Council ‘will defend itself’ against MP’s legal action
A WELSH council has said it will defend itself vigorously against a claim for £1.1m brought against it by a company owned by a local MP.
The Fields Group is owned by Jamie Wallis, who at the general election in December defeated Labour’s Madeleine Moon to become the Conservative MP for Bridgend.
After Mr Wallis was elected, we reported how, according to a Freedom of Information disclosure made by Bridgend council, there had been more than 800 complaints made to trading standards about the Fields Group and other associated companies.
When we contacted Mr Wallis for a response at the time, he said the council’s information was wrong and his company was taking legal action over the disclosure.
Although he retains ownership of Fields Group, Mr Wallis resigned as a director of the company on December 20. He also quit as a director of six other companies – Fields Associates Ltd, Rapid Data Recovery Ltd, Fields Data Recovery
Ltd, Quickie Divorce Ltd, Fields Holdings Ltd and Digzoo Ltd.
The companies offer services including data recovery and data security. Quickie Divorce Ltd described itself as offering “other information technology activities”. Digzoo was a website that said it “strived to bring you the weirdest and most wonderful news stories”.
Another company Mr Wallis was previously involved with, Action Direct (UK), was banned from taking on new clients by the Ministry of Justice, as we reported in 2011.
Action Direct (UK), like the other companies based at Pencoed, near Bridgend, and run by Mr Wallis’ father Dr Daryl Hamilton-Wallis, agreed to the restrictions following an investigation carried out by the Claims Management Regulator.
Among the online operations set up by Action Direct (UK) were visaaction.co.uk and injunctiondirect.com, which Jamie Wallis has described as commercial trials which closed down on his appointment as director.
A website called CleanBreak.co.uk, a trading title of Quickie Divorce Ltd, listed another website called sugar-daddy. net as a “recommended resource”.
We put it to Bridgend council that it was facing a claim of £1.1m from Fields Group Ltd in respect of alleged trading losses as a result of negative publicity following the FoI disclosure.
A council spokesman said: “Bridgend County Borough Council has not admitted liability, nor given any indication of an intention to settle any claim. The authority denies liability for the claim and will be vigorously defending any court action brought against it. We have responded to the letter of claim.”
Mr Wallis declined to comment.