and myself. He said that I a lay person on the street , if they read them, they would agree that Steve Jones never resigned. See us common folks views do matter.

The barrister who Wigan Council was a very highly respected Barrister from Kings Chambers in London and the judge said his judgement was not against his effects to try and stop this but it was because in effect Wigan Council were in the wrong and should have responded to my email on the 14th January.

So what now? The by-election goes ahead and Steve Jones will continue to fight that and if he wins then he wins. If someone else wins then Steve can then go for a Judicial Review and probably win ( well he would have won today) and then whoever had won would not be the official Cllr because the judgement would rule that Steve never resigned.

The judge left it saying that Donna Hall should write immediately to all candidates and inform them of this judgement. In my it means I Donna hall write to you but I am saying if you win and your name is not Steve Jones then you will be ruled out as a Cllr because Steve Jones has a right to a Judicial Review whereby he has a very high success rate of winning saying he never actually resigned in the first place therefore there should never have been an election. That confirms to us that this by-election has been called illegally.

Steve Jones wants to say a massive thank you to all those how has supported him and like the judge says the people who voted him in in 2016 should not be denied their Cllr.

There will be communication between myself and Steve with the Barrister for Wigan Council and Wigan Council and hopefully collectively we can resolve this mess.

Donna Hall must seriously  consider her position and if she doesn't quit now be sacked because now her position has become untenable! Her illegal actions ( in my view) have now cost Wigan Taxpayers about £100,000. She is on £200,000 plus a year take some of the money back of her!

At the end the barrister for Wigan Council tried to get permission to appeal the judges judgement. The judge said  no because they had very little success of winning.