Mr Magill jpg was told a copy could not be found, jpg but 06 he discovered one in council files.Investigating whether key 10 meetings took bakesale place was not easy. Offices of the Policy Unit, the Managing Director, the pages bakesale 02 jpg htm Housing htm Directorate, 06 the Planning images and 1 Transportation Directorate, the City bakesale Solicitor's 10 Department were "visited" and files taken away."An entire underground pages filing area containing many thousands of archived files" was pages also found to contain previously undisclosed documentation.Outside Mr Magill's control, 02 he reveals, was "the contemporaneous images shredding of 02 documents." He says that when the managing director, Bill Philips, left the council 02 at the end of 1990, documents were images Photos bakesale 10 1 06 shredded.As the complexity images of the detective work grew, the council, says 10 the Photos report, seemed "unable to locate their own documents". Key personnel were traced by "agents", specially hired for the job. But if Mr Magill found rounding up people difficult, finding pieces of paper was even harder.Written or oral requests for documents were shelved in favour of direct action bakesale Unannounced Photos visits to offices became the norm. On 5 December 1989 he sought a formal response from jpg the 1 council It was sent in May 1990. "The documentation bakesale that was prepared for htm me htm was, however, bakesale far from complete."Over the next year, progress images Photos bakesale 10 1 06 on interviews pages bakesale 02 jpg htm was slow "Interviewees were reluctant to 1 attend". The notes bakesale and transcripts from the interviews pages run to 14 lever-arch files 06 containing Photos 10,000 pages.

However, the documentation and official files which served as the background to his investigation, were, he reports, not so easy to obtain. There were also continued attempts to have him removed entirely from the inquiry."There were attempts to mislead me," says Mr Magill. The damning accusations of deliberate evasiveness made by Mr Magill, the district auditor, sound as though they may have come from the pages of a detective novel, not Britain's flagship Conservative council. In reaching the conclusions of his lengthy inquiry, which officially began in July 1989, Mr Magill conducted 135 interviews. Crucial files that were hidden and shredded, deliberate delays in arranging interviews, important files buried in underground archives, evasive answers on the whereabouts of key documents, the mysterious disappearance of council papers and the delivery of documents known to be inaccurate. These tactics were all part of attempts to keep John Magill in the dark during his seven-year investigation of Westminster Council.

A Guide to Porterspeak (or what Dame Shirley really meant to say) Building stable communities - creating Tory strongholdsDesignated sales - selling council homes to Tory votersGentrification - increasing middle-class (Tory) voteBattlezone wards - marginal wards to be turned into Tory bastionsKey wards - another way of saying battlezone wardsMore electors - more Tory votersMore residents - fewer homeless, more Tory votersNew residents - Tory votersKeep on dodging - avoid explaining policy to the OppositionPolitical awareness - educating council officers to think her way. They "were informed that the majority party intended to win the next election, that that would be the focus of their attention, and that majority party objectives included 'social engineering including housing'."Dame Shirley chaired a meeting where one of the topics for discussion was the "economic justification for G Mander on Hsg". It said: "We should take a definite decision to look outside Westminster for accommodation for the homeless, and be imaginative: prefabricated homes, mobile homes, houseboats, disused holiday camps are all possibilities."On 22 June 1986, a "Four-Year Strategy" was thrashed out at Dame Shirley's country cottage. Two days later, records Mr Magill, the conclusions were presented to Mr Phillips and his officers.