Local government: looters arrested
Tuesday 2 July 2013
This is a long-standing issue which we picked up in December last year when Caerphilly council staff walked out in protest a "mammoth" pay rises awarded to 21 of the top-paid executives, with chief executive Anthony O'Sullivan getting a £27,000 rise on top of his £120,000 salary.
Today's arrests come as part of action taken by Avon & Somerset Police, after the Wales Audit Office called them in to investigate the circumstances surrounding the pay raises.
It turns out that the rises were initially recommended by O'Sullivan himself, who was then present at a committee meeting when the rises were approved. A further 20 senior managers also received a substantial pay rise, but the bulk of the council's staff were on the third year of a pay freeze.
The rises were rescinded in January after a public outcry, and the chief executive was suspended in March on full pay after a report from the Assistant Auditor General for Wales, Anthony Barrett. He said that various aspects of the pay award were unlawful, not least O'Sullivan recommending his own pay rise, thus giving advice on a matter in which he had a financial interest.
Says Barrett, "Certain officers, including the chief executive, who would have been (and indeed were) beneficiaries of the decision were present at the meeting to approve the salary increases. No declarations of interest were made and these officers did not leave the room while the decision was made. Consequently they participated in the decision making process when they had a disqualifying financial interest".
Last December, when this first came to our attention, I noted that O'Sullivan was a novice in the looting stakes, with our own chief executive (in Bradford) walking away with £227,234 in total remuneration last year.
That, in itself, should be a criminal offence, without there having to be any procedural irregularities, but at least here, we have one CEO behind bars, along with one of his colleagues. It will take many more before the system is back in balance, and it will need the Harrogate Agenda to impose proper controls.
Next thing, though, is the BBC, where police could be called into investigate whether any fraud was committed by managers who allowed one in four of their colleagues to leave with bigger payoffs than they were entitled to.
Right from the start, we've been arguing that people such as these are the real looters. When it comes to local authority CEOs, I wrote in 2011, these are paid out of council tax. And unlike even central government taxation, if you refuse to pay, you go to jail.
This is really the point. Loot a shop, and you go to jail. Loot council tax payers and, if they don't pay up, they go to jail. There is something particularly evil in that system ... and that makes the real looters particularly evil. O'Sullivan needs to be the first of many to have his real status recognised.
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Richard North 02/07/2013
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