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Bankrupt council paid firm of solicitors £2m over two years

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CROYDON IN CRISIS: The council used to have a senior official known as the ‘Borough Solicitor’. These days, the cash-strapped council is out-sourcing much of its legal work to a single firm of solicitors, at huge cost.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

Legal eagle: Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, Croydon’s most senior legal official

Croydon Council paid a single firm of solicitors more than £2million in the two years from when the authority first declared itself bankrupt, through until November 2022, Inside Croydon can reveal.

As reported by Inside Croydon last year, lawyers from Browne Jacobson LLP have been sitting-in as legal advisers to planning officials at the council’s fortnightly planning committee meetings since last April.

This function used to be performed by lawyers on the council’s staff, specialists in aspects of planning law.

Browne Jacobson have also been called upon for other aspects of legal advice, too, such as over the dodgy £437,000 payment made to the council’s departing chief exec, Jo Negrini, when she quit in a bit of a hurry in 2020. Inside Croydon obtained Browne Jacobson’s “confidential” legal advice after the council published it… ahem… on its own website last September.

In their advice from April 2022, Browne Jacobson (no individual author was identified in the firm’s advice note) found that senior council employees working on the fiasco of the Fairfield Halls refurbishment had shown “serious” failings “over a prolonged period” that had “exposed the council to significant financial and legal risk”. They also recommended that those responsible should be referred to their professional regulatory bodies.

Despite such sage advice coming at great cost to the tax-payers of Croydon, the council’s current CEO, Katherine Kerswell, has so far failed to act on any of those recommendations.

The amount paid to Browne Jacobson over the course of the two years following the borough’s bankruptcy was confirmed to Inside Croydon through a response to a Freedom of Information request.

Penn’d up: Katherine Kerswell has resisted all calls to publish the Penn Report

“Browne Jacobson is a legal service provider engaged under contract with the council,” the FoI response stated.

“Browne Jacobson, are instructed from time to time on a wide range of matters, including planning, social care and education, governance, prosecutions, investigations and litigation matters.”

In providing the amounts paid to Browne Jacobson, the council appeared to try to soften the blow by quoting a figure excluding VAT – at 20per cent on top of the £1,681,873 expenditure on the lawyers, even the VAT comes to more than one-third of a million pounds.

Such profligacy may have been commonplace under Croydon’s previous, Labour administration, but it does not appear to have been staunched since Conservative Jason Perry was elected as Mayor last May.

Councils across the country in the past had teams of lawyers working on all aspects of the authorities’ functions, the legal department headed by someone known as the Borough Solicitor. Croydon doesn’t have a Borough Solicitor longer… they’ve traded up and put a barrister in charge.

Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense joined Croydon last year as its director of legal services and monitoring officer.

It is a statutory appointment, required by law at every local authority. Lawrence-Orumwense’s predecessors in Croydon, such as Julie Belvir and Jacqueline Harris-Baker, both carried the Borough Solicitor title.

At the time he was recruited by Croydon, Lawrence-Orumwense was listed by Companies House as a director of an estate agency based in Dartford.

Back in February 2022, Kerswell submitted a report to the appointments committee outlining the monitoring officer’s role and seeking approval for the annual salary of £104,902 to £109,140.

The post-holder, Kerswell wrote, would be a member of the council’s senior management.

“The director of legal services will be the council’s chief legal officer responsible for the provision of all legal services to the council…”, our italics, “and ensures the council remains in compliance with the law and best practice, the governance function of the council and promote the council’s corporate competencies and values through day-to-day managerial behaviours,” Kerswell wrote in her report to councillors.

“The director of legal services will provide high-quality professional advice to the corporate director of resources, the chief executive, leader and cabinet, the scrutiny and overview committee and any other external bodies of the council.” Note that: high-quality professional advice.

It was Lawrence-Orumwense who in November authorised and oversaw the High Court injunction by the council against this website. That ill-considered and unnecessary action is estimated to have cost Council Tax-payers another £20,000 in legal fees to counsel and in associated costs, while also seeing Croydon referred to as “a national laughing stock” by Private Eye magazine.

It is now almost three months since Lawrence-Orumwense also agreed to have outside consultants Kroll hired to investigate who leaked the Penn Report to this website.

Kroll are another external consultancy that has done very well out of cash-strapped Croydon’s troubles, while actually delivering up very little.

According to an FoI response, since February last year, the council has already paid Kroll £315,340. Or as they disingenuously prefer to describe it, “£262,784 (plus VAT)”.

“Kroll were commissioned to review the events around the refurbishment of Fairfield Halls and related expenditure overruns and, following investigation, report on any indications of fraud, conflicts of interest, potential breaches of fiduciary duty and any other wrongdoing,” the council obligingly explained.

“They were appointed via the Crown Commercial Services framework under officer delegated powers.”

This was the investigation into how a refurbishment managed by notorious Brick by Brick that was budgeted at £30million managed to over-run and under-deliver and yet still cost £67million.

Kroll’s report on the Fairfield fiasco was originally due to be delivered by the end of August 2022.

Then it was expected by the end of September. By November, Kerswell was telling councillors that the report was expected soon.

Suffice to say, despite being paid £315,000 for their efforts, Kroll have yet to deliver any report. Perhaps someone should launch an investigation into how an organisation can be paid nearly one-third of a million pounds and yet still not deliver its final report more than four months after deadline?

All is revealed: The council has been more concerned about who leaked the Penn Report than acting on its recommendations

Goodness knows how long, and for how much, Kroll might string out their investigation into the leaking of the Penn Report.

Nearly three months after they were asked to do so, Kroll have so far failed to make contact with Inside Croydon.

It was Inside Croydon who received the 160-page document in October, and we have been publishing extracts from it ever since. We know exactly how we obtained it. Not that we’re saying, naturally… But you’d think Kroll might at least ask.

In a report to the council’s appointments committee in November, a Fisher’s Folly official simpered, “The council… confirmed that publication of the contents of the Penn Report was without the council’s permission and was therefore unauthorised and unlawful.

“It has notified all parties who have stated they have copies of the leaked report of this and requested that they cease all commentary on its contents and return the report to the council. No copies have been received.” Awww. Shame!

“The council has also notified the Information Commissioner’s Office of the incident pending an external investigation into the circumstances of the leaking of the draft copy of the Penn Report.

“The council has commissioned Kroll to undertake that investigation.”

The appointments committee failed to mention any upper limit on spending on Kroll for this particular wild goose chase. Trebles all-round!

That meeting took place on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 9. Lawrence-Orumwense and Kerswell were both present, with the meeting chaired by the Mayor, Jason Perry.

The meeting was held in Fisher’s Folly, in Room 1.01.

Orwellian indeed.

Eye opener: how the council has been ridiculed in the country’s best-selling current affairs magazine

This meeting was much occupied with the Penn Report, and all the feeble excuses that Kerswell and Lawrence-Orumwense could summon up for refusing to make the report public, and failing to act on any of the report author’s official recommendations.

That evening, Lawrence-Orumwense issued his High Court injunction against Inside Croydon, for daring to publish material that had already been sitting in the public domain on the council website for six weeks.

Attendees at the appointments committee meeting, Conservative and Labour councillors, confirm that at no point did Lawrence-Orumwense or Kerswell discuss with them the wisdom, or lack of it, of trying to injunct against the publication of documents that the council itself had already published.

Inside Croydon has also had it confirmed from senior Katharine Street sources that Mayor Perry, when he was eventually advised of the council’s latest expensive legal action, chose not to try to stop the futile court case.

Once there was a hearing at the High Court, the case was quickly dismissed by judge Mr Justice Nicklin. The judge told the council’s counsel: “You’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle.”

Much of the legal advice that Lawrence-Orumwense wanted withdrawn from the public domain remains published by Inside Croydon.

You can view it here:

As well as advice from Browne Jacobson, this also includes further legal insights from Jane Mulcahy KC, of Blackstone Chambers.

According to the FoI response from Fisher’s Folly, “The council incurred fees of £18,340 (plus VAT) for leading counsel’s advice.”

Or another £22,008 spent on legal advice that Kerswell and the council has yet to action…

Read more: Council withdraws High Court case against Inside Croydon
Read more: #PennReport wanted police probe into possible misconduct
Read more: #PennReport: No referrals sent to staff’s professional bodies


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