A Law Unto Themselves: Former Council Staff Able to Threaten and Harass Others With Impunity

The situation with the Slacks on Red Houses is one that seems to have prevailed for a period of some twenty years. Previous to the dismantling of the old District and City Council system in Durham, and the subsequent amalgamation of all of these respective arms of Local Government into a single Unitary Authority, little has come of the extensive promises that appear to have been made to bring about an end to the blatant corruption and criminality exposed in the pages of ‘Private Eye’ magazine’s ‘Rotten Boroughs column at the hands of Tony Martin; the celebrated Durham Cobbler. In fact, thanks to the extensive disappearance and shredding of many important documents, much of the corruption previously referred to appears to have been getting worse.

A valid case in point revolves around the land at Quarry Heads, which lies adjacent to the estate at Red Houses; from which the Slacks have been able to organize burglaries, thefts, drug dealing, harassment, anti-social behaviour and a whole host of inter-related low level criminal activities for years; with little or no real action being taken against the primary instigators of the problem at source. Indeed, as early as 2008 a former District Councillor, who had sat on the Shadow Board of the Housing Association that had been set up to manage all of Teesdale District Council’s former housing stock in the run up to the setting up of the Durham Unitary Authority, had brought the activities of the Slacks directly to the attention of the Local Government Ombudsman.

At about the same time as the Local Government Ombudsman’s subsequent Report and Ruling into the matters then under discussion, documents which actually go so far as to ignore key pieces of evidence which were submitted in the run up to the Ombudsman’s supposed investigations, another report and ruling was simultaneously published; this time by the Independent Housing Ombudsman Service. Once again, members of the Slack Family are mentioned directly as being key trouble makers and nuisances right the way across the estate, not to mention the surrounding area. So why has so little yet to be done about them?

Apart from the alleged family ties between certain members of the Slack Clan and a former Housing Manager at Teesdale Housing Association, there is also clear evidence of some kind of direct involvement with certain serving Police officers and their families. This, it would seem, would appear to be at the heart of the Slacks’ seeming ability to deal drugs, burgle, steal, make threats, and engage in anti-social behaviour with virtual impunity: the absolute bare minimum of what should to all intents and purposes be recognized as the appropriate action in cases such as this ever having been actually taken. Something that was at the core of the former District Councillor’s provably logged complaints against them with the Local Government Ombudsman. Indeed, during the course of the above complaints he himself is on record as having testified to the Ombudsman in relation to being on the receiving end of the kind of abuse that one of his former neighbours can himself be seen being subjected to in the embedded video at the top of this page. For those unable to grasp sufficiently what is being said during the course of this albeit brief exchange, on account of the somewhat poor quality of the sound, an accompanying sound recording of the entire incident has been embedded directly beneath it.

So. why have the Police and their partner agencies still failed to take what should have been the appropriate affirmative response in relation to all of this, unless actually forced to by the persistent complaints of residents to organizations such as the I.P.C.C.,  now that more than four years have passed since the filing of the Ombudsman’s report? According to one account, a number of vested interests have wanted the block of flats outside which this incident can be shown to have taken place demolished for quite some considerable time. Unfortunately, due to the fact that all of the former and current tenants that effectively occupied the block before its wholesale vandalism by the Slacks and their various cohorts, of whom only two out of a dozen or so one time occupancies presently now remain, were possessed of Assured Tenancies, the only way to get them out without paying them the compensation to which they were entitled was by means of harassment like this.

At the bottom of this page the witness who can be seen talking to Kevin Slack, from the relative safety of his own car, can be heard telling the individual at the focus of the above harassment what Mr. Slack had previously told him. As it would appear from this, Mr. Slack has been walking past the windows of residents on the Red House Estate staring aggressively into their living rooms, whilst they themselves have been attempting to go about their daily business, for quite some considerable time now. In view of this, it is perhaps significant that another sound file, consisting of a discussion between the present focus of the Slacks’ attentions and his former Housing Officer, Nicola Stout, which is currently lodged with the Clark Willis Law Firm at Darlington, would likewise appear to indicate that she herself has been speaking to other residents who have been experiencing similar problems at the hands of the Slacks’ extended criminal network into the bargain. And, the fact that a number of these people have since been forced to relocate on account of Teesdale Housing Association’s apparent lack of action in relation to this may well add further substance to the theory that has just been put forward.

So why has something yet to be done, given the fact that this last mentioned recording was provably made in excess of fourteen months previous to the incident recounted here actually taking place? It should be noted that Kevin Slack is himself a one time employee of Durham County Council, who, it has been alleged, has only recently left their employ, for reasons that are still unclear. So, is this last mentioned fact in any way relevant with regard to how the Slacks seem to be a law unto themselves? Many local residents seem to think it is. In due course we shall look at things in relation to the matters described here in more detail, with particular reference to the land at Quarry Heads. And, with regard to this so far unanswered question, to which no one who is supposedly in ‘authority’ has thus far been able to provide anyone with a direct and satisfactory explanation, even their own elected political representatives, we shall attempt to provide the possible answer: now that all of the previously made inquiries have thus far met with a characteristic wall of silence; as is so often the case with anything vaguely awkward in relation to the workings of local authorities generally.