£157,192 per annum Jan Britton has risen to "the top" with great ease in scandal-ridden "Sadwell". His post-school education was primarily related to environmental studies and he had some minor council jobs before becoming an environmental services manager for rural Buckinghamshire Council. He joined Sadwell in the Highways Department and did that for a while plus a bit of urban regeneration. Then, despite this very "thin" CV for the CE of a large, urban, Metropolitan Council he was mysteriously given the top job on an interim basis in September, 2010. Of course, Cllr Mahboob Hussain was not the Leader then but was pulling the levers at that time and so we must assume that Britton was his "pick". He took the full post in 2011.
Addendum 10/01/16 - I have been reminded that Britton was the "mastermind" behind the massive Serco contract (where Serco have happily employed some friends and family of Cllr Hussain including the husband of Noreen Bi - see below - and a person with a criminal record for violence). I don't know why staff at SMBC bother paying union dues since union officials are very happy to do the bidding of Cooper and Co. Of course, the Unite members who were transferred to Serco were led in the negotiations by Brian Rickers who is a very close personal friend of, er, Darren Cooper and regularly claims to be his Sunday luncheon companion. Rickers has also been heavily associated with the twitter troll accounts abusing me and my wife and is a proven liar - see for example my post about his direct harassment of my wife's employers and check out his absurd twitter account for his false claims to be on foreign holidays etc.
(Incidentally, we have seen elsewhere that a poor record is not a handicap to advancement to power and riches at sleazy Sadwell .....)
Sandwell was recently found to be the second most miserable place to live in Britain and one might expect some "leadership" from Britton (compare and contrast with Mark Rogers, CE of Birmingham, who works so hard to boost the image of the city). I was sitting in the public area of the Oldbury Kremlin last summer when Britton shambled past me twice, his shirt hanging out over his gargantuan buttocks and eating a bag of crisps - a truly sad visual metaphor for "couldn't care less" Sadwell.
Unlike most other councils, senior Councillors such as Darren Cooper and Mahboob Hussain were allowed by Jan Britton to have "access all areas" security passes so that they could roam the offices and interfere in the daily running of Sadwell. Why? And why does the taxpayer need to pay for a very highly-paid management team [sic] if the Councillors are doing their jobs for them?
As the Police have taken no interest in many rumours of security lapses involving removal and/or shredding of documents there can have been no truth in the numerous allegations of such activity including from SMBC staff (ahem!)
Britton has done nothing to correct false information contained in important Council documents eg surrounding the bent Public deal. Just by way of example (from many), I have been pointing out for sometime that some of the most senior officers of the Council - Adrian Scarrott, Melanie Dudley, Neeraj Sharma and the now departed Stuart Kellas - lied in the so-called Fundamental Review document at paragraph 6.9 that the College had initiated the theft of the Public whereas the truth (as admitted by the College in a Freedom of Information request) was that Hussain (and Cooper?) started the process. Britton knows this but has not taken any steps to arrange for the lie in official documents to be rectified. (Incidentally, it is not known whether the above mentioned officers lied deliberately or were themselves deceived by Hussain (and others?) and unintentionally passed the lie on but none of them have seemingly attempted to put the official record straight).
When the land sale scandals started to emerge in 2014 the ludicrous leader, Darren Cooper, said that the Council's own auditors KPMG (hardly independent) were to investigate the sales but now Jan Britton's paid service deny this and say that Messrs Wragges, Solicitors, of Birmingham are being paid very handsomely to produce a whitewash, er sorry, report (he who pays the piper calls the tune). The police Regional Fraud Team claim they are STILL investigating the scandal but rumours abound that they are not actually doing anything and are simply waiting for the Wragge report so that they can then bury the investigation.
Two of the land sales at a clear undervaluation signed off by Britton's top management team were to a Council employee (surely not a normal occurrence in any event?) That employee was, of course, also the son of then Deputy Labour Leader, Cllr Mahboob Hussain, and the son stands to clear over £1 million profit from the transactions. Yet the Regional Fraud Team have very publicly stated that he is no longer part of the investigation even though the money is going his way. This begs the question of who the hell they are investigating?
Another land sale was to a close associate of Cllr Hussain and the infamous bog sales were to a member of his extended family by marriage. Britton's staff are also refusing to answer a Freedom of Information request concerning Cllr Bawa pending the outcome of the police investigation.
All these sales have happened whilst Jan Britton has been in charge and he must take ultimate responsibility. It is noteworthy that the thuggish Cooper was calling for the head of Jeremy Peace, Chair of WBA FC, recently for perceived "faults" and yet he tolerates everything that has been going on in The Kremlin? I wonder why? Not only that, but as part of the bent Public deal Cooper and Hussain forced the struggling College to accept Britton onto their Board of Governors so that the Labour Dictatorship could try and exercise power there too! Clearly if Jan is bringing the sort of sh*t with him that has happened on his watch at Oldbury, the College is in for an "interesting" ride.....
Britton was in charge when Hussain secured a lucrative taxi contract for a firm which he and his wife own half of and even though Hussain had failed to mention this interest. The police have been asked to investigate this (and issues surrounding a possible xxxxxxxxxxxx scam linked to it which I can't publicly disclose just yet) but once again have failed to do so. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have upheld my complaint about this and it remains to be seen what the new Chief Constable will do about it.
The Express and Star recently reported (!) that over 6,000 (six thousand) needy people are on the council house waiting list in "Sadwell" and some have been on the list for 10 years! Two of my Muslim friends in Smethwick told me that "a monkey" to the right people was the "going rate" for a council house in Smethwick but I have no idea what they meant by this. There are also very many rumours that the trick is for friends and family of councillors to be given a council house and then for the lady of the house to claim to be the victim of domestic violence so that she is then moved into a separate property. Thus the family now have two homes which they eventually purchase under "right to buy". The Police know all about this but have decided not to investigate it and so it obviously can't be true (ahem!)
For a blogger like me, the law does not permit me to find out information about Council tenants but we do know three lucky recipients of council houses, Cllrs Rouf and Frear and Cllr Hussain's daughter, Noreen Bi. What is the point of a Labour Council if they sh*t on "their own"?
The Police have now confirmed that they have not investigated Cllr Rouf despite the revelations in this blog and this has been the subject of another now upheld complaint to the IPCC. I am hoping the new Chief Constable will now be ensuring some investigation as to how Rouf was given a council house after he had sold his un-unmortgaged house and also had interests in a property on Shireland Road! Whilst not strictly relevant to the council house point, regular readers will know that Jan Britton's top team sold Rouf's son a large building plot on Florence Road for considerably less than us taxpayers had paid for it and despite interest from other potential buyers. The son, whose income is unknown but who had, in recent times, run a failed takeaway in Smethwick was able to afford to build a huge seven bedroom house on the plot (no problem with planning permission from Sandwell Council despite its vast bulk overshadowing all other homes around it). Rouf had claimed in the Register of Interests to be unemployed but had a private hire taxi licence in Brum. He gave that up and now claims to be doing (very extensive) "voluntary" work at another son's shop. He is presumably not claiming benefits despite being unemployed and so where did the money for the mansion come from? Of course, Rouf has friends in low places.....
The multiply-named Cllr Steven Frear was believed to be in private rented accommodation and receives over £23k from the taxpayer by way of councillor allowances. He seems to have moved in with a woman in Whyley Walk, Oldbury but then seems to have been fast-tracked by Jan Britton's staff to a council house with his brother/half-brother - potty-mouthed Paul Kerton. Darren Cooper associated with Kerton for a bit of social media trolling but claimed in writing he didn't know him even though he has known Frear (or whichever name he was using at the time) all of his life. Jan Britton must know that Kerton has a well paid job as he would only need to look at his employment file to find this as Paul Kerton is an employee of, er, Sandwell Council!!! Clearly this pair, with £50k (?) coming in a year, must have been far more deserving than the 6,000 others on the waiting list. (Oh, and Frear lied about living in a council house in a legal document - the Register of Interests - claiming that he actually owned the house!)
A lovely old lady - and, incidentally, lifelong Labour supporter - lived in a four-bedroom Sandwell Council property at Judge Close, Oldbury. Her family told me that Cllr Hussain personally spoke to her at the address on two separate occasions as to whether she might like to move to a smaller property. When the lady died, the Council renovated the property but despite the 6,000 waiting list, Jan Britton's team let it to one Noreen Bi who just happens to be the daughter of Cllr Mahboob Hussain. Now Jan Britton does not need expensive solicitors from Birmingham to piss down our legs and tell us it's raining since his Council KNEW that Noreen and her husband actually own their own property up the road in Century Road. They specifically knew this because the Council had a charge on the Century Road address for a renovation grant made to, er Noreen Bi and her husband. So come on Jan The Man - let's have a public statement about all that!
As the so-called "Chief Executive" Jan Britton is also the Returning Officer at the elections. I have it in writing that he was satisfied that there were "no irregularities" in the address given by the former Labour Councillor and proven liar, Lucy Cashmore. One has to question how extensive his enquiries were since, once again, he only needed to look at the employment files to determine the Cashmore family address, the liar's husband being another "Sadwell" employee!
Britton has also been responsible for signing-off huge "gagging" payments to certain departing Sandwell employees to make sure they never spill the beans about his scandal-ridden circus. This is our money he is using for this but he makes sure the details are not disclosed even pursuant to Freedom of Information requests on the basis that the information is "personal" to those receiving our hard-earned dosh!
Even - and I repeat EVEN - The Express and Star are beginning to see through the myth of Darren Cooper's "socialist paradise" and are finally beginning to report what is going on. They are beginning to highlight the fault lines that are appearing eg. the Children's Services catastrophe (see below), the fireworks fiasco, the history of accident payouts etc. Long may it continue since if they join the Halesowen News to hold the Dictatorship to account, The Skidder can hang up his keyboard!
If you don't believe me about how pathetic Britton's regime is take a look at adverse judgments from the Charity Commission and the courts of late. Just look at the Council Tax Benefit disaster when Britton and Sharma let a crackpot and illegal scheme, promulgated by Cllr Steve Eling and pushed through the secret Labour Group meeting, to sail through the full Council meeting. Sandwell Labour decided they wanted to f*ck-over some of the most vulnerable people in society and it took a High Court Judge to absolutely hammer them for this:
- the scheme was ultra vires and thus unlawful;
- the Labour Council failed to take into account material considerations;
- the Labour Council failed to consult on the scheme which was unfair and unlawful;
- the scheme was discriminatory and contrary to EU law;
- Labour's scheme was discriminatory on the grounds of race and sex and breached equality laws.
Some might think honorable men may have resigned after this shaming degringolade both from the political side of the Council and the paid service but not a bit of it! The dimwitted Cooper's response was that taxpayers' money would be thrown at an appeal but such was the unlawfulness of the scheme this was quietly dropped and everyone just carried on as per usual except us taxpayers' were shafted for the thick-end of £1 million because of this illegality and incompetence.
If all of the above is not bad enough, we finally come to the tragedy of Sadwell Labour's Children's Services disaster.And whilst Jan tries to hide behind others and duck taking responsibility (insofar as it is possible for an obese lard-arse to conceal himself - I should know as I am one too) this tragedy directly involved him.
Let us not forget that Children's Services deals with horrendous cases of all kinds of appalling abuse to kids who desperately need protection. It is surely the most important service the Council delivers but has been on a calamitous slide under the Cooper/Britton leadership [sic]. Cooper needed to cover his own back when the first inadequate Ofsted rating came through and was quick to find a scapegoat in Cllr Bob Badham - who was duly forced to walk the plank. The political poisoned chalice was given to Cllr Simon "Two Homes" Hackett who does not exactly have a sparkling record as a Councillor eg when he and Hussain got through an important and controversial Land Disposal meeting in just 7 minutes, and he has seen no conflict in agreeing cuts to Children's Services whilst more and money is paid into The Albion Foundation where he is on the Board of Trustees.
But Jan Britton himself was instrumental in this debacle. We have seen above that his CV, such as it is, does not show any previous experience in respect of Children's Services but, at one stage, he even took over running of the department (it is not clear whether this was as a result of his giant ego leading him to the delusion that he could sort matters out or whether he was forced to do so by the ineffectual and lunatic Cooper).
In 2012 Sandwell decided to procure an "improvement partner" ie very expensive "consultants" to help the troubled department and, for once, properly put this out to tender (note that these clowns never just enter into a contract for a third party to deliver a service etc but always go for a so-called "partnership". In the words of Catherine Tate's foul-mouthed "Nan" - "what a load of f*cking sh*t"). But this is where it all gets odd and Britton was at the heart of it. Four parties entered the tender process but two dropped out leaving Impower Consulting and Bidder B. These two had to put forward two real people each as possible candidates to be a new Director of Children's Services for the duration of the contract. Yes, you have probably got it already - instead of Sadwell just appointing a new Director themselves this had to be done via the consultants - no doubt at much higher cost. Then it getters odder still noting that there was supposed to be an EU tendering process going on. A Council committee, including Cooper and Hussain, decided they wanted Mr Simon White, then of Suffolk Council, for the job. As he was one of Impower's "candidates" and as Impower confirmed that he was "available", Bidder B - Mott MacDonald - was simply deselected from the tendering process which begs the question what the purpose of this whole expensive process was in the first place! Impower then went into the last formal part of legal tendering process as the only bidder and, of course, were duly awarded the lucrative contract.
Addendum - 10/01/16 We have seen above that Cooper and Co made a mockery of the EU procurement to favour their preferred bidder. It may, of course, be entirely coincidental (although I don't tend to believe in coincidences when it comes to Sandwell Labour) but The Chief Executive of Impower is one Martin Cresswell. I received an anonymous message this morning that this was one and the same Martin Cresswell who worked as an accountant in the 1990's for, er, Labour Sandwell Council. You won't find this on his LinkedIn profile where there is a big gap in the 1990's but this is from the New Local Government Network where he is said to be a Board member:
"Martin boasts a long established, and successful career in both local and central government spanning more than 25 years. A CIPFA qualified accountant, he has risen through the ranks in a number of finance roles starting at the London Borough of Newham in 1982. Martin has also held posts at LB Hackney, Sandwell MBC and more recently Liverpool City Council, where he headed up the financial planning department."
No doubt Jan Britton and team informed Mott MacDonald and the other two companies who submitted tenders of this connection?
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Readers of this blog will be aware that Sadwell Labour are regularly excluding competitors from contracts so that favoured parties get the deal (even on some contracts worth millions of pounds). Cooper and Co then come up with a figleaf in the Council minutes to cover up their private deals and, I kid you not, this is the pathetic bollocks they put in the Cabinet minutes of 7th November, 2012:
"Whilst it was acknowledged that only one Bidder remained in the final stage of the procurement process, it was reported that appropriate measures had been undertaken to ensure value for money was achieved and the Council’s requirements were met. The outcome of the final evaluation and agreement of key contractual obligations demonstrated that improved commercial terms and quality had been achieved by the Council, after the number of bidders reduced from two to one."
Note especially the usual crap about "value for money".
Britton, Sharma and Kellas were duly authorised to do the deal with Impower and a recruitment company called Penna. Britton was cock-a-hoop and, just like the inane Cooper, he cannot resist meaningless boasting. Let us look at some of the garbage Britton put out and use that as a benchmark against actual performance shall we readers?
As early as February, 2013 he was telling the Municipal Journal:
"[The contract with Impower and Penna will allow Sandwell] to make such a break we will never slip back".
Britton bragged that the employment of consultants had all been the idea of himself, Darren Cooper and Cllr Badham and Impower were to be paid £1.15m although, for some bizarre reason, Britton stated, in the usual bollocks-speak, he had not been worried that Sandwell would be shafted but that "a joined-up solution was essential if we are were to ask [Impower] to stake their profit on the importance of the contract". Sod the kids and watch the profits - an interesting approach from the so-called "socialists".
And even though the contract had hardly started, this arse was able to say, "It is early days in our partnership but we are on track. For the first time since I became Chief Executive in September,2010, we have a plan to do more than simply react to our last Ofsted inspection. Watch this space...".
This was soon followed by Jan Britton's staff's own "Improvement Plan" where, instead of manageable and incremental improvement targets, Labour went for the Cooper-style crowing and self-congratulation. The ambition for the shambolic department was "to become an [Ofsted] good service by 2014 and an [Ofsted] outstanding service by 2016". (Cue Catherine Tate's "Nan" again....)
The document if full of the usual gibberish: "We are working to get Sandwell ahead of its benchmark improvement trajectory within the next three years on a self-sustainable improvement curve from there." (Pass the sick bag, Alice).
But no matter if children were being assaulted, raped or buggered it was vitally important that everyone was bullshitted including their own pathetically ovine Labour councillors - hence this obscene media propaganda horror story where the public were to be deceived about the true state of affairs:
So much for "the child being at the heart of what we do". Now some of you may imagine that Britton sort of dropped out of the picture after Impower and the Interim Director were appointed and things continued on their downward "trajectory" but not a bit of it. Here are three attendance headings from a Steering Group (steering towards another car crash) including Impower representatives and Mr White and you will see that Jan Britton was the Chair and so was fully aware of what was going on (I am sure there were other meetings but these are the only copies I have):
Addendum - 10/01/16: Another anonymous caller has asked whether the "Tony Barnsley Children's Performance Manager" in on one of the meetings shown above is one and the same as "Tony Barnsley, Joint Branch Secretary, Sandwell Unison general branch". I don't know is the simple answer and perhaps "Mr Barnsley" will contact me. Given Britton's vile attack on staff set out below I do hope that Unison are not compromised in any way concerning this tawdry affair.
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I am not a social worker and these actual documents are rather technical but there does seem to be an obsession with "systems" and technology rather than, er, children. Also noteworthy is the presence of Melanie Dudley who was so heavily involved in Sandwell Labour's multi-million pound BT contract f*ck-up.
But still the pathetic boasting went on with Britton and Cooper bragging about how brilliant things were in December, 2014 - again to the Municipal Journal:
Britton crowed: "I am heartened that what we are doing in children's services is being looked at by other councils" and, "Our approach has been to improve the service in a completely different way to the path taken by many councils when they fail Ofsted.". And this is interesting given what will come below: "a fresh approach to workforce development is taking shape to ensure social workers not only view Sandwell as an attractive place to work (!) but stay put to build a career here."
"Talk to staff across the Council and it's clear that the turning point for children's services was the decision to bring Impower on board - a relationship that looks set to continue", said the MJ and then Britton was directly quoted as describing Impower's work as "exceptional" and claimed that it was being copied by other Sadwell departments: "Children's Services has become the exemplar for what we are doing elsewhere".
The braggart Cooper joined in: "We have broken a vicious cycle of failure, improvement then failure again" which is partially true apart from the, er,"improvement" bit."Lol".
In an earlier post I stated that concerned staff had contacted me to say that the Impower contract had gone way over the £1.15m and I was able to show that, AT THE VERY LEAST, the spend had been £1.8 million net of Vat. This does not chime well with Britton's weird claims of speciality on his LinkedIn profile of "value for money". I am not sure whether he means himself or what he has failed to deliver!
http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-kids-are-not-alright-in-sandwell.html
Ah well, you might say - if these useless Labour w*nkers are going to overspend anywhere then it's not so bad if the dosh has gone to management consultants (!) and the service improved. But, of course, the service as independently assessed did not improve and an Ofsted inspection in early 2015 again produced yet another "inadequate" rating (although the comrades were cleverly able to make sure that it wasn't published until after the May, 2015 election. Nice - "the child is at the heart of what we do......!"
Bizarrely, even though Britton had already received the draft Ofsted report and "inadequate" rating and knew that his staff, if not him directly, were trying to hold back publication, he took to Twitter in April, 2015 to laud the achievements of Impower! We know that he is a major arse-licker when it comes to "the Leader" but what was this all about when Impower had so spectacularly failed in his own Council? Perhaps he was hoping for a job "lol":
And things have gone from bad to worse under the Cooper/Britton regime so that, at long last, the Government has been forced to appoint commissioners to take over the department and try to protect the Borough's most vulnerable kids.
So has Britton resigned? No he has not and, indeed, this piece of work was written a vile blog to all staff in the Council seeking to shift the blame onto social workers and other staff more lowly than him.
Ironically, bearing in mind that Sandwell Council have had the use of the Wolverhampton Express and Star as a free propaganda machine for the Labour Dictatorship, Britton starts by criticising The Halesowen News (the only local media outlet to consistently try and hold the cowboy and girl comrades to account) stating the paper "has proved itself in the past to be no fan of Sandwell Council". Is it appropriate for a Council Chief Executive to be publicly slagging off a local newspaper?
Then he goes on to absolve the top echelons including, of course, himself from any culpability for years of desperate failure:
"It's not about inadequate political leadership or management, or budgets, or even about computer systems - it's about the quality of frontline social work that we do. My message to frontline social workers in children's social care has to be clear - we need to do better."
Then this £157k a year joker makes a vicious direct attack on hard-working staff effectively stating that they are hopelessly inefficient:
"And being better means [working] better and smarter, not longer. Workers in children's social care already work some of the longest hours in the council. I am not questioning your commitment, but I do question whether those long hours are always used in the best possible way". What a ****!
Then he says that staff need to "roll our sleeves up" implying they have been lazy in the past. And so deluded is this management "guru" that he still cannot accept the Ofsted reports and the Government intervention posting yet another completely ludicrous and grandiose gobbet of sh*te: "And despite everything that might be said by Ofsted or the DFE I am still very proud of the things we have already achieved". You really couldn't make it up!
Employees reacted angrily to this unpleasantness but rather than apologise to them Britton attacked again ( I hope the unions are taking the appropriate action - Mr Barnsley?):
An employee quoted what Ofsted had said about his management: "Leaders and managers have not been able to demonstrate sufficient understanding of failures and have been ineffective in prioritising, challenging and making improvements". Britton denied making an "attack" - despite the clear wording above - and accused the employee of "overreacting".
Another criticised the blogpost saying "This seems to ignore the comments from Ofsted about management direction. How as frontline can we get it right without direction, supervision, good process and support?" This was the bullshit management speak from Mr Denial:
"I acknowledge what Ofsted said about leadership and management but the diagnostic [whatever the f*ck that is] paints a slightly different picture with greater emphasis on quality of practice issues. Regrettably, I am not able to share this report with you at this stage". ("You" presumably meaning "you lowly minion").
Yet another criticised the attack on hard-pressed workers toiling for long hours to which this insulting man replied that the complainant had a "low sensitivity threshold". What an appalling thing to say to a frontline social worker facing extremely challenging problems. Surely it is effectively saying that the person is unfit to do their job as well as being astonishingly rude?
So there we have it readers? Does Britton's record and treatment of staff fill you with confidence? He is clearly not prepared to do the decent thing and resign but has Cooper got the balls to fire him bearing in mind that Britton has been there throughout the disastrous Cooper era? Jan knows where the bodies are buried and not just because he has a diploma in archaeology! Perhaps another giant "secret" compensation deal and "gagging order" will do the trick?
And what will we get instead, Lady Macbeth?
I leave the final word to a very decent man who knows a thing or two about children's social care, ex-Sandwell Councillor and left-winger Mick Davies, as quoted in The Halesowen News:
"Thankfully for the sake of Sandwell's children, commissioners are being sent in to sort out this mess. For over a decade the most vulnerable children have been let down time after time as have committed social workers, who have been used as scapegoats for inadequate leadership both politically and professionally..... The Leader of the Council and the chief executive, Jan Britton, have nowhere else to run. They should both show some integrity and resign immediately".
THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!
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