Open to work: council cabinet member Scott Roche has updated his personal profile, just not the council register which is a legal requirement
Another week, and another Croydon councillor has been found out as breaking the council’s code of conduct by failing to update their declarations of interest in a timely manner.
This time it is Conservative council cabinet member Scott Roche, who is paid nearly £40,000 per year in Town Hall allowances, but who hasn’t updated his record for two years, leaving it providing false and misleading information.
All councillors are required by law, under Section 30 of the Localism Act 2011, to keep their register of interests up to date.
But according to his register of interests, the councillor for Shirley South works as “a senior caseworker” for the Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam. That is no longer true.
Roche worked for Paul Scully, who in March announced that he would not seek re-election, and has been out of office since July 4. Luke Taylor won Sutton and Cheam for the Liberal Democrats at the General Election, and Tory Roche is definitely not on his staff list.
So Roche therefore hasn’t had a proper job since working on winding up Scully’s parliamentary office and handing over to Taylor’s team.
Roche has managed to find the time to update his LinkedIn profile, even adding one of those dinky little “Open for work” frames. Which is nice.
But unlike the council’s official register, LinkedIn is not a legal requirement.
After the General Election, there were more than 1,000 parliamentary assistant jobs being advertised, following Labour’s landslide win that left the Conservatives with just 121 MPs.
Taylor’s list: the current MP for Sutton and Cheam has a large staff. Scott Roche isn’t on it
But all those Tory MPs still have offices to run and constituent correspondence to manage.
Despite having more than four years’ experience working in the Palace of Westminster (Roche had previously worked in the office of Ipswich MP Tom Hunt), it appears that one of Mayor Jason Perry’s hand-picked top team has not been taken on by any Conservative MP – not even Croydon South’s Chris Philp – and so has been left at a bit of a loose end.
Apart, that is, from fulfilling his task as Perry’s dogsbody as cabinet member for streets and environment (it is Roche who is in large part responsible for handing a £40million waste contract to Veolia just two years after the rubbish contractors were sacked) and, supposedly, managing to do a bit of personal admin around his register of interests. Which he has failed to do.
As usual with Croydon Council, no disciplinary action appears to have been taken for this latest breach of the law.
False information: Cllr Roche hasn’t bothered amending his employment status, as required by law, for several months
Why does any of this matter?
Croydon Council, remember, is a basket-case local authority in large part for failing to do the basics right, like keeping accurate and up-to-date records – as recorded by auditors Grant Thornton, the Penn Report, the Kroll Report and government commissioners. There is a legal duty to keep the public properly informed of all our elected representatives’ financial interests.
There is a mechanism within the council for keeping a check on councillors’ (and council staff’s) register of interests, a responsibility that falls to the Monitoring Officer, the council’s most senior lawyer, who is Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense.
It was the failure to keep proper checks and balances in place, and to insist on such matters, that contributed to the council’s tailspin into effective bankruptcy in 2020. But as the examples of Fraser and Roche’s register demonstrate, even on such a routine matter, those checks are not taking place.
This week, when we asked about the demonstrable errors in Roche’s register of interests, a council spokesperson said: “It is the responsibility of members…”, they mean councillors, “… to update their register of interests within 28 days of becoming aware of any new interest or of a change to a registered interest Amendments on the councillors’ register of interests.
“When the Monitoring Officer is notified of any changes, these are uploaded to the relevant member’s register of interest form on the council’s website as soon as practically possible…
Slow worker: Scott Roche
“To ensure transparency, the date of the last update for each councillor is published within their register of interest form on the website.”
In the case of Roche, the latest update is recorded as Tuesday December 13, though the councillor’s employment status remains unaltered (the cabinet member scored 70 quid’s worth of freebie tickets to see Peter Pan at the Fairfield Halls, lucky chap).
The council spokesperson then added this: “The Monitoring Officer regularly reminds members of the need to submit any updates as they occur… There is a standing item on each agenda for all council meetings, for councillors to declare any interests based on the items for consideration, which are recorded in the meeting’s minutes.”
Fraser went the best part of the year without one mention of his new job at Hounslow Council as a declaration of interest, even at planning committees.
At present, Scott Roche doesn’t need to make any declaration: he’s unemployed.
But if £150,000 per year council lawyer Lawrence-Orumwense and his legal team are missing this kind of routine stuff, what else are they failing to keep a check on, too?
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Just another example that the appointment of a DEMOC has not changed the fundamental underlying culture of Croydon Council. Good management is not a factor of how the Council is structured. It is about the people who are working inside the structure.
Roche’s negligence of basic procedure and of course not facing any counterveiling punishment for his neglience just demonstrates the casual rotteness that really needs the two main parties who have ruled Croydon being cleared out.
I guess that the photo of the grinning idiots (Piss-poor Perry and his harem) at the top of this article is on the steps of Croydon Town Hall in Katharine Street(?), although we could hope that it is on the steps of the High Court after they have been found guilty of “Contempt in a public office” ? They are still grinning inanely, because that is what they always do when they see a photographer ?!
There is no such offence under the law.
Why not? Croydon would be the first place for it to be used.
There isn’t a law against commenters being an annoyance on a Wednesday, either. Which is just as well, because by all reports, the prisons are already overcrowded.