WRAGGE RUMBLES ON
The effect of the highly critical Wragge report continues to impact at Sandwell MBC.
Neeraj Sharma, head of the council’s legal department and monitoring officer responsible for ensuring that councillors complied with the council’s code of conduct, cleared her desk and left at the end of July. She had been criticised by Wragge but the later Gaudie report was more sympathetic to her and minimised Wragge’s earlier criticism as based on hindsight.
However, post Wragge it became clear that heads would have to roll and each one of Sandwell’s Labour councillors was determined it should not be theirs. Getting rid of council officers is rarely a cheap exercise for council tax-payers but is a valuable buck passing smokescreen for Sandwell’s Labour councillors. It suggests that any blame lies with officer employees not with their councillor masters. The severance agreement almost invariably includes a confidentiality clause which, in return for a usually large compensation payment, bans the discarded employee from “spilling the beans” and revealing anything embarrassing.
Next to go, in February 2017 will be assistant chief executive Melanie Dudley. She was not directly associated with the matters examined in the Wragge report. Whether this is a case of embattled Chief Executive Jan Britton showing greater love by laying down Ms. Dudley’s job in an effort to keep his own, time will reveal.
A couple of weeks ago, Cllr. Ian Jones was due to appear before the Audit committee. Unfortunately, new council leader Eling informed the press in good time of Cllr Jones’ appearance but failed to extend that courtesy to Cllr Jones, so the event had to be postponed. The Wragge report found Cllr Jones merely a passive observer in the sales of council land.
However, the “big picture” and “star turn” is bound to be the appearance of Cllr. Maboob Hussain before the Standards Committee. Again contrary to established practise, leader Eling trumpeted this to the press. Indications are that Cllr. Hussain, far from being intimidated by the attacks of his former close colleagues at the Sandwell Council cabinet table, will come out fighting. Cllr. Hussain’s long tenure as a leading figure in the government of Sandwell means he knows “where the bodies are buried”. The hearing is also likely to provoke questions of where Cllr Eling was and what he was doing when all the alleged shenanigans took place and what he did, at that stage, to prevent any abuse of power.