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| Christine Gilbert |
Confidential hotline for
concerned staff’ planned.
Guest Blog by 'Gilbert Harding'
Christine Gilbert, perpetual
‘interim’ CEO of Brent Council which, together with HR lead and interpersonal
staff relations role-model Cara Davani, was recently found guilty of racial
discrimination, victimisation and workplace bullying, has announced her plans to set up ‘a confidential whistle-blower hotline so that any staff who
had serious concerns’ could communicate their worries to their bosses.
This would be a great relief to those
many Brent Council employees who have, openly on this blog, privately to Martin
Francis, and most recently and publicly to Private Eye, expressed their
‘serious concerns’ about bullying, victimisation, threats of dismissal,
cronyism, gagging clauses and corruption
at Brent Council’s Civic Centre. Such a
move would be welcomed as an appropriate intervention by a leader wanting to
find out what was really going on in her organisation with a view to turning a
troubled situation round in an open and transparent way.
Slightly disappointingly, however, Ms
Gilbert made the whistle-blower announcement quoted above not recently but a
whole 6 years ago on December 10th 2008 to a Commons Select Committee
and in relation to her then job as Head of Ofsted (the previous employer also
of Cara Davani, Clive Heaphy and Ark Academies employee Dame Sally Morgan).
(Details HERE )
Nevertheless, Brent Council staff will be feeling
confident that Ms Gilbert’s passionate desire to let some light into the
murkier corners of institutional malpractice will not have faded since her
earlier statement and that her principles remain intact.
Indeed, one
hooded and masked Civic Centre employee was relaxed enough yesterday to tell me, in an unsigned
encrypted message smuggled out past a cordon of G4S security personnel and
hidden in a camouflage-pattern green and
brown envelope : ‘I think I can
speak for all my anonymous colleagues when I say that I believe Ms Gilbert’s
earlier interest in openness and transparency and her very real and publicly
declared desire to tap into the honest, uncensored and unintimidated experience
of the people she leads, still burn as brightly
now in 2014 as they did in 2008.’
A statement from Ms Gilbert on plans for a new
updated whistle-blower hotline is now expected. But perhaps not for another 6
years.
Alternatively, less patient Civic Centre
whistle-blowers may find it more productive to communicate their serious
concerns more urgently to Private Eye's 'Rotten Boroughs' contact here:
(Ms Gilbert was unavailable for comment).
