Bristol City Council spied on parents who criticised special schools

2022-08-21

Bristol City Council spied on parents who criticised special needs schools after Ofsted classed its provision as ‘disturbingly poor’ in a 2019 report

Activists who complained were put on a list of critical commentators by officials
Dossiers of personal information including wedding photographs were compiled
One parent was shocked and angry to learn of the monitoring by the council
Said there was a long history of parents being criticised and adverse narrative

Parents of children with special educational needs were subjected to an online surveillance programme by council bosses, leaked documents reveal.

Activists who had publicly complained about Bristol City Council’s special educational needs (SEND) provisions – classed as ‘disturbingly poor’ in a 2019 Ofsted report – were placed on a list of ‘critical commentators’ by officials.

Dossiers of personal information including wedding photographs were compiled by officers to try to link those parents to anonymous social media accounts posting additional critical comments.

One parent was ‘shocked and angry’ to learn of the monitoring by the council led by Labour Mayor Marvin Rees. She said: ‘There has been a long history of parents being criticised and of an adversarial narrative being created that SEND is somehow a drain on the system.’

One email, seen by this newspaper, describes council colleagues as ‘working hard to uncover concrete evidence’ on critics.

One parent was ‘shocked and angry’ to learn of the monitoring by the council led by Labour Mayor Marvin Rees, pictured

Attached to the email are social media posts, freedom of information requests and articles critical of the council. Officials describe how they had identified a parent calling for legal action against the council after uncovering wedding photographs on their Facebook account.

A council ‘fact-finding’ mission is due to report tomorrow but Green councillor Christine Townsend said: ‘We don’t know how many parents they have been looking at, what they were looking for and what they were doing with it.

‘The element of trust has been broken. The key question is whether people in the mayor’s office were also involved in this.’

The council said the investigation was carried out on behalf of the Bristol Parent Carer Forum (BPCF) to ‘substantiate concerns that members were carrying out online campaigning which seemed in conflict with them representing the forum’. The BPCF denied the allegations.

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