CROYDON IN CRISIS: A hearing for an employment dispute alleging unfair dismissal and racism brought by one of the council’s senior members of staff at the time of its financial collapse has done more to expose bullying and cover-ups at the Town Hall. By STEVEN DOWNES

It is Day 9 of a landmark Employment Tribunal, halfway through a likely three-week hearing. And for the first time today, the tribunal is to hear directly from Katherine Kerswell, Croydon Council’s £192,474 per year chief executive.

Kerswell has been lurking in the shadows at the online, virtual tribunal for most of the hearing. Goodness knows who’s been running the affairs of the cash-strapped council while Kerswell and a clutch of her most senior staff have been devoting their attentions to the goings on at the London (South) Employment Tribunal.

It is a case for unfair dismissal and racism brought by one of the crisis-hit council’s former executive directors, Hazel Simmonds, who has also alleged racism against her former boss, Kerswell.

The hearing is providing some of the most insightful evidence into the state of the council in the months leading up to the council’s financial collapse in 2020.

But it is also casting a very bright spotlight on the culture of fear and distrust among the most senior employees working in Fisher’s Folly into 2021 in the aftermath of the departures of Jo Negrini, Tony Newman and Simon Hall, and the arrival of Kerswell and her team of new brooms.

Few might have expected Voltaire and the plight of 18th Century Royal Navy Admiral Byng to get a mention in proceedings. Indeed, the mere mention of a French writer left Croydon’s current deputy mayor, Lynne Hale, looking non-plussed (part of  the Tory councillor’s otherwise threadbare contribution to the evidence on behalf of Kerswell and the council).

Hale had never heard of Byng (who faced a firing squad for losing the Balearics, as it happens), nor Voltaire, when a member of the Employment Tribunal put it to her that Simmonds’s fate was, as had been suggested more than 200 years ago, “pour encourager les autres“.

Conducting her own case: Hazel Simmonds

Simmonds was among five Croydon Council execs abruptly suspended from duty in February 2021 by Kerswell, soon after she had received the Penn Report from an outside expert from the Local Government Association – a report that Kerswell then suppressed from councillors and the public for more than two years. The majority of Richard Penn’s recommendations remain unimplemented by Kerswell.

Testimony has been submitted that Kerswell, who commissioned the Penn Report and drafted its terms of reference, used the exercise to provide an excuse to raise disciplinary action against existing senior staff to force their departures.

It is Simmonds’s case that she has been shabbily treated, being made an example of or, as tribunal panel member Julian Hutchings put it, “to encourage the others”.

Simmonds was never singled out for criticism in a single sentence of Penn’s 143-page report. While those who were individually identified for disciplinary action, or worse, have escaped any sanction (so far at least), Simmonds’s case is that her career was placed in jeopardy by the actions of Kerswell, who even changed the council’s constitution to be able to implement the changes she wanted.

Simmonds’s suspension arose because, under Negrini, as executive director of Gateway, strategy and engagement, she was a member of the “ELT” – the council’s executive leadership team.

In paragraph 14.20 of his report, Penn wrote: “The investigation has raised concerns about the behaviour of the Executive Leadership Team as a group and its behaviour in response to possible breaches of the Officer Code of Conduct in regard to bullying behaviour. Members are asked to consider what, if any, further action is warranted in regard to these concerns.”

There, “members” meant Croydon councillors. The recommendations of the Penn Report were never discussed by the majority of Croydon’s 70 elected representatives until earlier this year, but Kerswell pushed through the suspension of Simmonds and four others in secretive sub-committee meetings, their deliberations kept from the public. Until now.

Because in evidence over the past week or so, Simmonds has managed to establish that the bullying allegations were not about her own conduct. Indeed, she has submitted testimony to say that when she did complain directly to Jo Negrini about her fraught behaviour and bullying of staff, the CEO stripped her of her exec’s portfolio of work and moved her from a permanent position to a fixed-term contract.

Council brief: Patricia Leonard

Last week was mainly comprised of having Simmonds’ evidence and her witnesses cross-examined by Patrica Leonard, a barrister from 7BR Chambers in Holborn (conducting most of her questioning from what appears to be a converted loft bedroom; QB VII this ain’t).

While Simmonds is conducting her own case, Leonard, together with her “pupil” (a junior lawyer), are part of a small army of lawyers and para-legals employed by Croydon Council at massive cost to defend itself against the allegations made by Simmonds. The lawyers are therefore also fighting the case to defend Kerswell’s reputation, and salary.

Whatever the cost to Croydon’s tax-payers, from what has gone on at the tribunal so far, Leonard and the council solicitors from Browne Jacobson are not making a terrific case.

They even come across as unnecessarily snide at times. “You’re a friend of Miss Simmonds, aren’t you?” Leonard, leaning into her computer’s camera, asked Guy van Dichele, another of the suspended execs, when he was cross-examined last week.

“I was a colleague. An ex-colleague now,” van Dichele replied, calmly.

“Were you arguing with the council simply to argue with the council,” acid-toned Leonard put to Simmonds in her cross-examination.

“No,” came the matter-of-fact reply. “I’ve had sleepless nights. I was not going out. I’ve been on anti-depressants. Why would I do that?” Simmonds said.

More than once, Leonard had to be corrected by Employment Judge Adam Leith, who hauled up the barrister on one occasion to point out that as he couldn’t understand her rambling and convoluted question, then there was little chance for the witness to be able to understand, or answer, it, either.

In a tribunal discussing the possibility of racism within an organisation, Leonard appeared outraged when Simmonds tried to raise the findings of a 2019 report into racism and bullying at Croydon Council.

Firm but fair: Judge Adam Leith

That report’s findings were initially suppressed by Negrini. Leonard went for the Croydon Council default and sought to have the Joe Montgomery report ruled out of the Tribunal as inadmissible, apparently on the grounds that it was all such a long time ago.

Leonard will really lose her shit if someone tries to mention the 80 members of council staff who have signed a union grievance complaint this year alleging racism, after the only people being made redundant in Kerswell’s council’s housing department are women. Who are black.

Firmly but fairly, Judge Leith has been playing a bit of a blinder so far.

On the first morning, he had to remind the lawyers for Kerswell and Croydon that the Employment Tribunal is a hearing in open court, and of course publications were free to report its proceedings – after the council opened up with an objection to Inside Croydon’s reporting of the unnecessary costliness: £150,000 at least for the hearing alone.

And Judge Leith and his two tribunal members have also been doing staunch work in posing their own questions to the various witnesses, who this week have mainly been giving evidence on behalf of the council.

These have included Councillor Hale (who didn’t appear to remember much about anything; amnesia must be a particularly Conservative affliction), as well as former Labour councillor Joy Prince, current deputy leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, Callton Young and Hamida Ali, the council leader following the financial collapse until she stood down from local politics in May 2022.

Lurking: Katherine Kerswell

Ali’s questioning lasted more than three hours, typical of the slow-motion nature of the proceedings, as Simmonds struggled with a hacking cough (she was diagnosed yesterday as having tonsilitis) and everyone involved tried to find various documents and submissions in the volumes of evidence that had been submitted. There are 623 pages in one bundle. Another bundle is 3,000 pages long.

Kerswell’s contribution to all this has been a 100-page statement (the longest of all, according to Judge Leith). It is reckoned that her cross-examination could take at least twice as long as Hamida Ali’s.

The next day or two in the open court of the Employment Tribunal could, therefore, prove very informative. And crucial, for Kerswell.

Read more: After two years, Simmonds legal case approaches its end-game
Read more: Council exec Simmonds quits after 18 months ‘gardening leave’
Read more: Kerswell still holds out over Penn Report’s recommendations
Read more: #PennReport wanted police probe into possible misconduct

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