This is to be read in conjunction with post on Calls for EDDC Chief Exec to resign.

A council has asked for government help to mend fractious relationships with its staff following its handling of allegations against a councillor.

By Ewan Murrie and Brodie Owen www.bbc.co.uk

Former councillor John Humphreys was jailed for 21 years for sexually assaulting two boys in 2021.

East Devon District Council said in a letter seen by the BBC a “corrosive set of relationships” was impacting its ability to provide safeguarding.

The government said it would respond in due course to the request.

East Devon District Council (EDDC) has declined to comment.

Humphreys was first questioned in 2005 and arrested in 2016, but was the mayor of Exmouth from 2010 to 2012 and an East Devon District Councillor for 12 years until 2019.

In the letter to Communities Secretary Michael Gove, council leader Paul Arnott wrote a “historic case of paedophilia and the way it has been treated within the council” was affecting its ability to provide “proper safeguarding for all vulnerable residents”.

“The failure to resolve this issue properly is leading to a corrosive set of relationships between the controlling partnership of councillors and staff which is proving difficult to resolve,” the letter, dated 23 June, said.

It continued: “We are writing to you at this point because the LGA Conference is occurring early in July, and we would like to take the opportunity [to] meet up with your senior staff who will be present at the conference to discuss the proposals that councillors are making to redress the problems and move forward.”

An independent report, yet to be published, into how EDDC handled child sex abuse allegations against Humphreys is understood to be at the centre of the row.

The letter also stated the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny have both already been involved with trying to ease tensions at the council.

Councillors ask in the letter that government officials are involved with overseeing an “improvement journey” aimed at bringing the cabinet and senior managers together as a “unified team” that can “move forward as one body”.

It was co-signed by councillors Paul Hayward, Eileen Wragg, Eleanor Rylance and Sam Hawkins.

But it did not take any formal or informal action against Humphreys – it said the employee was restricted from alerting his colleagues about the case because of police confidentiality rules.

After his arrest for child sex abuse in 2016, Humphreys continued to mix with children while serving as a councillor until May 2019, before being made an alderman later that year.

While his political career progressed, the police investigation into the former Exmouth mayor’s crimes remained active behind the scenes.

He was sentenced to 21 years in jail in August 2021 after being found guilty of sexually abusing two boys before he was a councillor.

A government spokesperson confirmed the letter had been received and said the secretary of state would consider a response to the council and “respond in due course”.

The government has lost its legal challenge to block Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApps, notebooks and diaries from being handed over to the official Covid inquiry, after a ruling by the high court.

Aubrey Allegretti www.theguardian.com 

Ministers launched a judicial review last week, with lawyers for the Cabinet Office arguing it should get to decide what material was “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry.

But the inquiry’s lead counsel said the idea that the Cabinet Office could decide which documents were relevant “would emasculate this and future inquiries”.

Johnson’s lawyer supported the inquiry, and warned there was a “real danger” of undermining public confidence in the process if the Cabinet Office was successful.

High court judges handed down their decision on Thursday, six days after the hearing where the legal arguments were heard.

There are calls for a council chief executive to resign following a report into the council’s handling of serious allegations against a councillor.

By Ewan Murrie & Johnny O’Shea www.bbc.co.uk

The report said it was unable to find “reliable evidence” the CEO of East Devon District Council knew about an investigation into John Humphreys.

But the Labour group said the report “proves” Mark Williams was “guilty of serious failings” and should resign.

Mr Williams has been contacted for comment.

Humphreys, a former Mayor of Exmouth and EDDC councillor for 12 years, was convicted in 2021 of three counts of serious sexual assault and seven of indecent assault against two boys in the 1990s and 2000s. He was jailed for 21 years.

In 2021, John Humphreys was jailed for 21 years after sexually abusing two boys

The independent report by Verita investigated a line from the minutes of a Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) meeting in March 2016, suggesting Mr Williams had been “alerted to the situation”.

This was new evidence presented by Devon and Cornwall Police in March, causing the initial Verita report to be delayed while it investigated.

Verita said in its report this record “appeared to contradict” evidence which Mr Williams and the former monitoring officer of East Devon District Council had provided at an earlier stage in the investigation.

Humphreys was an alderman by East Devon District Council while under criminal investigation

Mr Williams told Verita he had never seen the minutes and had not been told about the criminal investigation at that time.

The report said it could not corroborate the statement from the minutes and concluded “it does not constitute sufficiently reliable evidence that the CEO of EDDC was aware of the Humphreys’ situation”.

Had Mr Williams been aware he would have had a duty to inform the safeguarding lead, which was not done.

Devon and Cornwall Police gave this statement to the BBC: “The appropriate and agreed route for sharing sensitive information with relevant partners is through the LADO process.

“Once a partner agency has been informed of a risk, it is for them to assess and manage the impact of that risk internally as they see fit.”

The Labour group of councillors on EDDC has written to Mr Williams having seen the report, calling for him to resign with immediate effect.

Dan Wilson, the leader of the Labour group, said “the report is completely damning” and the failure to inform the safeguarding lead was “unforgiveable”.

He said: “I certainly hope that no children were harmed in the three-year period between the information coming out and his conviction. The problem is that it could have.”

He added: “Because safeguarding weren’t informed, he could have gone into schools, colleges, he could have been in situations with vulnerable children and as we now know, that would have been extremely dangerous.

“Any harm that was avoided is down to luck when it should have been down to competence.”

‘Historic debate’

The Labour group leader told the BBC he would be tabling a vote of no confidence in the chief executive at a council meeting next week unless a resignation was forthcoming before then.

Humphreys was able to continue mixing with children while serving as an EDDC councillor until 2019 and stayed on Exmouth Town Council until he was jailed.

He was nominated for the award of Honorary Alderman which he received from EDDC on 18 December 2019.

It was rescinded weeks after his conviction.

Independent EDDC councillor Jess Bailey said: “There was a situation where a former councillor was awarded a civic honour whilst he was under a criminal investigation, and he went into that trial with that honour as an apparent badge of respectability and I think residents deserve to understand how that happened.”

The reports are on the agenda for discussion at an extraordinary meeting of the council on Tuesday.

In June it emerged the council had asked for government help to mend fractious relationships with its staff following its handling of the Humphreys case.

The leader of the council, Liberal Democrat Paul Arnott, said the extraordinary meeting “will be an historic debate for East Devon”.

He said: “I must not predetermine it, but members’ comments to me already suggest that councillors will seek to clarify senior officer statements about who knew what when, and to understand the reason for the inertia in a process we began in April 2022 which has taken until July 2023 to make the next step. Why?”

He urged everyone involved to remember the victims of Humphreys’ crimes, including one from East Devon, saying “members and officers alike owe him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.

The Conservative group said its thoughts were with the victims of the “despicable crimes” and it had “nothing further to add until the report can be debated at full council next week”.

East Devon District Council said it had no comment to make at this time.

An opportunity missed, perhaps deliberately – Owl

On Tuesday local MPs debated levelling up in the South West under the chair of Ian Liddell-Grainger MP (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) with Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up Dehenna Davison in attendance.

Possibly because there are so few opposition MPs in the region, Richard Foord (LibDem) and Luke Pollard (Labour/Co-op) only managed to squeeze in a few words, and  the debate was dominated by Tory partisan attempts at point scoring.

The Chair set the  tone. The result was a disappointment. 

The debate was dominated by the minister, and Tory MPs like Simon Jupp, reeling off  lists of all the investments made recently, that most of us would regard as essential infrastructure projects.

For example, Jupp: “Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset have secured £231 million from the levelling-up fund so far.” 

Schoolboy point scoring

Here are schoolboy examples of point scoring:

Richard Foord 

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. The Cullompton relief road has been part of the Mid Devon District Council levelling-up bid on two occasions. In both the first round and the second round, the bid was unsuccessful. How does the Minister recommend that Mid Devon District Council should pursue the relief road?

Dehenna Davison 

I am grateful to the hon. Member for mentioning the Cullompton relief road, but I am afraid he has been pipped to the post, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) has raised the issue with me on multiple occasions, to the point that it is probably one of my favourite relief roads. I hear about it weekly. [Jupp is a PPS in her ministry]

Debate descends into farce

At one point the debate descended into farce skipping from Broadband, to blame shaming South West Water, to potholes and Belgian weak beer. What has this got to do with levelling up?

[Worth noting that BBC Spotlight chose to highlight, out of context, the “confected outrage” from these two Tory MPs diverting the blame for the state of pollution away from years of government inaction onto the water companies.]

Liddell-Grainger

[Following on from comments on broadband roll out]…The same goes for the management of what turns out to be the worst water company in the United Kingdom. Never mind Thames Water, we have South West Water. It overpays its top team, dumps sewage in rivers, fails to invest in new reservoirs, yet wants to be treated like a paragon of virtue. It sells services in Bristol and Bournemouth as well as in Devon and Cornwall. They are up to their necks in it.

Richard Foord 

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr Liddell-Grainger 

No. Anyway, I received a jolly little email from the PR chief, which I would like to share. I will read, if I may, the first paragraph of the email I got yesterday, addressed to “Dear Mr Liddell-Grainger”, which was spelled correctly.

“I wanted to get in touch in advance of your levelling-up debate. May I congratulate you on securing this important debate? If you are planning to attend this debate on Tuesday I would be grateful if you or your team could confirm this.”

That is a water company supplying millions of people with water, yet is not sure I am turning up for my own debate. What hope have the rivers and fish of Somerset and Devon got, with people like that? If I may, I would also like to bring in potholes, the bane of all our lives.

Anthony Mangnall 

rose—

Mr Liddell-Grainger

I will give way with pleasure.

Anthony Mangnall 

I apologise for having two bites of the cherry, but since my hon. Friend has raised South West Water, does he not agree with me that, if it is failing to clean up our waterways or expand our storm overflows, and is not following the laws that we have passed in this place, namely around dividend payments, we have to ask the question, what is the point of this place, if the company is not going to follow those laws? We have to ask it not to take Parliament into contempt when it comes to enacting the stringent laws that we have passed to ensure that it cleans up our waterways.

Mr Liddell-Grainger 

I am very grateful for that extremely serious intervention. My hon. Friend is quite right; it is beyond the pale. South West Water is a disgrace at every level. We are rightly trying to hold its feet to the fire. It has to be brought to account. If necessary, we have to get representatives here to ensure they understand just what a shambles and disgrace the company is. It is damaging the environment, damaging confidence and damaging people’s water. It is failing at every level. My hon. Friend gave an extremely good example of how it is holding this place, us, and the elected representatives of the people of the United Kingdom in contempt. That is wrong.

But back to potholes! Potholes are the bane of all our lives. Minister, I know they do not come under the remit of levelling up, but would it not be sensible if they did? Somerset has more roads than Belgium, and who knows where Belgium is? Weak beer and people in strange hats. Minister, we need to look at giving money to pothole improvement, in Somerset and Devon, as both counties desperately need it, which is important.

Here is the Ministers final statement. Vacuous platitudes about cream teas and tourism – Owl

Dehenna Davison 

As it stands, the two are separate strands, as the hon. Member will know. At level 3 devolution, there is the opportunity to access an investment fund, which is a fantastic way to fund local infrastructure projects and the like. It is up to local areas to decide what level of devolution they wish to pursue, and we are in talks with Devon, Plymouth and Torbay to explore opportunities there. As for round 3 of the levelling-up fund, we are dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, so it would be inappropriate for me to make any announcements today, but I assure Members that we will provide full detail in due course and very soon. I hope that provides the clarity that the hon. Member seeks.

I am not suggesting that levelling up is a quick fix that will happen overnight, but our levelling-up plans, underpinned by 12 ambitious missions, are set to be achieved by 2030. For that to happen, they require serious cross-Government and cross-society efforts. The first mission, for instance, has a target for pay, employment and productivity to grow everywhere, which is vital for the south-west, where average productivity lags the national average.

As I have outlined, our plans will lead to more devolution in more places across England; rebalanced spending across regions in areas such as research and development, arts and culture, and housing; investment in infrastructure and skills to grow the economy; and, crucially, a renewed focus on regeneration, supporting community initiatives and community safety.

To many, the south-west is the region of cream teas, the world’s best cider and buildings made from the famous Bath stone. It is unquestionably a beautiful part of the world, and it is no wonder so many people choose to take holidays and make trips to the south-west. In fact, the south-west attracts more visitors than anywhere else in the UK bar London—but I reckon you guys can catch up if we work hard enough!

Relying on tourism to drive the economy is a double-edged sword, especially in the south-west. While it creates plenty of jobs, many are low-paid, and while it supports countless businesses, that can price local families out of their area. For example, a full-time worker earns an average of £33.40 less per week than the UK average and more than a third of local people do not have a level 3 qualification. The unfortunate reality is that for all the region’s incredible natural beauty, it is also home to significant pockets of deprivation and disadvantage. One in 10 of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods is in the south-west. I have always firmly believed that prospects should never be determined by postcode.

The challenges in the south-west are clear, but so too are the opportunities. The region is home to world-class universities, highly skilled workers and cutting-edge small and medium-sized enterprises. Bristol and Bath are centres of advanced manufacturing and engineering, aerospace and creative industries, Plymouth is a growing centre of expertise in maritime autonomy, and in Torbay, high-potential opportunities in photonics and microelectronics have been identified.

In my Department, we recognise the potential of supporting local projects and are investing—I hope hon. Members are ready for me to rattle off my list— £131 million in them through round 1 of the levelling-up fund. From creating a new training academy for health and social care in Bridgwater, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset referenced, to supporting the University of Gloucestershire to bring empty buildings back into use, we are supporting projects that are delivering on local priorities. We are investing a further £198.6 million across nine towns in the region through the towns fund, and an injection of £96.2 million is going to the south-west through the getting building fund. Those are just some examples of the diverse opportunities and incredible local projects that we are funding.

As I have said, we need to empower local leaders and communities, which is why we are carrying out an ambitious package of devolution—the biggest transfer of power away from Westminster to local government in modern times. I am delighted that Devon, Plymouth and Torbay, and Cornwall, are in the first wave, giving local leaders the tools they need to deliver for their communities, such as increased control over transport and infrastructure.

On transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset raised the issue of potholes, that vital scourge on our society. I am pleased to say that there is an £8 billion pothole fund announced by the Government, which I hope he and his community can draw upon.

I am conscious of time, but let me again mention round 2 of the levelling-up fund, which will provide £186.6 million of funding across the south-west. The UK shared prosperity fund, which is worth more than £2.6 billion in total, is living up to the Government’s commitment to match EU structural fund receipts in each nation of the UK and in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. As I said, round 3 of the levelling-up fund will be announced very soon. I am pleased that we will be providing further funding in that way.

Levelling up is not just a slogan or a tagline; it is the central mission and commitment of this Government. We have defined the problem and drawn up a long-term plan based on measurable missions. Our focus now is on delivery. Work is under way. Funding has been allocated. Devolution deals are being negotiated. The whole of Government is being mobilised towards this goal. Decisions on transport, culture and healthcare are all being viewed through the prism of levelling up. That is no small task, but the size of the prize is clear, and I look forward to continuing to work with all hon. Members present to make levelling up a reality in the south-west.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

So the upshot is they waffled their way out of time. – Owl