Philip Grant: Open letter to Brent Council on Equalities

Guest blog by Philip Grant. The Equalities Committee agenda and papers can be found HERE

 

Open Letter to Equalities Committee, 9 July 2015

Dear Councillors Pavey, Harrison, Kansagra, Tatler and Thomas,

Congratulations on the first meeting of this new committee next Monday, and my best wishes for its efforts to help improve equalities and HR management at Brent Council. I will not be able to attend that meeting in person, so have not asked to speak as a Deputation at it, but there are points which I would like to make in respect of both main items on your agenda. I will set these out below in this open letter, and hope that you will be able to find time to read my views, and take them into account in your discussions.

Item 5 – Equalities and HR review: action plan

Cllr. Pavey is aware of my views on this matter, but I need to set them out for other committee members, and by way of introduction to my second point below. I had hoped to make this point to Scrutiny Committee on 30 April 2015, but was not allowed to present my Deputation there.

The point relates to Section 2 of the draft Action Plan [see page 5 of equalities-hr-review-app2].  This was prepared by Cara Davani, until recently Brent’s Director of HR and Administration, and is entitled ‘Achieving Excellence in Employment Policies’.  

I am deeply concerned at one of the “success criteria” which she proposed. This reads:
  

‘Number of employment tribunals is low against benchmarked councils (benchmarks TBA) and ET cases are successfully defended.’ 

It is the second part of this that I find most worrying. “Success”, according to Ms Davani, should be measured by successfully defending Employment Tribunal cases. The risk of setting such a “target” is that it might encourage Council staff involved in these cases to fabricate or falsify the evidence that they give.  

You may consider that such a concern is far-fetched, but in the Rosemarie Clarke Employment Tribunal case (which Cllr. Pavey’s review was set up to learn the lessons from), a key factor
in the finding of ‘racial discrimination’ against Brent Council was the decision to continue disciplinary proceedings against Ms Clarke after she had ceased to be a Council employee. In Para. 240 of the judgment in that case it says: 

‘With regards to the decision being taken to pursue disciplinary action against the claimant [Ms Clarke], following the termination of her employment, the respondents [Brent Council and Cara Davani] have been unable to state by whom or when that decision was made.’ 

As there would have been very few Council employees who could have made that decision, and at least some of those were witnesses at the Tribunal, this totally undermined the credibility of the Council’s evidence. It is quite likely that one or more of those witnesses was willing to commit perjury in order to cover up who had made the decision, and why it was made, in an attempt to conceal from the Tribunal facts that would have added to the evidence in support of Ms Clarke’s claim.

I do not believe that this was an isolated case of fabricated or false evidence being used by Brent Council in Employment Tribunal cases. I have heard, from someone close to the former Brent Libraries employee involved, although I do not know the full facts or have evidence 

to support the accusation, that false evidence was given at a Tribunal where Brent was “successful” in defending a claim against it for unfair dismissal. In another case (see my P.S. at the end of this letter for details), Brent had to concede a claim against it for unfair dismissal when it realised that its false evidence would not stand up to close examination by the Tribunal.

I would strongly suggest that the “success criteria” I referred to above should be deleted from the Action Plan. “Success” over Employment Tribunals is having none, and to achieve this I would suggest that the “criteria” should be:  

100% of managers honour in practice the core value set out in Cllr. Pavey’s review:  ‘Every Brent Council employee deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.’

Disbelief as Brent Council choose Cara Davani to head up its Equalities Team!

There was disbelief today when the Kilburn Times LINK reported that Cara Davani, Head of Brent's Human resources and found by Watford Employment Tribunal to have racially discriminated against, victimised and constructively dismissed a black council worker will - wait for it - head up Brent Council's Equalities Team!

This is an insult to  Cara Davani's victim, Brent Council workers and Brent residents.

How on earth can anyone have any faith in our Council in the face of such an incredible decision?

Pavey Review not yet available but notes on Constitutional challenge released

The Agenda for Thuursday's meeting of the General Purposes Committee has now been published. The meeting is due to discuss the Pavey Review of Brent Human Resources but the report is not yet available on the Agenda web page.

I understand this is because there are some late additions being made. Instead of the report there is a placeholder:

Following the loss of an employment tribunal case in September, 2014, Councillor Pavey, Deputy Leader, who has Cabinet responsibility for Equalities and the Council’s role as employer, agreed to take stock of the Council’s policies and practice to see where improvements could be made.  Councillor Pavey has now completed his review and will present the findings to the General Purposes Committee.

Although the fullest possible report is obviously desirable, it is unfortunate that members of the committee, the press and the public won't have time to consider it in detail before the meeting.

The Annual Brent Diversity Profile LINK  has been published and this graphic tells its own story about racial equality (Sc3 is the lowest and Hay the highest). Overall % of council workers who are BME is 62%):

Meanwhile the indefatigible Philip Grant is now able to pass on notes of his meeting with Brent Council Leader Muhammed Butt following a resident's successful Freedom of Information request.

Philip asked for a meeting to raise his concerns over the Council's respect of its constitution.

Cllr. Butt had agreed that Mr Grant should take a note of their discussions, and that these should be sent to him for checking, with a view to producing an agreed accurate record of those discussions. It was Cllr. Butt's change of mind on that agreement which means that the Council now claims they are no more than Mr Grant's 'own personal recollection of the meeting'.

Regular readers of Wembley Matters will be able to put a name to the anonymised "AB", especially if they follow those initials in alphabetical order.