Statement made to the Pevensey Town Trust
Simon Montgomery,
editor, Bay The Journal
12 April 2017
On Friday 7 April the Pevensey Town Trust made a phone call to the Cardiff University Centre for Community Journalism that can only be described as malicious.
I have been a teacher for 41 years and the work has included working in secondary schools, for language schools, for the WEA (Workers Education Association) and Brighton Unemployed Centre as a tutor, as well as a tutor in a number of adult education settings, including Pevensey Bay.
For the last 28 years I have run my company Computer Box College, teaching page layout and web development. The company has taught over 500 students, including British Airways delegates for 13 years and an editor of the Evening Argus.
The Cardiff University Centre for Community Journalism offers networking, information and training for hyperlocal or community journalists.
Cardiff University is one of the first major educational institutions in the country to receive funding to explore and support the emerging hyperlocal press. I have been offered an opportunity to go and teach at Cardiff University aspects related to the birth of the hyperlocal press in this country with specific reference to the mechanics of broadsheet production in this context.
This is a very small role involving only a number of days work, but nonetheless I am proud to have been offered this role, because the work of Cardiff University in relation to the birth of the hyperlocal press may be a first in the United Kingdom, and of national significance. The Cardiff University Centre for Community Journalism identified the hyperlocal newspaper here and made the initial contact, suggesting the production was of interest.
In a very small way I am also proud of the work to develop the hyperlocal newspaper here and I will be teaching aspects of production here in addition, with the support of Cardiff University.
I am naturally very proud of my continuing 41 years work as a teacher.
In my view to have made such a phone call, given the context of the situation, with such malicious intent, in an attempt to undermine my relationship with Cardiff University Centre for Community Journalism should be opened to public scrutiny.
Any parish clerk making such a phone call to a major educational establishment of this nature would have their work called into question, such a phone call, in my view, might lead to the possibility of a dismissal.
There is no difference in a clerk to a charitable institution making such a call.
The call was made by Barbara Molog representing Pevensey Town Trust as the clerk to the Trust.
I have asked whether this call made on behalf of the Pevensey Town Trust, representing the organisation, was made at her own behest or with the agreement and approval of the trustees.
If this phone call was made with the approval of the trustees, my view is that the trustees should also be held to account.
The trust has failed to answer a question about whether this phone call was made with the approval and agreement of the trustees.
There is something seriously wrong with the Pevensey Town Trust in my view.
An organisation with the responsibility for managing such precious assets as the Court House Museum and Gaol, together with the Cattle Market car park has responsibilities.
The trust is run by volunteers meeting every 8 to 9 weeks, who give their time free of charge for the good of the community.
My view is that there is no infrastructure to the organisation and there is no accountability.
It must be manifestly clear that such a body is wholly inadequate to manage the affairs of what is such an important body in Pevensey.
The management of the car park was recorded by the trust as bringing in £86,000 to their bank account up to 2014. The figure now will be significantly higher.
It is only since November 2009 that the Trust has taken control of the car park and all the monies being paid by both residents and visitors utilising the car park. This is a major change in the circumstance of the Trust and requires management.
There is no management in this situation, the work is undertaken by volunteers meeting every 8 or nine weeks in an unaccountable way. There is an open question about whether such a structure can possibility work.
It is necessary in my view for communications with both residents and visitors to be managed.
It is also necessary in my view for there to be an educational programme which can support the recruitment of volunteers to support the work of profiling the Court House, Museum and Gaol. Neither of these features need necessarily cost a significant sum of money. The employment of someone for a half day a week on a freelance basis to manage communications with residents and visitors, responsible to the trustees, is not prohibitively expensive.
Neither would it be prohibitively expensive to employ an experienced freelance person in the development of an educational programme for volunteer led museums to establish such a programme to recruit volunteers. This would take an experienced education manager in this context, working part-time, three months, in my view.
At a point in 2016 the Trust recorded that there was £64,000 in their bank account. The cost in both the above cases would not significantly alter what the Trust describes as the ‘very healthy’ situation with their bank account.
It could be argued that this malicious phone call made by the clerk of the Pevensey Town Trust on behalf of the Trust and attempt to undermine my relationship with Cardiff University does not matter to anyone apart from myself and Pevensey Town Trust.
It will be necessary for me to work out the basis on which I will seek redress from the Pevensey Town Trust.
It is for people in Pevensey and Pevensey Bay to judge for themselves the work of the Pevensey Town Trust based on their own communications with the Trust.
My view is that Barbara Molog should resign from her role as the clerk.
My view also, that I am putting on public record, is that the Pevensey Town Trust is in a state of complete dysfunction.
On whose behalf did the Pevensey Town Trust make this phone call?
Simon Montgomery,
editor, Bay the Journal
The first hyperlocal newspaper for any network of villages in Sussex
12 April 2017
