Oh my! Just days after a formal council report from Bristol City Council Legal Services, the direct responsibility of Head of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer, “L’Il” Tim O’Gara claimed:

The council has released, under Freedom of Information, their protocol – Guidance re Use of Social Media in Investigations – that, er, deals directly with viewing and sharing third party social media!

This is not a new document cobbled together in the wake of the SEND spying scandal. It was created in May 2020 by Kate Burnham-Davies, a solicitor at Bristol City Council and a colleague of the people who produced the ‘fact-finding’ report assuring us that there was no social media protocol “dealing directly with viewing and sharing third party social media”.

The guidance strongly suggests that the social media surveillance carried out by Bristol City Council on SEND parents is unlawful. Pretty much a consensus view shared by everyone in the country except the council’s Director of People, Hugh “Cares” Evans; Director of Education, Alison “Pervy” Hurley; a variety of spying chancers in Bristol City Council’s SEND management team; the External Comms team and the council’s Head of Legal, “L’il” Tim O’Gara.

Here’s some relevant items from the guidance. This is what it says about RIPA:

So where’s the evidence the SEND management spies and External Comms followed RIPA procedural guidance?

Next up, here’s what it says about social media users’ human rights:

Where’s the council’s public interest purpose for spying on SEND parents social media? Where’s the specific legal advice establishing a lawful basis for direct surveillance?

Finally, this on record keeping:

Where are the records of the decision and rationale for spying on SEND parents?

This document proves that everyone from Hugh “Cares” Evans and Alison “Pervy” Hurley down have deliberately ignored their own organisations’s policies and broken the law to spy on the city’s SEND parents. They all need to go and if they won’t go, they should sacked.

Meanwhile, “Li’l” Tim O’Gara and his legal team have tried to cover it all up. What. The. Fuck?