Councillor rejects claims by Cornwall he presents risk to children

A councillor has vigorously denied claims that he represents a potential risk to children after Cornwall Council wrote to schools and children’s settings in the Launceston area warning them not to allow him access to children and young people.

In a statement issued on Friday (21 November), Cornwall said it had received information in October raising “serious child protection concerns” relating to Cllr Alex Folkes.

The authority subsequently launched an investigation and asked the councillor to stay away from the council while the investigation was carried out.

“As a result of the information which came to light during this investigation, the Leader of Cornwall Council, John Pollard, decided that Councillor Folkes could not continue to carry out his Cabinet responsibilities and demanded that he either resigned with immediate effect or he would remove him from his role as the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources,” the authority said.

Cllr Folkes, who has described the claims as “outrageous”, resigned on 4 November 2014.

The council acknowledged that following the 2009 unitary elections, some officers had become “aware of an adverse entry on a CRB disclosure form relating to Councillor Folkes”.

It said the chief executive, Andrew Kerr, had recently written to Cllr Folkes calling on him to resign from the council with immediate effect.

Cornwall said it had been given information by the police which had been assessed by the local authority’s designated officer (LADO) under its safeguarding process.

“Based on the information supplied by the police at this stage, the LADO process concluded that Councillor Folkes represented a serious and enduring risk to children,” the council said.

“This decision was later confirmed by additional information supplied by the police. This led to the Director for Education, Health and Social Care writing to schools and children’s settings in the Launceston area.”

The council said it had taken legal advice on all aspects of the matter in order to make certain that the process was conducted fairly and properly and in the interests of ensuring the maximum safety of children in Cornwall.

“We are confident that the investigation, which was aided by the police, has been dealt with appropriately and all proportional steps have been taken to ensure children in Cornwall are protected to the maximum possible degree,” it added.

The council also said it had taken legal advice on when it could share details of the evidence which had been provided to the LADO with Cllr Folkes. It insisted that it had provided him with the information “as soon as it was legally able to do so”. 

Cornwall announced that an internal investigation is currently underway into how the matter was dealt with in 2009.

Writing on his blog last Thursday (20 November), Cllr Folkes denied the claims he represented a risk to children.

He said: “In 2006 (and before I became a councillor) I was one of many people who was arrested when credit or debit card details were found which linked the cardholders to a site containing indecent images of children. I have never viewed any such images nor had I ever visited the site or any others like it.”

The councillor said he had been able to show the police that his card had been cloned and used illegally for various things including a hotel in Brazil.

“I reported that at the time and my bank refunded the money,” he said. “Of course I cannot be sure, but that is how I believe my card details came to be linked to the site as it fits the time my card was used fraudulently. When details are stolen on the internet they tend to come in a package and hackers can also have access to your address, email, password, phone, IP address, etc, which can easily be cloned and used by another person to cover their own identity and make it look like the victim of their fraud is the guilty party.”

Cllr Folkes said the police had not brought any charges and he had been told the matter was closed. There is no current police investigation.

When he was elected to the council in 2009, his arrest was revealed in an enhanced CRB check.

“I discussed this matter with the chief legal officer of the council,” Cllr Folkes said. “He told me that he would discuss it with the (then) leader Councillor Alec Robertson. I heard no more about this from the legal officer, Mr Robertson or anyone else. I assume that they took the view, quite rightly, that the matter was properly dealt with by the police and considered closed.”

Cllr Folkes said that the matter had been raised with Cornwall’s child protection team at some point within recent weeks, and that since then anonymous letters and emails had been sent to the press and to opposition councillors.

He said he had repeatedly asked officers for the information they received to be passed on to him so that he could refute it. “They refused to do so. That limited information which has been shared with me I know to be untrue and they have not offered any evidence to support their outrageous claims.”

Cllr Folkes also claimed that he had not been given time “to correct the wrong information” held about him, and meetings about him had been held in secret.

“I know the allegations are untrue and I am determined to prove it,” he said, adding that he had invited his party, the Liberal Democrats, to look into the matter under its own disciplinary processes. “I have voluntarily suspended my membership of the party and the whip on the council for the duration of this process.”

Cllr Folkes said he would be taking a leave of absence from the council for a few weeks “in order to be able to obtain and correct the misinformation held on me, and whilst the party investigation is undertaken”.

He also set out some questions for the council, including why it had done nothing until recently when the authority had known about his arrest since 2009.