Showing posts with label Employment Tribunal.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Employment Tribunal.. Show all posts

Thursday 1 September 2016

Public's interest led to details of Davani 'exit payment' being revealed

My attention has been drawn to Minutes of Brent's Audit Committee which give further infromation on Cara Davani's 'pay-off' from the Council. The Minutes do not explain why no disciplinary action was taken against her in 2014 after the Employment Tribunal and why (and by whom) a decision was made in May 2015 to seek legal advice on ending her employment with Brent Council.


Extract from minutes of Brent Council’s Audit Committee meeting held on 30 June 2016 (item 7 – Draft Statement of Accounts, 2015/16)
The Chair drew attention to note 30 of the draft accounts, which appeared on page 56 of the printed agenda, and asked officers to clarify the process by which the exit payment to the former HR Director had been agreed, as this was known to be a matter of interest to some members of the public.

Conrad Hall explained firstly that the Council acknowledged that the entire sequence of events reflected poorly on the Council.  He added that the Council was not required to publish the figure, but had chosen to do so. Technically under regulations the note was only required to disclose the remuneration of the Chief Executive, officers reporting directly to the Chief Executive and statutory officers.  The Council’s former HR Director met none of these criteria in 2015/16, the year of account. Nonetheless, officers had decided to publish the figure because of the known interest in it, which was felt outweighed the statutory obligations.

In terms of process, Conrad Hall explained that in May 2015 advice had been sought from a leading QC specialising in employment law.  The QC had been recommended by the Council’s Monitoring Officer from a framework contract operated by the London boroughs legal alliance.  His advice, in conference, had in summary been that the Council lacked good grounds to conduct a fair dismissal of the Council’s former HR Director for a variety of reasons, and had it attempted to do so it was likely to have been found to have acted unfairly by an Employment Tribunal.  Conrad Hall further advised that had such a course of action been attempted then the Council had been notified that a substantial claim would have been submitted by the former HR Director and that under those circumstances the decision had been taken to seek to settle matters by way of a compromise agreement.  Conrad Hall added that the terms of the final settlement, essentially one year’s salary plus notice, (which were broadly similar to payments to some other senior managers) had been notified to the external auditor.   Whilst the auditor was not required legally to ‘sign-off’ such payments, he nonetheless had the power to intervene in cases where he felt the Council was acting inappropriately, for example if he considered the payment excessive.  Phil Johnson confirmed this and that he had chosen not to exercise his powers to intervene.  Conrad Hall concluded that the terms of the settlement had therefore been negotiated bearing the commercial considerations in mind.  In response to a question from a member of the committee, Conrad Hall confirmed that the Council’s former HR Director had not been subject to disciplinary or capability proceedings, which would have been a decision of her then line manager.

Members asked why the situation had reached the point it had and further enquired of the process followed.  The Chief Executive explained the circumstances at the time and pointed out the improvements that had since been made to the HR procedures concerned, as referenced in the Annual Governance Statement reported under item 9 on the agenda.  The Chair suggested that consideration be given to what information could be made available on this matter that would provide a time line and demonstrate to members how lessons learnt had led to new improved procedures being introduced.’

Friday 10 July 2015

Brent Council: Does mere data gathering justify race equality award?

Nan Tewari has been following up the issue of Brent Council reaching the finals of the Race for Opportunity Award. This correspondence tells the story:

Dear Nan

Thank you for your phone call last week regarding Brent Council.

Our award categories are designed to celebrate and spotlight specific areas of best practice. The Transparency, Monitoring & Action Award specifically recognises best practice of the capture of ethnicity data within an organisation. It recognises organisations that are monitoring and evaluating the attraction, recruitment, progression, development, employee engagement, appraisal/performance ratings and retention of BAME employee in their workplace. We have this award because we believe that monitoring workforce data by ethnicity is one of the first and most important steps an employer can take towards understanding gaps in their workforce and improving diversity. 

We assess award entries against the criteria of the category being entered and this assessment is based on the information provided in the award application. Brent Council entered The Transparency, Monitoring & Action Award and their entry was scored in line with the award category criteria, and the entry met the requirements to be named as a finalist in this category.

All judging (our judging panels include external independent experts) has taken place and the winners will be announced at the dinner in October.  

Best wishes
Sandra

Sandra Kerr OBE

Race Equality Director
BITC


Dear Sandra,

I appreciate the time you have taken to reply and do not intend to take up your time with a protracted correspondence as this would be pointless.  I do however have some comments.

The mere exercise of data gathering does not confer equal opportunities status on an employer.  Brent has gone from being an Authority with significant BME representation in its management ranks to being the metaphorical pint of Guiness, notwithstanding the diversity of its population.

I have worked with many bodies that had been reluctant to change their ways of working on my recommendation citing that it would be contrary to their long established equal opportunity policies.    When I pointed out that the body in question notably lacked diversity in its ranks despite years of following these so-called equality policies, the light dawned and willingness to change followed.

I would respectfully suggest that your organisation could achieve much more by challenging monitoring and policy to actually deliver change, rather than to being ends in themselves.  Providing comfort to Brent Council by making an award to it (bad enough that it is one of two finalists!) would run completely counter to what BITC is supposed to stand for.

In the event that you are not familiar with the background to the uproar over ths issue by Brent residents and staff, I attach a couple of links for your information.  It is utterly unspeakable that Brent Council made no move to initiate disciplinary proceedings against its HR Director, Cara Davani, in the light of the Watford Employment Tribunal having found against her for race discrimination and victimisation.  No amount of statistical monitoring of diversity can eliminate the contempt which Brent Council has shown to its workforce by its having left this very HR DIrector in charge of a redundancy programme involving large numbers of (non-management grade) BME staff.    


WEMBLEY MATTERS: Tribunal finds employee suffered race discrimination, victimisation and constructive dismissal at hands of Brent Council



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WEMBLEY MATTERS: Tribunal finds employee suffered...
The Employment Tribunals has announced its judgment in the case of Rosemary Clarke versus the London Borough of Brent and Ms Cara Davani, Brent's Director of...

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WEMBLEY MATTERS: Brent Council Race Equality Award condemned


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WEMBLEY MATTERS: Brent Council Race Equality Awar...
Following yesterday's revelation that Brent Council was a finalist for a Race for Opportunity award the organisation has received messages from local people about t...

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Yours sincerely,

Nan Tewari