Brent Council and Cara Davani: ‘Both parties had something to hide, so they both agreed to hide it.’

Philip Grant added a comment to a previous blog yesterday which contains some new information about the likely “pay off” by Brent to Cara Davani. So that all Wembley Matters readers are aware of this new development, I am posting his comment here as a separate guest blog:-

Despite a reminder to Christine Gilbert this afternoon (Friday Aigust 7th) that I was expecting her reply 'by the end of this week', I have not heard anything further from her, and so am still waiting for her answers to my two simple "yes" or "no" questions. See LINK if you don't know what these are.

Cllr. Warren copied to me an email he sent to Brent's Chief Legal Officer on Wednesday, referring to my email above of 3 August and supporting the arguments I had made. Calling for Christine Gilbert or Fiona Alderman to provide the answers to my questions, he said: 'It cannot be right to deny both Members and Brent Council tax payers such basic information.' Ms Alderman copied to me her acknowledgement, saying that she would reply to Cllr. Warren shortly, but if she has replied, I am not aware of what she has said.

I can now say for certain that there WAS an agreement between Brent Council and Cara Davani. Some WM readers have said that the continued mantra from Ms Gilbert, Ms Alderman and Cllr. Butt of: ‘The council cannot legally disclose any details of the arrangements relating to Ms Davani’s departure,’ meant that there must have been "arrangements". They were right. 

A reliable source has now told me that when she left Brent in June 'both Cara Davani and the Council signed an agreement. One clause of this restricted either party from disclosing the details of the agreement.' So much for openness and transparency! Both parties had something to hide, so they both agreed to hide it.

Despite this, it is NOT the details of the agreement that my two questions are asking for, so there is no valid reason why Christine Gilbert should refuse to answer them. It seems highly likely that the agreement involved some financial benefit to Ms Davani, so that the answer to at least one of the questions must be "no". In that case, Christine Gilbert also needs to tell Brent's councillors, its staff and its residents what the justification is for the Council giving that financial benefit to Cara Davani, so that councillors in particular can satisfy themselves that this is not a misuse of Council funds.

PAY OFF FOB OFF: Christine Gilbert’s “answer” to the questions about a “pay off” by Brent to Cara Davani

Guest blog by Philip Grant
 
Christine Gilbert promised me a reply by today to the two questions I had first put to her on 9 July, and repeated in my open letter to her a week later. 

I said that I would share her reply with “Wembley Matters” readers, and it came in an email to me at 5.55pm today:

‘Dear Mr Grant, 

Thank you for your various letters and emails to the Chief Executive in relation to Cara Davani, which have been passed to me for reply.

Ms Davani, then Director of HR and Administration, left the council at the end of June 2015.  The council is grateful for the significant contribution Cara made over the last three years.

The council cannot legally disclose any details of the arrangements relating to Ms Davani’s departure.  

In relation to your separate question regarding compensation, the remedies hearing in the case of Ms Clarke has not yet determined any compensation award and, as such it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.

Yours sincerely 

Fiona Alderman

Chief Legal Officer

The heading to Ms Alderman’s email was “Recent correspondence”. I replied to it at 8.50pm today, under the heading “Re: Recent correspondence about possible "pay off" to Cara Davani, and your failure to reply to it”, as follows:-

‘Dear Ms Gilbert and Ms Alderman,

I am replying to Ms Alderman’s email to me today at 17:55, headed “Recent correspondence”. I am also writing this to Ms Gilbert, who my correspondence was addressed to, and who must accept the responsibility for answering the two questions which I raised, as Brent’s interim Chief Executive and its Head of Paid Service, and as the person who must know the answers to those questions.

The main statement in your email of 3 August is in exactly the same words as Ms Gilbert’s email to me of 8 July:

‘The council cannot legally disclose any details of the arrangements relating to Ms Davani’s departure.’

You have not explained why you believe you 'cannot legally disclose', although that is not the main point here. The original reply in these words was to an email of 30 June in which I had made a formal request for information including details of amounts and arrangements in connection with Ms Davani’s departure from Brent Council. You are now using the same reply to my email request of 9 July, repeated in my open letter to Christine Gilbert of 16 July. That request was specifically drafted so that Ms Gilbert did not have to disclose any details of the arrangements relating to Ms Davani’s departure. That request has not been replied to, and I will set it out again here:

‘I believe it is reasonable to ask you again to reply, openly and honestly, to Council staff, elected councillors and publicly to Brent’s residents, to the two simple “yes” or “no” questions I put to you:

1. Can Brent Council confirm that there has not been, and that there will not be, any financial payment by the Council to Cara Davani in connection with her leaving the Council's employment as Director of HR and Administration, other than her normal salary payment up to 30 June 2015?   YES or NO.

2. Can Brent Council confirm that it has not agreed, and will not agree, to pay any award of compensation, damages or costs made against Cara Davani personally, as a separately named respondent from Brent Council, in any Employment Tribunal or other legal proceedings in which she and the Council are named parties?   YES or NO.’

After I first put these questions, Ms Gilbert replied on 10 July: ‘I have passed these to Ms Fiona Alderman, Chief Legal Officer, for her consideration. She will respond to you in due course.’ I now wonder whether her instruction to Ms Alderman was not ‘please reply to these questions on my behalf’, but ‘please find an excuse for not replying to these questions, and delay responding to the email for as long as possible’. 

The whole point of this correspondence, from my point of view, has been to highlight the serious concerns which many people have expressed over rumours of a “pay off” by Brent to Cara Davani, and to seek to resolve those concerns by either getting confirmation that the rumours are unfounded, or by getting those responsible for deciding on such a “pay off” to explain their reasons for agreeing it. That is what Brent’s Constitution, and the principles of conduct in public life, expect of you as senior Council officers in delivering openness and accountability. Instead you seem determined to prevaricate, and not to resolve those serious concerns, which I know that a number of elected councillors share. 

I would ask you to read again my open letter to Christine Gilbert of 16 July 2015, and the question which I included in the letter which I had published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times”:

‘What are senior officers at Brent Council trying to hide from us, and why?’

I acknowledge that Ms Alderman did refer to my second question in her email to me today, saying: 

‘In relation to your separate question regarding compensation, the remedies hearing in the case of Ms Clarke has not yet determined any compensation award and, as such it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.’

I accept that the remedies hearing has yet been finalised, but that does not mean that the question I asked cannot be answered now. If Brent has not agreed ‘to pay any award of compensation, damages or costs made against Cara Davani personally, as a separately named respondent from Brent Council,’ then the answer to that question should be “yes”. If the Employment Tribunal, based on all the evidence that it heard and read, and the findings of fact that it made from that evidence, decides that any compensation, damages or costs should be awarded against Ms Davani personally, as distinct from the award(s) that it will decide to make against Brent Council (on the basis of its judgement of September 2014), then Brent Council should accept the Tribunal’s decision, and its Chief Executive should commit the Council to do so. 

It might be argued that Brent Council should pay all of the compensation, damages and costs awarded to Ms Clarke, as Ms Davani, though a separately named respondent in the case, was acting as an employee of Brent Council. I dealt with this point in my first email raising concerns over this matter, of 12 June 2015 to my Fryent Ward councillors and copied to the Chief Executive, explaining why, if any award were made against Ms Davani personally, Brent should not pick up the bill:

‘At first sight, this may sound vindictive, as the case relates to actions she took while Brent's Head of HR (although she held this role up to 31 March 2013 as a self-employed interim consultant) and as interim, then formally appointed, Operational Director of HR. However, it is clear from the evidence and findings of fact in the Tribunal judgement that her actions against Ms Clarke were totally contrary to the Council's HR policy and practices, and that her victimisation of Ms Clarke was done for reasons of personal spite, as a result of Ms Clarke complaining of being bullied and harassed by Ms Davani. Her actions were therefore not in the proper performance of her duties, particularly when those duties were of Brent's most senior HR officer, who should have been leading by example.’

I would only add that, in these circumstances, any payment by Brent of any awards made against Ms Davani personally would be a misuse of Council funds.

I look forward to receiving from Christine Gilbert her honest answers to the two simple “yes” or “no” questions above by the end of this week.

I am copying this email to the councillors to whom our previous correspondence on this matter was copied, and will also make it openly available, in the public interest.

Yours sincerely,

Philip Grant.’

Brent Council finds request for information on the Stonebridge Playground betrayal 'extremely burdensome'

As we have heard this week the Government wants to get rid of the Freedom of Information Act, although they haven't quite said it so bluntly.

As far as Brent Council is concerned is seems they have already adopted their own Obfuscation of Information Act.

Glynis Lee, puzzled over the sudden change of policy by Brent Council in Summer 2014 - at a first meeting Brent Council officers informed the Brent Play Association that the Stonebridge Adventure Playground was to be rebuilt, with a new building and perhaps slightly less land but then, at the next meeting, told them they would be closed.  An excited architect named Fred Eastman of South Stuio Architects had shown them his plans for the Playground at the first meeting.

At the same time Brent Council decided to end funding for the Playground.  Their own consultation report later admitted that 80% of consultation respondents wanted to keep the playground, but this was followed by Cllr Ruth Moher stating at a Cabinet meeting that 'you can get anyone to sign a petition'.

Wanting to unravel all this Glynis had put in a Freedom of Information request that the Council refused to answer. She then asked for a review and this was the response.

Note the promised reply by  12th May 2015.  In fact it did not come until July 8th and had been apparently arbitrarily changed from an FoI request to an Environmental Information Regulations request.

This is Fiona Alderman's reply:

--> Dear Ms. Lee

Thank you for your request for a review received on 13 April 2015.

Your information request
Environmental Information Regulations 2004

I refer to your request received on 13 April 2015 for a review of the
council’s decision to refuse your request for information relating, in
broad terms, to the Stonebridge Park redevelopment from 16 September 2013
to date. Please accept my apologises for the delay in conducting the
review.

As part of my review I have considered your original request for
information received on 9 March 2015 which was in the following terms:

“All correspondence, reports, minutes, letters and proposals which relate
to the redevelopment of Stonebridge, the expansion of Stonebridge primary
school, the removal of the Welsh School and the closure of Stonebridge
Adventure Playground. This information would be with specific reference to
all of the above between the Brent’s Asset management department, Children
and Young people department, and department of Regeneration and growth.
Information including reports and plans from South Studio Architects to
also be included, and all communication between council officers, and
councillors which pertains to any or all of the above”.

I have also considered the council’s response to your request dated 8
April 2015.

The response stated that your request is being handled under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information
Regulations 2004 (EIR) and that with one exception your request was
refused because it exceeded the statutory cost limit of £450 (or 18 hours)
as set out in section 12 of FOIA.

The response referred to the diffuse nature of your request, its breadth,
the shear volume of the potential information that might be in scope, the
hundreds of officers across the council and other individuals who may hold
the information you have requested, the difficulties in determining with a
reasonable degree of certainty the information the council actually holds
and the council officers and other individuals who actually hold it (i.e.
the difficulty in locating the information) and the inordinate amount of
time and the excessive and wholly disproportionate amount of resource and
money complying with your request (including retrieving and extracting the
relevant information) would demand.

I also note that you were invited to narrow or refine the scope of your
request.

A link, however, was included in the response for ease of accessing the
report to Cabinet on the council’s re-development proposals for
Stonebridge Park which is a public document and was already published on
the council’s website.

Against that background, I now set out the outcome of my review.

As your request was for information relating to redevelopment proposals,
it constituted ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of EIR.
According to EIR, environmental information includes any information on,
amongst other things, the state of land and plans and activities affecting
or likely to affect the state of land. Your request therefore should have
been considered under EIR and not FOIA and, as a consequence, the refusal
of your request did not comply with the requirements of EIR.

Under EIR, the council can refuse to disclose environmental information if
an exception applies and, in all the circumstances of the case, the public
interest in maintaining the exception outweighs the public interest in
disclosing the information. There is, however, a presumption in favour of
disclosure. Although, unlike FOIA, EIR do not contain an express
cost-limit, the council can refuse to disclose information to the extent
that the request is “manifestly unreasonable”. Further, according to FOI
case law, the costs of compliance can be taken into account under both
regimes.

In all the circumstances, I am satisfied that it is necessary to refuse
your request to protect the resources of the council from being squandered
on disproportionate use of EIR. I am also satisfied that there is no
adequate or proper justification for your request and that it is not aimed
at the disclosure of important information which ought to be made publicly
available.

In this regard, I note in particular that key decisions about the
Stonebridge Park redevelopment proposals have been made by councillors in
open and public meetings and that important information, such as Cabinet
reports and associated documents, are already freely available. Also of
particular note is the extensive and widely advertised consultation that
was undertaken to seek the views of residents and other local stakeholders
about the redevelopment proposals which included creating a website
setting out consultation information with an on-line response portal and
face to face consultation events. The consultation also received
considerable local press coverage.

Finally, as the redevelopment proposals have education, planning and
procurement implications, the attendant statutory controls bearing upon
the council ensure that its decision making is open and transparent and
that there are opportunities for public participation and for the council
to be held to account.

As the availability of the manifestly unreasonable exception is subject to
the public interest test, I have also considered the benefits of
disclosure. The disclosure of yet further information would be in the
interests of openness and transparency. Providing access to information
can assist in holding public authorities to account and encourage greater
public participation in the exercise by public authorities of their public
functions.

On the facts of this case, however, I have no doubt that for the reasons
given in the previous refusal of your request and the reasons I have
given, the public interest in disclosing the information you have
requested is outweighed by the public interest in withholding the
information. In deciding how much value there would be in attempting to
comply with your request I have also had regard to the fact that at least
some (if not most) of the information is likely to fall within available
exceptions under EIR which the council could and would rely upon to
justify a refusal of your request.

Thus, for all the reasons I have summarised in this decision notice, as
your request is extremely burdensome and costly, would require an
unreasonable diversion of finite resources from the provision of valuable
services and is of no public value, it is in my opinion manifestly
unreasonable.

Hence, although your request should have been dealt with under EIR, and
not FOIA, to all intents and purposes, very similar considerations apply
and the outcome is the same.




In conclusion, therefore, I have upheld your complaint in part because it
was dealt with under FOIA, and refused under section 14 of that Act, and
not under EIR. Ultimately, however, I have upheld the decision to refuse
your request because it is manifestly unreasonable and the public interest
favours withholding the disclosure of the information.

If you are not content with the outcome of my review, you have the right
to complain directly to the Information Commissioner. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow,



Glynis would appreciate a translation of the above into English so that she can inform the children of Stonebridge, badly missing their playground as the summer holidays begin, of the Council's position. Can anyone help?

Incidentally the School expansion document going before the Cabinet on Monday notes (regarding the Stonebridge Day Centre currently hosuing Stonebridge Primary classes) and the Preston Library site:

It should be noted that of the above sites, the former Preston Road Library and the former Stonebridge Day Centre are both included in the Capital Disposals Programme for 2016/17 with forecast receipts of £700k and £1.5m respectively estimated for Quarter 4.

 

Recruiting Brent Council's Chief Executive – ‘no illegality in the process’ but...

Guest posting by Philip Grant

Last month’s blog about the permanent Chief Executive job at Brent Council finally being advertised LINK generated a great deal of interest. Among the comments (129 at the last count) some serious concerns were raised, so I wrote to Brent’s Chief Legal Officer, Fiona Alderman, to bring them to her attention. Four weeks later I have received a reply, the key sentence of which is as follows:

‘I have considered the issues which you have raised but am satisfied that there is no illegality in the process currently underway for the recruitment of a Chief Executive.’

Although I have to respect her opinion that there is nothing illegal in the recruitment process, the legality was not what I had written about. The purpose of my email was summarised as follows:

‘It is very important that the appointment of a permanent Chief Executive at Brent Council, to lead by example as Head of Paid Service, is not only conducted fairly, but is seen to be conducted fairly.’

I had referred to several “anomalies” on the practical side of the recruitment process ‘which, if not addressed, are likely to mean that it will not be seen to be conducted fairly.’

There are some aspects of the recruitment process which may already be unfair, but which it is too late to change. The briefing pack issued to potential applicants makes clear that the post has been designed with the current Leader of the Council in mind. Part Four of the “Person Specification”, which candidates must show they meet, is actually headed “Chemistry and ‘fit’ between the Chief Executive and Leader of the Council.” The previous permanent Chief Executive, Gareth Daniel, was in the post for fourteen years and served a number of Council Leaders, from different political parties, before leaving because of irreconcilable differences with Cllr. Muhammed Butt, just four months after he was elected as Leader in 2012. And yet, unlikely as it may seem, Brent Council could elect a different Leader at the same meeting as it is asked to approve the appointment of a new Chief Executive recruited to ‘fit’ with Cllr. Butt’s ways of working.

One source of potential unfairness is the small number of people who will actually have any influence over who is chosen for the post. These will include the current interim Chief Executive, Christine Gilbert, and Director of HR, Cara Davani. Questions have already been raised about appointments of their “cronies” to other senior Brent Council posts LINK  The fortunes of Ms Gilbert and Ms Davani also appear to be closely linked with those of the Leader of the Council, and Cllr. Butt has not yet answered the question of why he is still “protecting” these two senior officers, when he has known about their misconduct in the Rosemarie Clarke Employment Tribunal case since at least September 2014. That question was put to him in February 2015 LINK

Good online detective work by “Wembley Matters” readers has shown that there are close links, during their time at Tower Hamlets Council and at Ofsted, between Ms Gilbert and Ms Davani, and Shahidul Miah of Bloomsbury Resourcing Ltd. That one-man company is one of two recruitment consultants handling the search for Brent’s new Chief Executive, along with Davidson & Partners. It is unclear from the briefing pack what the respective roles of the two consultancies are, but the involvement of Mr Miah does raise concerns that the external and internal sides of the recruitment process may not be independent of each other.

Under the Council’s Constitution (Standing Order 77) the shortlist of candidates who will be interviewed for the post will be drawn up by the (interim) Chief Executive, ‘or another officer nominated by him or her’, most probably the Director of HR. The list is then submitted ‘to the Chair of the Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee’. If the Chair agrees the list, ‘then the shortlist prepared by the officer shall stand.’ If not, ‘a meeting of the Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee shall be held to determine the shortlist.’ The Council’s website shows that the Chair of this “SSASC” is Cllr. Muhammed Butt, so once again the trio of the Council Leader, Ms Gilbert and Ms Davani hold the power to decide who will, or will not, be considered for the job.

The composition, and Chair, of the SSASC was one of the main points which I raised in my email to Ms Alderman. Under Brent’s Constitution, the SSASC comprises 5 councillors, 'at least one of whom shall be a member of the Cabinet'. This wording appears to have been designed as part of a system of “checks and balances”, to ensure that power over senior staff appointments is shared between Executive and backbench councillors. While it does not say that there should be only one member of the Cabinet on the sub-committee, as the Constitution also gives Cabinet members other rights to object to proposed appointments, it seems odd that the SSASC currently comprises four Cabinet members, plus the leader of the official Conservative group.

As stated above, Cllr. Butt chairs the SSASC (to be fair, his predecessor, Cllr. Ann John, did so before him, although with only one, or at most two, other Executive members, and at least two members from opposition parties on the sub-committee). I have suggested that Cllr. Butt should allow a backbench councillor to replace him as Chair of the SSASC for the recruitment of the new Chief Executive, and that one or two other Cabinet members should appoint non-Cabinet substitute councillors for this process. Brent’s Chief Legal Officer did not comment of this suggestion, other than to thank me ‘for [my] observations’.

The SSASC will interview the shortlisted applicants, and its Chair must then notify to the Council’s Director of HR ‘the name of the person to whom it wishes to make an offer together with any other particulars the sub-committee considers are relevant to the appointment.’ It is at this point that a clear conflict of interests arises, because the HR Director then has to notify every member of the Cabinet of these details, and of ‘the period within which any objection to the making of the offer is to be made by the Leader on behalf of the Cabinet to the [Director of HR] and the Chair of the sub-committee.’

Part of the “checks and balances” on the fair appointment of senior officers built into Brent’s Constitution is to separate the roles of Chair of the SSASC and Leader of the Council, as one heads the sub-committee which choses the preferred candidate, while the other heads the Cabinet which has the right to review and object to that choice (even though that may seem unlikely in practice, when half of the Cabinet are also currently members of the SSASC). If there were an objection, the Leader then has to give notice ‘of any objection which the Leader or any other member of the Cabinet has to the proposed appointment’ to both the HR Director and the Chair of the SSASC (imagine the scene: “I, Cllr. Butt, as Leader of the Council, give you, Cllr. Butt, as Chair of the SSASC, notice …”). In that case, the SSASC would have to reconvene, ‘to consider the objection and to consider whether to confirm the appointment.’

While Brent’s Constitution does not say that the Leader of the Council and Chair of the SSASC cannot be the same person, it is difficult to see how the recruitment process can be seen to be fair if this is the case. It could be argued that having the two roles held by the same person allows the process to dealt with more quickly and efficiently; but that argument could also be used to combine the roles of judge and jury in the criminal justice system, which many would feel could make that system less fair or just.

For the appointment of a Chief Executive, the proposed candidate 'must be approved at a meeting of the Full Council before an offer of appointment is made'. The proposed date, shown in the briefing pack, for the SSASC’s final interview panel is 18 or 19 May, and the next Full Council meeting is the Annual Meeting on 20 May. The final point I made to Ms Alderman was that this would not give the elected members of Full Council given sufficient time to consider properly whether they should approve the proposed appointment. I suggested that the date of the final interview panel should be brought forward by a few days, and that Officers should ensure that all members of the Council are notified with details of the person who it is proposed should be appointed as Chief Executive in good time (at least several days) before the Full Council meeting on 20 May. I do not know whether any changes have been made as a result of these suggestions.

Brent’s Chief Legal Officer is also its Monitoring Officer, a role which includes trying to ensure that the Council’s committees, sub-committees and officers do not act in a way which breaches codes of practice, or which may give rise to maladministration or injustice. I hoped that by bringing the points above to Ms Alderman’s attention, the potential unfairness in the recruitment process for the Chief Executive post could be avoided. It is not my intention to criticise Ms Alderman, who may have done all that she can to achieve this end. The overall responsibility for ensuring a fair appointment lies with the interim Chief Executive and the Leader of the Council.

We will find out next month whether my efforts have helped to produce an appointment which is seen to be fair, or whether those at the top of Brent Council are determined to bring it further into disrepute. If it appears that the person proposed as the new Chief Executive may not have been recruited fairly, I hope that councillors will be prepared to challenge his or her appointment at Full Council, rather than just nod through their approval of it.