The interesting question in this case is why Mark Williams took so long to make contact with the new administration when the changing of the guard took place in 2020. One might have expected him to be eager to discover what the new priorities might be.

Council Chief Executives and council staff are paid by the public but operate in a rather different way to civil servants. Both are responsible for advising and implementing the policies of elected leaders. The difference is that the civil service is overseen centrally by the civil service commission including recruitment and promotions. 

Local government has no such equivalent overarching organisation. Councils are independent. In most cases a council’s Chief Executive is also Head of Paid Services, which means the Chief Executive directly employs the staff working for that authority. – Owl

Joe Ives, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

A report about the spat between council leader Paul Arnott, above and East Devon’s CEO Mark Williams has been hushed up.

And it’s cost tens of thousands of pounds.

A bust-up between the leader of East Devon District Council (EDDC) and its chief executive has cost local taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds, caused a senior officer to take time off with a stress-related illness, and damaged the council and its reputation.

Tensions between Cllr Paul Arnott, the independent leader of EDDC and chief executive Mark Williams were so bad that, according to a leaked report, “council taxpayers and stakeholders, had they been aware of the council’s difficulties, may well have had concerns about its leadership and operation.”

The unpublished report, commissioned by EDDC and carried out by the East of England Local Government Association, is thought to have cost the council up to £22,000. 

Though the precise cost of the episode has not been revealed, it is believed to have been “substantial”, dragging in top lawyers and draining hours of council staff time across a year.

But East Devon’s leadership have since tried to shield the report from public view, even keeping discussions about it behind doors closed to the press and public.

The inciting incident, unknown at the time, began in January 2020 when, following a review, chief executive Mark Williams proposed to axe a senior officer position at EDDC. The officer consented but no formal agreement was made.

Two months later, when a group of councillors going by the name of the Democratic Alliance Group, which is made up of independent, Lib Dem and Green councillors, came to power, that decision wasn’t raised by Mr Williams.

Even that initial meeting between new leader Cllr Arnott and Mr Williams – usually the critical relationship for the functioning of an effective council – didn’t take place for several days after the Democratic Alliance took control in March 2020.

Issues arose almost immediately. The new administration, led by Cllr Arnott, declined the support of the Local Government Association (LGA) which is usually taken up when an authority has a change of political control.

For its part, the Democratic Alliance said it received little in the way of formal help with the handover.

The report says: “All in all, this meant that a new and relatively inexperienced administration took over the council with very little understanding of officer roles, the functioning of the council and with no internal or external support or advice being available.”

It says the situation was a “perfect storm” where there was “no shared understanding of their respective roles, no respect for each other, no common purpose or common ground from which to build productive relationships”, causing an employment dispute about a senior officers role to be dragged out for several months and costing the council tens of thousands of pounds.

Mr Williams didn’t make councillors formally aware of his proposal to make the senior officer role redundant for five months.

When he did, Cllr Arnott then sought advice from South West Councils, an association of council leaders in the region.

But Mr Arnott found  the advice he was given to be unconvincing and asked for another opinion from external lawyers.

Law firm Clarke Willmott found that the redundancy would be legal and suggested EDDC reach a settlement with the officer in question.

Cllr Arnott rejected that advice too.

He wanted the council to implement a more thorough senior management review before committing to the redundancy.

This, according to the leaked report, “essentially left the chief executive in the unprecedented position” where a senior officer had agreed to be made redundant but the politicians in control of the council refused to allow it.

“The question became not whether he “could” make the role redundant but whether he “should.”  

In any event the chief executive felt unable to act,” says the report.

It documents how suspicions over each side’s motives incapacitated decision-making.

A meeting in November 2020 between Cllr Arnott and Mr Williams to review their “working relationship” fixed very little.

Having rejected the guidance he had received from two external sources, Cllr Arnott said he wanted additional outside advice, this time from an occupational health professional. He wanted to ensure the council had fulfilled its obligations to the officer after they went off sick.

The officer, who had been aware of the situation for much of the year, was ill with work-related stress. The officer argued this was “a direct result of the failure to implement redundancy” and thought the help of occupational health would be pointless as it would simply confirm this.

The officer alleged that Cllr Arnott was preventing Mr Williams from implementing the redundancy in revenge for comments they had made about another councillor earlier in the year.

It is not clear what these comments were.

The officer also alleged that Cllr Arnott’s argument, that he wanted a full ‘senior management review’ was “a sham” to stop the council making a redundancy payment.

Mr Williams, for his part, saw Mr Arnott’s idea of a management review as a tactic to frustrate him.

At one point Cllr Arnott attempted to solve the issue with the help of an LGA advisor and a trade union representative for the officer.

But the agreement they reached was effectively useless because neither the council leader nor the LGA advisor have the power to make such decisions.

The report describes Cllr Arnott’s own attempts to solve the redundancy issue as “inappropriate.”

In the end, further legal advice was sought from a barrister – who usually cost several hundred pounds an hour.

It was decided the only way to settle the dispute was through a full council meeting. This took place on 9 February 2021, something the report says should be avoided in future.

The report says the disagreement between the chief executive and EDDC’s leaders became “increasingly entrenched” in the build-up to this meeting, at which the full council agreed to make the senior officer’s position redundant.

The council commissioned the independent report In April 2021, but it remains unpublished. Leaked documents show that to pay for it EDDC set aside a budget of £18,150 pounds, excluding VAT.

No precise figures are known for the cost of the barrister, the officer’s redundancy payment, or the amount of paid time of council employees given over to this matter.

But as a rough calculation for just one of the people involved show how costly the episode has been.

In 2020/21, Mr Williams was paid £121,414, with a further £20,762 towards his pension. If he had spent a month on this matter since it emerged in January 2020, that’s nearly £12,000 in his time alone, plus other costs such as national insurance.

Commenting on the resources wasted as a result of the feud, the report says: “At a time where the council is required to either generate additional income or make significant savings this expense is unhelpful at best and if matters had been resolved by internal means could have been avoided.”

It explains how the saga had its origins in mistrust between the current administration [of independents, Lib Dems and Greens] and senior council officers, with some councillors believing “some officers were withholding information at best or “in cahoots with” the pre-2019 administrations which had been run by Conservatives in one form or another since the dawn of local government.

The report continues: “At no point were these assumptions about officers put to them to allow them to respond or even to explain their roles regarding the political agenda of the previous administration; essentially that they had to carry out the instructions of their political masters.

“It cannot be stated strongly enough the damage that has been done to the council, its reputation, its officers and members and its ability to reach its potential by the events which led up to the full council meeting on 9 February 2021.”

It says that the mistrust of the Conservatives and a combative environment between different political factions in East Devon “all come together to create a perfect climate of mistrust and acrimony.”

“It is regrettable that the powerful force for good which can be created by members and officers working productively together has been lost to the community.”

Amongst other recommendations, the report says the chief executive Mark Williams and council leader Cllr Paul Arnott “need to work together and model the behaviours expected of senior leaders”

“The two individuals and their colleagues should make every effort to make the relationships work for the benefit of the council.”

A spokesperson for the council wouldn’t comment on the issue because the report will be discussed by the scrutiny committee next week and they think doing so would be “inappropriate.”

They continued: “The decision to commission a report into this was taken at full council with the full support of all political groups. It was not a decision taken by the current administration.”

“Rebel Conservatives trying to orchestrate enough names to oust the prime minister say many MPs, particularly newer ones, are concerned about the privacy of the process.”

Owl wonders whether one of these might be Simon Jupp, though on his voting record he doesn’t appear to be independent minded. For example he voted, last October, to reject the Lords amendment that would have placed legal duties on the companies to reduce discharges until the government U-turned. He also voted, a few weeks ago, against a windfall tax on power generation companies until the government U-turned.

On the other hand Owl can’t find effusive support for Boris on his website or twitter account.

The time is fast approaching when silence becomes acquiescence to: sleaze; lies; cronyism and incompetence. Electoral Calculus predicts Simon only has a 33% chance of winning the new “Devon East” constituency (front runner is on 42%) – Owl 

Tory MPs hold back from move against Boris Johnson over fear of reprisals

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com 

Tory MPs including a junior minister are holding back from submitting letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson over fears their names will leak and they will face reprisals from the whips.

Rebel Conservatives trying to orchestrate enough names to oust the prime minister say many MPs, particularly newer ones, are concerned about the privacy of the process.

They worry that the Tory whips will be spying outside the office of Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair who gathers the letters, and do not trust emails not to be accidentally shared or viewed by staff who have access to the accounts.

Some senior Tories who are publicly opposed to Johnson have taken on the role of conduits carrying letters to Brady. One said they had offered to take letters to Brady’s parliamentary office on behalf of colleagues concerned about leaks, as there was a pervasive feeling of mistrust in the process among new MPs who had not been through the vote of no confidence in Theresa May.

They said MPs had not been prepared to email their letters because of concerns about others having access to their inboxes or computers, and they said they had repeatedly reassured colleagues that no letters had leaked from the challenge against May.

Another Conservative backbencher said the newer MPs in particular were worried about being targeted by the whips if they went public with having submitted letters, and if the coup attempt was ultimately unsuccessful.

A third MP said some of those who have gone public with their opposition to Johnson already felt as though their lives in parliament were being made difficult by the whips.

At least one minister has been wavering over putting in a letter over fears his name could come out and he would have to resign if the challenge is unsuccessful.

Almost 20 Tory MPs have now publicly stated that they have submitted letters, and 45 in total have publicly questioned Johnson’s leadership.

If the threshold of 54 MPs submitting a letter is reached, then Brady will inform No 10 and a confidence vote will be held by secret ballot on Johnson’s future as leader.

The number of 2019 MPs who have called for the prime minister’s resignation has been growing. Simon Fell, the MP for Barrow, became the latest to publicly question Johnson’s position, saying an apology over Partygate was “insufficient”.

Fell, who was part of the “pork pie plot” of MPs who met to discuss their loss of faith in Johnson earlier in the year, stopped short of saying he had written a letter of no confidence in the PM.

“I’m left feeling angry and disappointed. It beggars belief that when the government was doing so much to help people during the pandemic, a rotten core with an unacceptable culture carried on regardless of the restrictions placed on the rest of us,” he wrote in a letter to constituents.

“To many of us, these findings are a slap in the face. The culture that Ms Gray’s report details is unforgivable and I certainly will not be defending it. There were no exceptions in the rules for the activities that took place, and there is no excuse whatsoever for them.

“As Ms Gray details, a corrosive culture and a failure in leadership allowed this to happen and apologising after the fact is insufficient … Trust matters. And standards in public life go to the heart of maintaining it – once trust is lost, the whole house of cards is at risk of collapse.”

Others from the 2019 cohort who have called for Johnson to go include Aaron Bell, Alicia Kearns, Elliot Colburn and Anthony Mangnall.

Martin Shaw, Chair of the East Devon Alliance: “When it comes to the by-election, it’s horses for courses. We need to make sure this corrupt government does not win here again.”

seatonmatters.org

It’s now pretty clear that however disgraceful Boris Johnson’s behaviour, Conservative MPs will not remove him. The most telling new revelations are about the Downing Street cleaner who was not allowed to visit her mother in hospital because of lockdown rules, but had to clean up the mess left by Johnson’s rule-breaking parties; and about the security guard being mocked by the PM’s staff for doing his job and pointing out that rules should be observed.

There was a time when any minister, let alone a prime minister, would have resigned for presiding over such outrageous behaviour. There was a time when Conservatives claimed to represent standards in public life, and when MPs would have forced a disgraced prime minister out. 

Our chance to make a difference

These times are gone, alas, and in most parts of the country people are pulling their hair out because there seems to be nothing they can do about this travesty of a government, so preoccupied with its own survival that for months it ignored the terrible cost of living crisis which is plunging families and pensioners into poverty.

But here in many parts of East Devon – Seaton, Axminster, Honiton and the villages around – we can do something. In three weeks time, we can vote in a by-election to send a message to Boris Johnson and the country that enough is enough.

This is an election which people who don’t always bother voting should make sure they turn out for. It’s an election to make sure you’re on the electoral register (if not, register to vote now), and to apply for a postal vote for if you’ll be away on 23 June. 

Tactical voting

It’s an election, too, where we need to vote tactically for the candidate best placed to defeat the Conservative, since on the morning after a Tory victory here, Johnson will conclude that the electorate will put up with anything – literally anything – that he throws at us.

When I first mooted tactical voting two weeks ago, I didn’t say who to vote for, but Sean Day Lewis from Colyton (writing in this paper) assumed I meant the Liberal Democrats rather than Labour. I think that’s telling – the sense that the Lib Dems are the people who can win is already out there even among people who’d like it to be Labour. Exeter’s Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw, has also given a heavy hint: it’s the Lib Dems who can win this by-election, not his own party.

Indeed the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has drawn the same conclusion. Labour’s national party are not putting resources into this by-election because they know they can’t win. Starmer has an informal pact with the Lib Dems because they know that working together, they can help put the British people out of the misery that the Tories have created. 

Horses for courses

We should welcome this outbreak of common sense among the parties. It’s the same approach we already have in local politics, where my own East Devon Alliance of Independents has teamed up with the Lib Dems and Greens to give EDDC its first non-Conservative administration in 50 years.

I empathise with Labour’s Liz Pole and the Greens’ Gill Westcott, both good candidates who in other circumstances might well gain my vote as their parties have in the past. As an Independent, I’ve worked with Lib Dem, Labour and Green members on the County Council, and I know that there is much more that unites us all, and separates us all from Johnson’s Conservatives, than divides us.

When it comes to the by-election, it’s horses for courses. We need to make sure this corrupt government does not win here again. Personally, I would feel sick if Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat candidate, lost by a few votes on June 23 while I’d given my vote to a Labour or Green candidate who had no hope of winning.

Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Foord