Yet the council sacked a whistleblower who raised serious concerns about staffing agency Adecco’s possible overcharging for workers in the children’s services department.
With an Employment Tribunal judge mentioning the possibility of fraud, opposition councillors are demanding an urgent investigation. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s Green councillors have called on Mayor Jason Perry to commission an urgent and independent auditors’ investigation into the possibility of large-scale fraud, going back at least eight years, over the use of temporary staff booked through agency Adecco.
Loadsamoney: Jason Perry always has the readies to pay for temporary staff, or for lawyers in the long-running persecution of a council whistleblower
Inside Croydon revealed this week how Croydon Council has spent almost £150,000 in hiring lawyers to oppose an Employment Tribunal case first brought by temp worker Daniel Cox in 2018, when he was dismissed after blowing the whistle on contractors Adecco’s billing for his work.
Rather than investigate Cox’s claims, Croydon Council has instead been the co-respondents alongside Adecco in this eight-year Employment Tribunal saga. The latest hearing was held this week, with a further full tribunal to come in January.
The judges in the hearings only consider the rights and wrongs of Cox’s dismissal, though His Honour Judge James Tayler did include mention of possible fraud in one of his rulings. It will be HH Judge Tayler who will hear Daniel Cox’s case at the Employment Tribunal in January.
Cox blew the whistle when he discovered that while he was being paid £22.70 per hour as a SEND support worker via Adecco subsidiary company Giant, Croydon Council was paying £350 per day for those services.
In his ruling handed down in April 2021, Judge Tayler wrote: “In the pleadings the claimant contends that he had disclosed information that tended to show that there had been fraud – essentially, that [Giant] was overcharging the [council] by claiming that staff were working at a higher level than they were, and then not passing on the additional payment to the workers.”
Now opposition councillors want the matter investigated by external auditors.
Time for audit investigation: Green Party councillor Paul Ainscough
Paul Ainscough is the Green councillor for Fairfield ward. This week, he wrote to Mayor Perry: “We have long raised concerns about the amount of money being spent on agency staff by Croydon Council.
“Employing people directly not only provides greater job security and retains valuable expertise within the organisation, but also offers far better value for money for residents.
“Daniel Cox’s case, which has been reviewed by Employment Tribunal judges, raises serious questions about the council’s relationship with Adecco and Giant, and whether the issue goes beyond inefficiency to potentially involve improper or even fraudulent payments.
“We are calling on Mayor Perry to commission the council’s external auditors to conduct an urgent and independent investigation into all related contracts, paperwork and financial records. If any incorrect or fraudulent payments are identified, the council must take immediate action to recover public money and introduce stronger safeguards to ensure this cannot happen again.
He’s got the receipts: just one of the Adecco invoices that Daniel Cox has obtained while pursuing his case
“Residents deserve confidence that every pound of their money is being spent properly, transparently and in the best interests of the borough.”
Councilor Ainscough has not even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement of his email from the Tory Mayor. It is almost as if the cash-strapped council has something to hide.
Mind you, it is part-time Perry who has presided over a quadrupling of spending on temporary staff, and a payments system that allowed hundreds of thousands of pounds of invoices from Adecco to be signed off by an employee of… Adecco.
Read more: Whistleblower’s lonely eight-year battle over council spending
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 per hour consultant
Read more: Children’s services passes Ofsted inspection despite 5 deaths
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