Monday, 15 August 2022 – Claiming Corporate Social Responsibility is Cheap
After nearly two years into construction dating back to before I started work at Hammersmith and Fulham, the council’s contracted developer for our own office, Hammersmith Town Hall, has placed their first local resident into an apprenticeship.
In 2018, the council applied for planning permission to itself to redevelop the Town Hall. A unilateral undertaking was drafted in lieu of a S106 agreement after Hammersmith and Fulham Council applied to the Local Planning authority, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, for planning permission, from which Hammersmith and Fulham council, without needing consent from Hammersmith and Fulham Council, unilaterally decided to create 32 apprenticeships for local residents. No, I don’t know how this works either.
Ardmore was subsequently commissioned to be the lead developer and convert the aging office for council workers in a prime location in Zone 2 in London into the Civic Campus of luxury, and some affordable, flats, commercial venues, restaurants and a cinema. Oh, and some modernised office space, some to be rented out commercially, and some for council workers. This is one of the reasons we officers have not been asked to return to the office and gladly continue to work from home post-Covid; our offices are mostly gone. Costing the council an initial £150,000,000, followed by a £9,500,000 contract variation, a commission of this magnitude would normally require social value contributions from bidders, including perhaps jobs and training for local residents, in a large new commercial enterprise smack in the middle of their borough, in addition to passing on the S106 obligations including the 32 apprenticeships. But, despite the council being committed in its written policy to ensuring residents benefit from social value when it spends their money, this was waived by the council when it came to their flagship building and the chance to “commercialise council assets” (make money). In May, soon after taking over the Social Value Officer role (at least in terms of duties and work rather than position, office and actually being paid to do the work – more on this later), I asked the Civic Campus Project Team what social value contributions had been committed in the contract. The Project Director replied to my email on 25 May:
“My team has confirmed that Social Value on Contracts over £100k was not a requirement when the original contract was let, hence it not being part of the ERs [requirements of the contract?].
“It was however raised by [your Assistant Director of Economic Development] at Contracts Assurance Board… when the original contract required variation by £9.5m. It was subsequently agreed that as this was a variation to an existing contract let prior to SV requirements, that we could not realistically enforce this with Ardmore and a waiver was requested from Cllr Jones (Economy Member). Happy to forward this email confirmation if required. We did, however, at the time show on the SV calculator the SV that was generated by the site albeit that this wasn’t going to be monitored (I’ve attached the calculator we completed to demonstrate this).”
Senior council officers can normally talk a good game but the Project Director, here, has tied herself up in knots with her logic. Social Value “was” generated (past tense referring to a development that hadn’t started then), albeit we chose not to monitor our commitments that weren’t committed because we were so sure of them, even though we monitor other commissioned suppliers? The calculator attached was a spreadsheet listing the S106 targets for jobs and training which are the minimum required to allow planning permission to be granted to the council in the first place. And the council does monitor S106, in the case of employment and skills contributions, by me. But why would a Project Director for property development at the council know that!?
No matter, there is still the (planning) commitment to create 32 apprenticeships and employ H&F residents into them. But, since I started at the council in January last year, despite the amount of guidance and plans I gave to help them, Ardmore and its Rhino could not get themselves to create any apprenticeships. In quarterly report after report, zero apprenticeships were claimed. Frustrated, eventually I simply brought in an apprenticeship training provider that I had previously worked with at Enfield Council, Joe Brennan Training (JBT). Joe employs, pays and arranges the accredited training for construction apprentices, and places them with developers with S106 obligations and charges them for the apprentices’ salaries, training and his own time. I asked the Rhino to co-operate with Joe and he placed a local resident, Christian, in an Electrical Installation Apprenticeship on the development while completing his Level 3 Diploma at MIT College. Great result and that’s one towards the target of 32 with the development due for completion in November next year!
I asked Joe if he could write a short case study of Christian and he sent me a heart-warming story. Christian went to school locally at Fulham College Boys School. He then went to Burleigh College but couldn’t find an employer to take him on so that he could complete his NVQ. Frustrated, he supported himself with low-paid jobs until the college referred him to Joe. Now he is being paid £386 per week plus travel by JBT on the Town Hall development and kitted out with Personal Protective Equipment and continues to be supported by JBT. I thought this would be a good case study to publicise and sent the story to our Comms team.
With the Leader of the council, they visited Christian on the site and published an article with photos:
H&F Civic Campus Employs Local Apprentice, Publish date: 2 August 2022
A Fulham man is one of 22 residents now working as an apprentice at the new Civic Campus site thanks to an agreement with Ardmore, the project’s construction company.
He set his heart on pursuing a career as an electrician because “It’s the only job I’ve ever been passionate about.” He has successfully completed his Diploma Level 3 in Electrical Installation.
While he was working on the diploma, he was also doing a business degree with the Open University. “I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and start my own business. I just thought having a trade – I can turn it into a business once I get to a certain level of experience. It made sense and fits in with my plans,” he said.
“At first, it was quite hard finding a company willing to take me as an apprentice.” He explained: “I’m really grateful for this opportunity. This is my first on-site experience and it's enlightened me to how far I can take this career. It's opened up a lot of doors and helped me understand my purpose.”
He feels the apprenticeship scheme is “a good opportunity for young people. The local government, Ardmore, and JBT have done really well with employing young people. It’s going to save a lot of lives and give people a future.”
H&F Civic Campus employs local apprentice | LBHF
As a one-off,
this is all good news except that the opening line is, “A Fulham man is one of 22 residents now working as an
apprentice at the new Civic Campus site thanks to an agreement with Ardmore,
the project’s construction company.” 22
residents now working as an apprentice?
Where did that come from?!
TBH, I didn’t spot this line at first. HR brought it to my attention. On reading the article, the Strategic Resourcing Lead from the People and Talent Team (nee HR) today asked for my assistance:
“Could we get in a session with Ardmore to understand how they are reaching residents to apply for apprentice opportunities, and any other partners too that are doing well in this area. Ardmore have now recruited 22. Kenn [sic] to understand their approach.”
Not understanding what she was referring to, I replied,
“…happy to put you in touch with any local employers with obligations to apprenticeships but, as far as I know, Ardmore has only taken on one apprentice.”
She replied pointing out the reference in the article that I had missed:
“There was an article to say there are 22 residents? Assumed these numbers came from [your team manager’s] team!”
This is a strange way, I thought, to refer to me. My team manager’s team? That would be me then? I’m in my team manager’s team. That is, I am in the team I am in of which my team manager is the manager. And I sent the article. HR always seems to find a way to dismiss you for no particular reason other than they like to. I find it best just not to engage with trolls but I was curious, so I replied. Referring to the article (published 2 August) to which she included a link, I told her:
“So that’s Christian who is employed by our apprenticeship training partner, Joe Brennan Training. That did come from me via JBT but not the bit about the 22 local apprentices. I know… the Comms team went on site to take photos so maybe [they] got this directly from Ardmore. If Ardmore has employed 22 local residents in apprenticeships, they have chosen not to claim them against their S106 targets and they last reported to me on 5 August.”
And this is the problem with greedy organisations that you constantly have to keep on top of; they’re too used to telling everyone how great their “Corporate Social Responsibility” is and happy to tell their ultimate client, the Leader of the council, what great “social value” they are giving to poor people. If it was BP doing it, it would be called out as greenwashing. But councillors and senior council officers can be a bit more naive and in awe to the private sector. Ardmore has told me they have apprentices on site but, if I ask them who the local apprentices are, they have no idea. I knew they had Christian because I arranged his placement via JBT. But when the Leader asks them a different question: how many local apprentices they have employed, the answer is a firm 22.
I have to stay on top of it with Laing O’Rourke on the Olympia development too. For many months now, their Rhino has been arguing with me that I can trust them with just the number of local residents they have employed. Otherwise, to identify them to me would be a breach of the residents’ data protection. They are contributing to society and supporting our residents, honestly!
On 20 July, at her request, I had a video call meeting with the Laing O’Rourke Rhino and her manager, the Head of Social Value. I explained the situation again to her why I need identifying evidence of our residents employed and not just the numbers, why sending identifying data with good reason and consent is not a breach of their data protection and why they have obligations to ensure our residents local to and impacted by the development get jobs on it. In this screen-to-screen encounter rather than by email, I think I got to the heart of her problem, and her manager, clearly embarrassed by her response, saw it too. “But that’s discrimination!” she bleated. Yes, I replied. We want you to discriminate in favour of residents local to your development when recruiting or else you don’t get planning permission. How has she got a job in S106 and not know that? After that, her manager, and she meekly, conceded to report identifying evidence of those local residents.
Victory? Three weeks later, on the 9 August, the Rhino emailed me an update on her progress:
“We are working on backdating data to obtain full names and postcodes... This involves an explanation to workforce managers and our HR function to share data in this format therefore the Q1 ’22-’23 report is delayed. Sorry for any inconvenience, [sic]”
Ignoring the fact that she has never submitted any report other than just giving numbers, I don’t know why she’s referring here to the lateness of the Quarter 1 report specifically. Up to now, we know she didn’t want to report names and postcodes for reasons she related to data protection, but she assured me the numbers she reported have been verified by Laing O’Rourke. Is she saying now that, all this time, she hasn’t known herself who the local residents employed are for which she reported firm numbers but assured me I can trust her that they are correct and, therefore, I don’t need to know who they are? This is why you have to stay on top of organisations motivated by greed; claiming corporate social responsibility is easy, they can be shameless and will say anything. But the next bank holiday is in a week and a half so I should know soon after that.
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