CROYDON IN CRISIS: A three-week hearing at the Employment Tribunal could cost the cash-strapped council at least £150,000 – with tax-payers picking up the legal tab again. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Money no object: Croydon CEO Katherine Kerswell is having all her legal costs paid for by… YOU
Cash-strapped Croydon Council, the local authority that says it has no money to pay for public services, has today embarked on an Employment Tribunal case which is expected to last for three weeks and where the hearing alone will cost tax-payers at least £150,000.
At the centre of the case is Katherine Kerswell, the council’s £192,000 per year chief executive who has been accused of acting in a racist manner by a former council director, Hazel Simmonds.
Simmonds has also brought a discrimination case against the council as well as a claim for unfair dismissal.
All Kerswell’s legal costs are being paid for by Croydon Council – and so therefore by the borough’s long-suffering Council Tax-payers. Croydon Council is using its regular external firm of solicitors, Browne Jacobson, and a King’s Counsel plus a junior lawyer to represent them at the case.
In her defence, Kerswell has submitted a statement that runs to more than 100 A4 pages. Legal sources estimate that compiling this statement alone may have cost Croydon Council at least £5,000.
Sources in Katharine Street suggest that the decision to go ahead with this case will have had the full knowledge and consent of the borough’s Tory Mayor, Jason Perry. Perry was elected 18 months ago on a promise to take action against those who caused the council’s financial collapse, yet the Mayor has yet to act on the majority of recommendations made by an independent investigator in a report delivered to Kerswell and the council nearly three years ago.
The hearing of case reference 2304609/2021 (the 2021 bit indicates how long this matter has taken to come to court) began at 10am today at the South London Employment Tribunal which is contained within an unprepossessing red-brick building called Montague Court on London Road, nestled close to a Lidl supermarket and an EasyGym.
Legal threats: the council’s most senior lawyer, Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense
The judge set aside the first two days for the parties to wade through the volumes of documents and statements that have been presented for the case. Some of the claims and evidence submitted dates back as far as 2014, years before Kerswell or Simmonds ever started working for the council.
Simmonds was appointed to her £150,000 per year role of “executive director of Gateway, strategy and engagement” in 2018 by the council’s then chief exec, Jo Negrini.
There is a suggestion that the council and its lawyers are employing deliberate delaying and filibustering tactics, in efforts to exhaust Simmonds and run up the costs of her bringing the case. “The council has deep pockets, thanks to tax-payers, and they know they can play for time to force anyone who challenges them to give up,” said a source.
In previous cases, lawyers for the council have issued threats of dire consequences against those involved in the dispute, as well as saying that it would seek punitive costs against them if successful. It is understood that this may have happened in the Simmonds case.
Because of the financial burden of mounting legal costs, Simmonds was representing herself at the Tribunal’s initial session today.
Simmonds’ legal advisors had made some efforts to settle the matter out of court, including writing to Tony McArdle, the chair of the improvement panel at the council, appointed by Michael Gove to oversee the bankrupt borough’s slow progress of recovery since the finances first crashed in 2020.
Such efforts for conciliation have come to nothing – despite Simmonds having won the first part of her case, when it was shown that the council had acted unlawfully in reducing her pay while she was suspended from duty. The cash-strapped council was ordered to give Simmonds £15,000 in back-pay. Simmonds was unable to recover her legal costs for this part of her case.
Simmonds was one of four execs who were suspended in February 2021 by the then-new council CEO, Kerswell, while their part in the council’s multi-million-pound financial collapse was to be investigated. No disciplinary action has ever been taken against any of them: three quit their Croydon jobs that year (a fourth never returned from long-term sick leave).
Simmonds did not resign until September 2022, and she embarked on a grievance counter-action against the council for race discrimination, victimisation and unlawful reduction in wages. She also made a separate racism complaint against Kerswell individually.
Day in court: former council exec Hazel Simmonds
While Kerswell has continued with her work of making hundreds of council staff redundant, she and the council have refused to release any of the details of their defence of the case brought by Simmonds, nor the mounting costs incurred by the authority.
Reference to the long-running case has been kept top secret, appearing only in the exempt, Part B sections of council reports and referred to as “an ongoing confidential staffing matter”.
Ahead of one committee meeting held last month, Kerswell excused her actions by writing, “The report contains confidential personal data and confidential legal advice and therefore the entirety of the report is exempt.” Kerswell has been backed in her actions to keep her costly legal case a secret by her deputy CEO, Elaine Jackson, plus the hapless legal director, Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense.
The Simmonds complaint was filed more than 15 months ago, so Kerswell has been accumulating legal costs all that time.
The prolonged disciplinary process brought against Simmonds was used by Kerswell as an excuse for failing to action the findings of the Penn Report, which had investigated the conduct of several senior figures at the council.
Read more: Council exec Simmonds quits after 18 months ‘gardening leave’
Read more: ‘You seem to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle’
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Do the Council not purchase Professional Indemnity insurance that may well provide protection for at least part of the defence of Ms Simmonds claims?
Almost certainly not. I’m pretty sure that, as a vast organisation with vast resources (!) they ‘self-insure
What insurance company would take the risk of insuring this Council against malpractice whilst effectively (oops, should I say I effectively run) by piss poor Perry. The premiums would be stratospheric,
There is a big difference between Risk and Actuality George. Insurance specialists are usually pretty good at assessing that and as you say raise premiums. Which is why one has to wonder that those in charge are not curtailing unlawful acts/decisions within Croydon.
The Council should consider presenting its case itself, through an in-house lawyer and Mrs Kerswell, rather than using outside solicitors and barristers at great expense. The procedures of Employment Tribunals are designed to be less formal than those of the courts. Mrs Kerswell and Mr Lawrence-Orumwense presumably know the facts of the case inside out. Their time will be involved in the matter anyway. In the unlikely event that a complex point of law comes up they could seek counsel’s opinion on that specifically.
Croydon doesn’t employ any barristers. Or even baristas, ffs
Actually, they do.
Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense is a barrister (so he told me). Just not a very good one (otherwise he wouldn’t be working for Croydon).
Croydon does as IC said below. I do think Mr Orumwense has a modicum of intelligence thence some qualifications. However, and not because he is no good but more because, like all public servants on the merry-go-round, he is there as the mouthpiece for others that are hired in.
Then when it all goes tits up the contractor gets the blame and not the council person.
That risk mitigation, 2020s style!
Its what you vote for folks
Kerswell should resign.
She was employed as a redundancy specialist.
She clearly isn’t.
But let’s cut to the quick – she is fucking useless.
Everything she has attempted to remedy has got worse.
She sit tight on her fat ass waiting for a fat payout should anyone sack her.
Perry hasn’t got the balls to sort this out.
If Kerswell is found to have behaved in a racist manner there has to be the possibility of her resigning or the Council dismissing her for gross misconduct. That could avoid a pay off. The stakes at this tribunal are quite high.
It occurs to me, with a good degree of cynicism, it that the former members of the Negrini Gang naturally will seek to “clear” their names by directing opprobrium against the persons they blame for their downfall. It is hardly a unique event in local government across UK, and it costs the taxpayers dearly dealing with it.
Public sector HR practices, intended to protect vulnerable employees, are routinely used by senior staff members to advance their interests and far too frequently local authorities lack the courage to face the individuals down, fearing reputational and financial risks.
Having been involved in a long Employment Tribunal case brought many years ago, I appreciated the reason why the local authority brought in external legal experts, as they cut through the insecurities and fought the case, thus saving money. I have also witnessed where a local authority failed to take disciplinary action against corrupt officers and paid them very large sums just to go away.
When this case is heard, the judges will decide and we will know whether or not the claims were valid.
This is the same council legal team that a week ago was at the Supreme Court arguing that it did not have to fulfill its statutory duties to house the homeless because… it has no money.
The council’s chosen solicitors to contest that case (after they had lost at the Court of Appeal in 2022) were the same Browne Jacobson.
For the record, Croydon Council lost its Supreme Court case. Apparently, where they have a duty set down in law, the council has to fulfill that duty. Who knew??
It’s possible that Hazel Simmonds has been the victim of unlawful discrimination and unfair dismissal by Croydon Council and its Chief Executive, Katherine Kerswell.
Another possibility is that she wasn’t, hence the vigorous defence being mounted by those Simmonds has accused of wrongdoing.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the Employment Tribunal decides.
What I’d like to know is what Simmonds actually did for her money. To quote iC when she got her Executive Director job 5 years ago, she was in charge of the Council’s “Gateway, Strategy and Engagement division”, “which apparently looks after the borough’s housing, strategy (yeah, they’ve got one apparently), policy development, communications, community relations and the council’s welfare service”.
Was this the housing service that let Regina Road residents endure homes unfit for habitation which have now been condemned, and forced disabled people to live in unsuitable accommodation? What was her role in Brick by Brick? What did she actually do for the people of Croydon? Why was she suspended and what allegations were made about her?
A lot of dirty linen is about to be washed in public. About time too
The Penn Report gave us 143 pages of commentary on the collapse of Croydon Council under Negrini, Newman, Butler and Scott.
It identifies several individuals for specific failings in the period up to November 2020. Hazel Simmonds was not one of them.
Simmonds was suspended in February 2021 because she was a member of the executive leadership team (like Guy van Dichele, who was also suspended but not mentioned specifically by Penn).
Penn says: “Other post holders on the Executive Leadership Team may have direct management responsibility for functional or service leadership, but nonetheless they are also managerially responsible for ensuring the corporate effectiveness of the Council’s overall functions, services and budgets.”
When it comes to standing on the sidelines and doing nothing, it might be worth considering that Penn submitted his report in February 2021 (Katherine Kerswell may have had sight of a draft version two months earlier).
To date, the council chief executive has failed to implement the majority of the recommendations in that report.
Apparently, she’s been too busy writing 100-page testimonies of “Why I am not a racist”. Helped by taxpayer-funded lawyers.
Wise words ‘Arfur’