Councillors who took roles on council staff disciplinary panels and reinstated workers accused of bullying at the Cityclean depot should apologise, Greens have demanded.
They spoke out as a committee made up of senior members of Brighton and Hove City Council met to end councillor involvement in “personnel appeal panels”.
The Greens said: “Proposals to remove the member panels follow an independent report into behaviours at Cityclean which revealed a culture of bullying, sexism, racism and homophobia at the bin depot.
“The report also makes a series of recommendations, including on the council’s involvement of councillors in disciplinary processes, with the report author Aileen McColgan stating she heard from witnesses that managers felt unable to take action against bullies as a result of panels.”
The Greens cited a passage in the independent report that said: “Concerns were raised with me about the propriety of allowing panels whose members may have received (and declared) GMB funding, to ‘completely, unashamedly just reverse officer decisions’ relating to GMB reps and / or individuals described to me as being particularly protected by the GMB reps within the council.”
Although the Labour leader of the council Bella Sankey was not a councillor during the period in question, she said that she had already apologised because staff at Cityclean were let down.
She said that her Labour administration had driven changes at the bin depot and this had not happened before, including when the Greens ran the council, albeit without a majority.
The Greens said: “A freedom of information (FoI) request published on the council’s website states that three members of staff dismissed for gross misconduct were then reinstated following a member appeals panel.
“It also states that no further investigation has been proposed into what the independent report describes as a ‘high degree of political interference from politicians in disciplinary processes at Cityclean’.”
These included claims, the Greens said, that “highly confidential information passed between the (Labour) administration and GMB reps within the council”.
The Greens said that they had asked Labour on several occasions to make public a previous report on Cityclean, written in 2019 by the former senior trade union official Gerry Doherty.
The party said: “This report goes into even more depth about how member appeal panels allowed Cityclean staff dismissed over bullying allegations to keep their jobs.
“Each time, Labour has refused to release the report.”
The Greens said that Labour’s plans to scrap the member appeals panels were “incomplete” because the need to remove the arose only as a direct result of the poor behaviour from councillors who have yet to be held to account.
Green councillor Sue Shanks called on Labour to commit to a “root and branch review” of whether any Labour involvement in panels allowed a bullying culture to continue at Cityclean.
Councillor Shanks, deputy convenor for the Green group, said: “The independent report into behaviour at Cityclean makes it absolutely clear that the reason the council must get rid of panels is because certain members appear to have used and abused them – presumably all to preserve a status quo and avoid strike action they felt would be damaging to their political fortunes.
“Yet it was the staff subject to bullying and harassment for months on end who will have paid the price.
“The independent report raises important questions Labour has yet to answer. It details accounts from witnesses who said that councillors described as having ‘close ties’ with particular members of the GMB at Cityclean were part of the problem.
“Yet we have had no indication from Labour that they will seek to uncover who these members are and hold them and their party to account.
“In fact, a reply to a freedom of information request makes clear that despite the repeated references to toxic political interference made in the independent report, no investigation is planned at all.
“Given Labour’s words about preventing a toxic workplace culture at Cityclean from happening again, this is deeply disappointing.
“Member panels do have a role in many other councils – yet here in Brighton and Hove we are being asked to agree to remove them because some members could not be trusted to use them for their intended purpose.
“Simply removing panels does not go far enough to address the issues raised in the report about political interference.
“It’s high time Labour commit to a full root and branch review of their members’ roles on these panels and apologise for any role played, as well as explain to the city how they will ensure any abuse of power is rooted out, so it can never happen again.
“At present, we have little assurance with Labour at the helm that residents and staff will get the functioning bin collection service they deserve.”
One former Labour councillor, Penny Gilbey, said previously: “As a councillor, I sat on many appeals panels.
“In my experience, councillors, from whichever political group or union they belonged, always acted impartially when making decisions and hearings were conducted fairly, following correct agreed procedures and legal advice.”
The council said: “The decision to stop using member appeal panels means there will now be no member involvement in any disciplinary process and no opportunity for any member – either from the administration or opposition groups – to influence the process or the outcome. It will be an entirely officer-managed process.
“This is in line with local government best practice, ACAS guidelines and is also how the majority of local authorities we spoke to currently conduct their appeals process.”
Don’t mention the microwave!
Intrigued – have seen a microwave mentioned before?
He’s now working for an architectural firm. Should we warn them? 😳
Silly comment, and totally irrelevant.
Councillors should not sit on employment panels. They should excersise oversight only.
Anyway I think we can all agree that the worst performing periods from cityclean were under the Greens.
Nope – not everyone does agree. If the Frank LaDuc article today is correct and the KC report, it implies there were all sorts of backhanders going on under the last Lab administration – https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2024/04/25/councillors-reinstated-three-workers-sacked-by-managers/. Greens def might have got some things wrong, but I’ve not seen anything yet that is evidence they were taking money from GMB and overturning officer decisions. The other cityclean article today suggests that the dreadful behaviour went on for years because of what sounds like quite dodgy behaviour from Labour! That needs investigating and if that doesn’t happen then what are they hiding!! Think everyone can prob agree the whole thing is a mess!!
Shame on the grubby corrupt Labour councillors and labour group. Time they owned up their mess and named the responsible councillors.
Who care about this rubbish, just get the bins emptied, red, blue, or green, you are all the same,
Exactly. They should stop this crap and just empty the damn bins. Same as the potholes. Stop blaming everyone else and get the roads sorted.
Labour, the fakers,, fake resident councillors, now gone, fake council (City Clean) mediators, now de-activated, New in ,, fake Re-Nationalised Railways, no chance, fake,,,,,, fill in the gaps,,,,,, ,,,,,, ,,,,,, plenty to chose from. Apart from an endless supply of pot holes, very real, design your own and apply it to your local Tarmac, no-one will notice yours among the rows and strings of pot holes loosely banded together with strands of Tarmac in between.
So the reason our bins are always spewing rubbish is because Labour have a love in with the bullies who work at the bin service, those people block any decent progress because labour politicians will cover for them and labour don’t want to investigate that!!!!! Glass houses comes to mind!!!!