Polly has accused Reform-run Kent council of trying to block scrutiny after it refused, for more than five months, to produce evidence that it had saved more than £40m by cancelling two environmental projects that did not exist yet.
Polly first requested background to the claim via a freedom of information (FoI) request in July. She said the subsequent delay had not been explained and seemed to show the council was embarrassed at what the documents would show.
Kent county council said it rejected any suggestion of a cover-up, and that it planned to release the information to Polly later this week.
The saga began when the Kent leader, Linden Kemkaran, told a council meeting on 10 July that the authority had saved £32m by scrapping a programme to make properties more environmentally friendly, and £7.5m by not making the council’s fleet of vehicles electric by 2030.
This prompted the FoI request from Polly, who worked in green energy before becoming an MP, which requested documents setting out how the total figure had been calculated.
A response from the council in August said the only available information was two lines in a budget document, arguing that because they were only potential projects and had not been formally agreed, no business cases had been completed.
Polly told the council it was “not plausible” that no other documents or emails about the projects existed, and demanded they be passed to her.
Since then, the MP has written several more times to the council and then to Kemkaran, saying they had breached laws over FoI requests and that she would take the case to the information commissioner’s office.
In an email at the end of October, one of the council’s FoI officers apologised for the delay, saying they were “currently waiting for a response from the leader’s office”.
Polly said she was shocked at what she called a lack of openness from the council about supposed savings on projects that “never really existed”.
She said:
“When I submitted this transparency request all I wanted was a bit of honesty from Reform UK that the supposed savings from these energy efficiency projects wasn’t all that was claimed. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer lengths council leader Kemkaran would apparently go to in order to prevent the truth being released.”
“Kent County Council have already admitted these projects never really existed but are now refusing to release the email exchanges between council staff and Cllr Kemkaran about them.
“It’s one thing to lie to voters, but it’s quite another to break the law to cover it up. You have to wonder what is in these emails that is so bad that Kent County Council would be willing to flout the law in order to block their release.”
A version of this story originally appeared in The Guardian. Read it by clicking here.