At the end of May I put in a Freedom of Information request to Selby District Council (SDC) asking what assessments they had made about the impact of a no deal Brexit and what plans, if any, they had prepared. I asked for copies of both. They replied on Tuesday afternoon. What I received was a single page Word document and a Corporate Risk assessment. That was it.
The FOI request, acknowledged by SDC on 29th May, was to ask:
(a) If any assessment or planning has been undertaken by Selby District Council into the impact of exiting the EU without an agreement?
(b) If so, could I have a copy of such assessments and planning?
I reminded them the request was overdue on Tuesday morning and up it popped on Tuesday afternoon. Amazing. The odd thing is that the Corporate Risk Assessment was updated on Sunday just two days before! Local government is clearly a 24/7 business these days. Presumably someone had to work overtime on it. Anyway, it's essentially an updated version of one released as part of a wider Audit & Governance review of the corporate risks facing the council published on January 30th this year.That was 166 pages long but to save you wading through it, page 61 is here:
The risk rating then (December 2018) was 12, calculated from an impact of 4 and a likelihood of 3. This was before Theresa May's deal was voted down when there seemed to be a chance of somehow getting it through the House of Commons. It talks about labour and skills shortages and the 'negative impact of Brexit Transition' and notes it poses 'a major risk to UK economic development'. Nowhere does it mention a no deal Brexit. It was predicated on our leaving three months later on 29th March with a Brexit transition.
As we know, that didn't happen and we got an extension to the end of October but we are now looking at the serious possibility of a no-deal Brexit in four months time. This is both the legal default position and one of the declared leading options by both Hunt and Johnson.
You would have thought the risk level had increased, but weirdly it has now dropped to just 4 as you can see (left).
This is calculated as a likelihood of 2 and an
impact of 2 even though 'civil unrest' is given as one of the consequence. That was not even on the list of potential issues back in January when the risk rating was 12.
I intend to ask why they now believe the risk rating has dropped to 4. Does the council know something we don't?
One of the links in the Word document takes you to a copy of a supplementary agenda from the 30th January meeting of the A&G Committee, dealing solely with Brexit, which claims the December risk rating actually was for a no deal Brexit although it isn't stated in the assessment itself. The council was also expected (see page 4) to have inter alia:
- A 'Fully Resourced Plan for 29th March'
- A Communications Plan
Note the causes of risk included the failure to plan, resource the plan and implement the plan and to communicate it to all stakeholders. But as far as the FOI response shows, in Selby we seem to have no plan at all! I intend to put this to SDC to see if there is more to come.
Also included was a link to a rather alarming page on the .GOV website on Local Government Brexit Preparedness with a very long list of things for local authorities to do or be aware of. This includes a section on farming which you might be interested in.
Also included are video guides for businesses on importing and exporting and a 'good practice guide' for Chief Executives on coping with civil emergencies.
The exporting video guide is here: (Update 12th Aug 2019: These videos have now been removed!! Presumably because you can see the miniscule number of views)
It's a short, typically cheerful 10-step guide on how to do it. A sort of Ethel the Aardvark goes exporting for primary school children. It's on YouTube (HERE) which means you can see how many views it has had. This morning it was 1,762. There are 240,000 businesses trading with the EU.
Are we prepared? I don't believe so.
The Japanese Foreign Minister warned again this morning of the 'negative consequences' of a no-deal Brexit for more than 1000 Japanese companies operating in the UK.
I am afraid when thin gruel is the only thing on offer from the EU, as soon as we're hungry enough, we will eat it - or go back to the table on which is sitting the five course meal we have just rejected.
