This is simply a list of people from one of the following:
- Scottish State Companies:
- Scottish Water, and
- Scottish Water Business Stream, and
- Subcontractors such as Debt Collectors et al.
- Other Revenue Collectors,
- The Scottish Government [Administration],
- The Scottish Parliament [MSP's],
- Water Industry Commission for Scotland
some of whom have been asked the following simple question, and have failed to give a simple straight forward and honest reply.
The following has been emailed to the people in the list below:
This request is raised as a law abiding citizen of Scotland who would pay all the legitimate and valid demands for payment.
Please provide, from Scottish Water, or other source [the 2005 Act, or other legislation, or valid Legal Opinion - with name of Counsel, or report of a court case [thus NOT from the SPSO]], the reason, valid in law, and thus supportable in the Sheriff's court, that Premises which have neither a direct connection to a Scottish Water water pipe, nor a direct connection to a Scottish Water Sewer whether it be Foul, Storm, or Combined should be treated as an Eligible Premises.
Responses have been classified as follows:
- An Inadequate Response, viz:
- No response made within a reasonable time - viz a max of six weeks.
- A response made but the content is not specific meaning that it could not be presented to a Sheriff or Judge etc in a Court of Law.
- An adequate sensible response - so classifying the respondent as Open, Honest, and Accountable.
List contacted to date:
- Scottish Water Business Stream Complaints - see here for the email exchange - Asked 3rd August 2017 - No reply within six weeks. The MSP's office had failed, and direct communication with SWBS Complaints had taken over.
- Jon Rathjen - Team Leader, Water Industry Team, Scottish Government - Asked 18th September 2017 - Non Specifc Reply received 19th Sept 2017. See here for the email exchange.
- Scottish Water Business Stream Subcontractor: Brodies - Debt Collection Department [in progress - commenced 22 Jan 2018]
- Scottish Water Revenue Protection Department - see here for the email exchange - Asked 25th January 2018 - Non Specific Reply received 31st January 2018.
- Clear Business | Water - Samantha Howard, Customer Resolution Officer [in progress - commenced 13th April 2018].
Why has this been done ? Because getting a simple answer to the above straight forward question appears to be impossible in a country which declares itself to be Open, Honest, and Accountable.
It would be reasonable to ask why we have not asked the Water Industry Commissioner for Scotland [WICS] to answer the question. There are three reasons:
- We raised several Freedom of Information Requests to which we received evasive responses. In our view, there was an obvious unwillingness to be Open, Honest, and Accountable.
- WICS remit, enshrined in Law, effectively precludes answering this question. However, it is interesting to note that we have had a communication from the Administration's Deputy Director for the Water Industry indicating that WICS do have such authority. We have treated this as "buck passing" and have ignored it.
- Banking Consultants are, by tradition, not known for answering any question that it is not in their interest so to do. See Alan Sutherland's CV [downloaded 05102016] as was once published by the University of Dundee for more information. If you belong to Linked-In, Sutherland's CV posted there [downloaded 28012018] tells a more likely story .... and his skills quote by Linked-In "are Endorsed by 5 of Alan’s colleagues at Water Industry Commission for Scotland."
The BBC reported that on 20th December 2023 Sutherland resigned over false accounting [of his expenses] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67772825 .