CROYDON IN CRISIS: Just a couple of weeks after they took retirement from their six-figure salaried job at Fisher’s Folly, a former exec director is back, reportedly overseeing the council’s response to a potentially costly legal case. By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE
Road works: Kier worked for Croydon for seven years, but now have launched a £10m legal case
Katherine Kerswell, the chief executive of Croydon’s cash-strapped council, has come up with an ingenious way of dealing with the latest costly legal case to land on her desk: go and hire the person responsible for the mess to oversee the council’s response.
The Kier Group, the construction and engineering giant which carried out Croydon’s highway maintenance services in the borough from 2011 to 2018, has begun legal proceedings against the council in a contractual dispute. The claim at stake is said by sources at Fisher’s Folly to be around £10million.
The council was formally notified of Kier’s legal challenge just before the end of August.
Helping to oversee the council’s defence case is Steve Iles, who only retired from his six-figure salaried role as “director of sustainable communities” on August 31, after nearly 35 years working for the council.
He’s back: Steve Iles
It will have been Iles working in a very senior position at Croydon when Kier were first brought in as roads contractors, and he will have been in charge of the council’s roads department when the decision was made to discontinue with their services five years ago.
Staff have only recently been advised of the appointment of Karen Agbabiaka as an interim replacement for Iles. The council began its recruitment for Iles’s replacement too late to ensure anything resembling a smooth transition, so have had to find someone to fill the vacancy, initially at least, on a temporary basis.
Agbabiaka arrives in Croydon with an impressive-looking CV, including heading the highways departments at Islington and, most recently, at Liverpool City councils, with a solid grounding in civil engineering. So that’s an improvement over her predecessor straight away…
From earlier this year, Agbabiaka has also been a non-executive board member of Active Travel England, which suggests a level of expertise that Croydon might well need in untangling and improving many of the LTN’s hurriedly, and often poorly, implemented under Iles.
It was Iles who launched a handful of new school streets without any enforcement cameras because the kit he ordered from the United States was not compatible for use in south London…
It could be February 2024 at the earliest before a permanent replacement for Iles is installed at Fisher’s Folly unless, of course, Agbabiaka decides she wants to stick around.
The next few months could prove critical in the council finding a replacement for its rubbish contractors, Veolia, another aspect of the busy brief that Agbabiaka is taking on from Iles.
At least Agbabiaka won’t have to go far if she needs to refer to him over any important matters.
Interim: Karen Agbabiaka
According to a source, “Steve is already back with the council, literally within days of his formal retirement, working on a day rate.
“He is working on the council’s countercase for the claim Kier has submitted.”
One of the factors that has seen Croydon accumulate its £1.6billion debt mountain is its systemic issue with paying people, or their private companies, enhanced day rates, as Inside Croydon has reported on many times.
There are many of them spread across the council, some of whom have been working there for more than 10 years. “One of their arguments is that it helps bring in or retain the talent,” said the source, “but if that’s the case why not just pay the right rates in the first place?
“Or if there is a need for a specialist skill for a short-term project, ensure that it is just for that and not a back door into a continuous roundabout of one project after another.”
Other council sources have confirmed that they are aware of the legal tangle with Kier, who today, when contacted by Inside Croydon, declined to go into any detail about the nature of the dispute.
But they would not deny that they had embarked on a legal case against their former clients.
“Any outstanding matters will be resolved through the appropriate contractual mechanism,” a spokesperson for Kier said.
So it looks like another set of outside contractors, lawyers, will be getting rich at the expense of Croydon’s Council Tax-payers yet again…
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Perhaps it could be possible to counter sue Kier? After all 7 years of looking after Croydons roads and the work on them has been poor at best and definitely temporary – maybe thats what they were paid to do – a quick fix.
I assume they did not do the London Road Public realm enhancements? you know the ones after the riot that only happened along time afterwards.
Sadly they are also falling apart – amazing that such work failed to last a decade – Pretty much the same in many areas as well.
Does no one question wht we pay so much for such shoddy work?
Where’s the evidence that the work was shoddy? The council engineers drew up the spec, inspected the work – perhaps did some supervision – then signed it off. Unfair to blame Keir
It’s Kier not Keir you absolute wally.
If you want to see the evidence, take a trip down Wellesley Road and have a look at the carriageway surface from the point where the underpass emerges, down to the junction of Station Road, this is the last (ie newest) piece of carriageway surfacing Kier carried out before they left the borough.
Thanks Micky, but if the work didn’t meet the spec then Croydon could/should have forced them Keir to re-do.
Oh yeah, like Croydon Council “enforces” its mark-your-own-homework contract with Veolia, for instance?
It is surely a little more than coincidence that the exec director responsible for the contractor-friendly contracts under which Kier and Veolia operated/operate was one and the same…
Sorry Micky for mis-speiling Kier
Mention was made of this in the Councils 2019/20 accounts and a value of £6.5 million is given. The accounts say that the claim was refuted. Having some expertise in construction contract management and law I look forward to seeing how this develops.
So millions are going to be wasted on contractual disputes all over again, rather than on the direct provision of services and of course the rehiring of senior management to deal with the issues created by themselves in the first place. Does seem to tell you why the Public Sector used to provide such services directly in the first place rather than an endless redistribution of money to those who provide legal services, personnel appointments and who ever can get their fingers in the pie.
Derek Thrower hits the nail directly on the head, why oh why did Croydon Council give up it’s DLO (direct labour organisation) to go with Kier (formerly EM Highways at the time of appointment by Croydon, Steve Iles dog collar was at that time reading “Head of Highways”). They actually had a decent set up at Purley Oaks depot, even having their own concrete batching plant on site! They threw all this away to go with an awful contractor, (and the current one is even worse, wait until you see how contractual they will get if they lose the contract at renewal time), and the roads and footpaths have gone downhill ever since. I will admit that the CURV and Connected Croydon spin offs done some half decent high street schemes (as mentioned above post Croydon riots), but they too have been wrecked by utility companies and a lack of maintenance by the Council. Oh well, I suppose it is another case of “trebles all round” for Mr Iles!!
The council ‘gave u it’s DLO because it was bloated, inefficient and expensive.
Where is the evidence that the DLO was “bloated, inefficient and expensive”. Justify your statement on here for us to see.
The DLO was closed at least 20 years ago and never re-instated by successive Labour leaderships. My choice of words paraphrased the reasons given at the time
He won’t because he can’t
And there you go ! I did say in a previous post that he would return as a consultant, unfortunately this is normal practice for the delusional Croydon Council who just love wasting public money on an individual who was no Engineer but a chancer !