If you want to lodge a complaint about someone putting up an oversized shed next door, but want to remain anonymous, planning authorities will typically tell you to get stuffed.
Why? Well, it's pretty obvious. Complaints where neither the authority being complained to, nor the person being complained about know who's behind the moaning inevitably lead to open gates for malice.
But if you want to remain anonymous to Social Services? No problem! They don't ask who you are, because, they say, the interests of the child are paramount over any concerns about anonymity. It sounds good, until you ask: is Social Services about family wellbeing, or just protecting children? It ought to be an equal concern.
This is the terrible place local authorities up and down the UK have taken us. Arse-kicked into covering their own backsides after high-profile failures on their part, they've now swung to the other extreme of making everyone guilty until they can prove otherwise.
It is, in no uncertain terms, a turning of centuries of legal safeguards against arbitrary punishment by the state on its head. Forget Magna Carta, because Social Services plebs think it's a kind of upmarket coffee.
And forget, too, the line that "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about." It's a lie. If someone that hates you cottons-on to the fact they can make as many complaints about your parenting abilities as they like without anyone asking who they are, chances are they will. Children are emotive. They grab the headlines. Especially when Social Services get things wrong.
Many will say that anonymity encourages reporting of bad parenting. Probably true. But then, it was an ethic used to terrible effect by the Stasi, too. Is that where the UK has come to? It is.
It's time Parliament put an end to entirely anonymous reporting of allegations against parents. If complainants want their details withheld, the Data Protection Act 1998 already allows that with no difficulty. If this practice were to end, then it would be easier for parents maliciously targeted by former partners, estranged spouses and neighbours with nothing else to do of a day, to tell Social Services who they think is responsible, and match that against what is often long-term harassing conduct by others, and often a matter of clear police record, too.
So long as Social Services redefine innocence by allowing completely anonymous accusations to be filed, parents - and their children - p and down the country remain at significant risk of further distress and harm. After all, send a shirty letter to a parent that someone, somewhere has moaned about them, and chances are they won't be taking it very lightly. It's an incredibly awful experience, sometimes pushing already stressed parents to the edge.
It's no good saying, on first complaint, that the "file is closed." If anonymity is OK, then Social Services can't tell whether the first anonymous complaint wasn't also made by the same person as the second. So, when they do get the second malicious complaint, they assume it's made independently of the first. They have to, because nobody asks who's moaning. This is just fundamentally wrong and ought never to have been allowed to become the default arse-covering, anti-rule of law system that operates daily in the UK.
It is a shame on the British spirit of justice, no less.
