Friday, 25 February 2022 – I Asked You to Break the Law

 In an all-council email this morning, we have been informed that we have an interim Chief Executive:

“Kim Smith, Chief Executive, is currently on extended leave. In her absence, Sharon Lea, Strategic Director for Environment (pictured), will be covering as Interim Chief Executive from Friday 25 February. The role also includes the duties of the Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer.”

Below this message is a link reading, “Read the message from the Senior Leadership Team here.”

This message reads:

“Dear All, 

“Kim Smith, Chief Executive, is currently on extended leave.  In her absence, Sharon Lea, Strategic Director for Environment (pictured), will be covering as Interim Chief Executive from Friday 25 February. 

 

“The role also includes the duties of the Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer. 

 

“During this period, please direct any communications to your Director in the first instance, or to Sharon. 

 

“Kind regards, 

 

“The Strategic Leadership Team”

Righto.  It’s a good job they added that link or we might not know what’s going on!  The Senior Leadership Team obviously thinks the council is a Chekist state but, unbeknownst to them, councils operate in the real world and the role of Chief Executive of a London borough is too high-profile for real people not to be sharing the gossip instead.  So, what does the Internet say?

“Council backs chief executive who lied to tribunal over discrimination evidence”, is the shocking headline in the Disability News Service back in November.  It reports that, “A council whose chief executive told a senior colleague with ADHD* that her brain “doesn’t work like other people’s” has been found guilty by a tribunal of disability discrimination and harassment.

*Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”

It goes on to say that Kim said that she had not realised that the senior officer had been serious when she disclosed her ADHD during the recruitment process, questioned whether she disclosed her ADHD during the recruitment process at all (disabilities are disclosed in confidence to HR and not to the recruiting manager so as to not influence the recruitment decision which, if it did, would be unlawfully discriminatory), asked why she had not been told she had ADHD (she had notified the council’s Occupational Health team), and sacking her while she was on sick leave due to this condition without first warning her that she was at risk of losing her job despite the employment tribunal finding that she would have been confirmed in the role after her probation had it not been for the period of disability-related absence.

It goes on to say that Kim and her Corporate Services Director (responsible for HR), Mark Grimley, manufactured paperwork for the disciplinary process to justify her dismissal after she was dismissed and on finding out that they were being taken to an employment tribunal.

It reports:

“In a scathing judgement delivered by the three-person panel, the tribunal said that both Smith and Grimley… had given evidence on “key factual issues” that they both knew to be untrue.

“The tribunal, which had considered more than 4,700 pages of written evidence, found them both to be “unreliable” witnesses.

“Grimley is no longer with the council, but Smith remains its Chief Executive.”

 

Not any longer she’s doesn’t.  Evidently, the council has changed its mind about backing her and suspended her instead.  How they thought they could back anyone a tribunal found with such overwhelming evidence to have defrauded council paperwork to perjure herself to a tribunal in the role as a representative, Chief Executive no less, of the council, is anyone’s guess, but the article does quote a “council spokesperson” having a stab at it after the finding:

“We are disappointed and fundamentally disagree with the tribunal’s judgment.  We are studying it carefully and considering our options.”

 

Well, they must not have been listening during the tribunal then, and undoubtedly taken aback when they “studied” the transcript to then consider the best option was to suspend and replace her so unceremoniously.

The MJ online newspaper went further reporting in November that:

“Senior officers conspired to doctor a dismissal letter in a bid to make it look like it was signed before a grievance procedure was launched against their council, a tribunal has found.

Hammersmith and Fulham LBC’s “chief executive, interim head of corporate services, strategic director of governance and finance and section 151 officer and the borough solicitor and monitoring officer were all involved in this deception”, according to the tribunal report.”

 

So, the first two people in that list are Kim and Mark.  Trying to follow the grammar of the rest that sentence, I count three, perhaps four additional members of the Senior Leadership Team, to whom we’re now instructed to direct our communications, were involved?

Sharon is the Strategic Director for Environment (she just had the one job and salary) so not a reported conspirator in this lawless gang.  Her additional qualification for being appointed interim CEO as reported in the Birmingham Mail in 2017, is that she was paid by Birmingham City Council £414,000 a year to run the “bins, street cleaning, housing and neighbourhoods”.  Heady stuff.  But the real test is, now, can she understand her own council’s recruitment equalities process, avoid making fun of someone’s health impairment, not sack someone without warning and not defraud disciplinary paperwork to cover her tracks?  It’s tricky.  And she certainly can’t rely on her treacherous Senior Leadership Team to advise her.  But, then, it’s this level of sophistication for which we pay the big bucks.