In-Person Surveillance

One of the most disturbing things I learnt when I received my Subject Access Request was that Bristol City Council was not only spying online. They were spying in-person on the Send support group I co-ran with a friend.

‘[REDACTED] SENDIAS just called to say she’d had a sleepless night because she now thinks that [REDACTED] wasn’t actually running the group as she didn’t have the PCF top up…’

I was co-running the group, but as I have sensory processing difficulties with certain fabrics, I was not wearing the BPC Forum t shirt.

During peak 2021 spying, Bristol City Council was playing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with the city’s SENDIAS service Send And You (SAY).

A SENDIAS service should offer free, impartial and confidential information, advice and support to children and young people with Send as well as their parent carers. Bristol’s SENDIAS service was anything but impartial, working directly with Bristol City Council to target parent carers they just did not like.

Presumably it was SENDIAS in the below email of September 2021 that informed Bristol City Council of the parents it doesn’t like having the audacity to run a Send support group in south Bristol.

In October 2021 began the T-shirt issue from the in-person spying.

SENDIASS had a sleepness night thinking about me. A slightly less redacted version of the above.

The full email chain

Send and You (SAY) would also go on to spy with Bristol City Council and falsely accuse me of leaking confidential information: https://www.bristolsendspying.com/accusations-of-confidentiality-breach/

This below email was made from within the Mayor’s office in April 2021. There was a Send gathering on College Green for the 250 children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) who did not have a specialist school place but needed one.

Not of particular note on its own, but within the bigger picture and a hugely redacted SAR, it makes one wonder how much more was going on that was far more insidious and widespread.

This also took place in the April ahead of the first bout of major spying by the council. What exact role was the Mayor’s Office playing in the difficulties the parent carer forum would face as well as how Bristolians were being profiled by the council?