Sandwell Council - Rolling Log of Employee Misconduct and Outside Interests

BREAKING NEWS - Gillian Douglas, bent Labour's Director of Housing is leaving after just two years. The plan was to clear out the dross (excluding Surjit Tour) and bring some stability at the top of the paid service. Well that went well ...

In the real world of work - outside the feather-bedded environment of local authorities - employees are usually obliged by their contracts to obey rules and to act diligently. But at bent Labour Sandwell Council a number of employees have sinned in various ways - from facilitating corruption to shocking incompetence.

In many cases miscreants have been paid-off with large sums of public money. Invariably they sign gagging-clauses to prevent them from spilling the beans. But, in many cases, these people face no sanction at all for their misconduct, negligence or ineffectiveness.

This blog has recorded many incidents of wrongdoing from theft to gross incompetence. But these incidents are usually kept secret. Further, there has been a deliberate policy of failing to keep records. This ranges from outright fraud - like the bent Lion Farm deal - and the wholesale destruction of records (unquestioned on numerous occasions by the Office of the Information Commissioner and even by the Information Rights Tribunal), right through to staff who simply cannot be arsed to fulfil their contractual duties.

There has been a history of dealing and consumption of Class A drugs within the workforce. Some specific names have been supplied to Sandwell Police over the years but, inevitably, they have not moved against their pals.

We now know that many employees are supposedly "working from home" so that the Oldbury Kremlin is now like the Marie Celeste. It remains to be seen whether this fact is linked to the apparent upsurge in gambling addiction within the shirkforce. Apparently bent Labour and the Unions claim this addictive behaviour is now so bad that they have had to agree a "Charter" so that taxpayers' can also fork out for the rehabilitation of the pen-pushing punters! When it comes to bent Labour, Sandwell taxpayers - like mug punters - always lose.

In the circumstances, The Skidder Team is starting a rolling blog post to name errant employees. As SMBC staff face no sanction for most wrongdoing, it is appropriate to shine a spotlight on what has been happening so that taxpayers can ask their Councillors why this deeply corrupt Council (currently in Government "special measures") causes and/or permits this continuing sh*tshow.

Another issue that this post - which will be updated from time to time - will deal with is the moonlighting of  a number of staff. The normal rules in most councils are that employees wishing to do work on the side must get permission from line managers and, clearly, this must not conflict with the "day job". Further there is a Register of Interests where employees are usually required to list outside interests. As we shall see, in bent Labour Sandwell Council, the likes of fraudster Naseem Khan (pictured here recently with spiv John Spellar MP) simply did not report his interest in four companies to his employers. (His business interests were well known to a number of Labour Councillors who kept schtum.) Even if employees do make disclosure, the public are not allowed to see this as Sandwell claims this would be unlawful disclosure of personal data. 

It is a matter of considerable public interest that some employees cannot live on their taxpayer-provided income and need to take on extra jobs to enhance their wealth. Further, most taxpayers will be concerned that the likes of Khan can run side-hustles whilst supposedly devoting themselves to full-time for the service of the public. 

It is not illegal to take on additional jobs (subject to contractual disclosure) and no such imputation should be taken from an employee's inclusion in this blog. As ever, readers - including employees - are referred to the Legal Notice below.

Accordingly, as Sandwell are trying to keep these issues secret The Skidder Team will be providing this log. It should be noted that some of those listed may have now left SMBC but records show that they were running businesses contemporaneously with their employment.

There are some employees who have left whom we are still interested in, such as David Stevens and Stuart Lackenby . We are also interested for more on the employee who worked mostly on her back during Covid - "debriefing" a Labour Councillor.

Some of the following are historical incidents or ones that are some years old, but which have mostly only recently come to light. The list is rather sparse at the moment but we are checking anecdotal evidence about a number of other individuals, including regarding property interests. We will add to this "blog log" from time to time. Please feel free to add your own experiences via any of the contact methods set out below.

Incidentally, most Sandwell Council employees are on a cushy number as it is, but Labour and the unions are beginning to press for a 4-day week on the same pay. SMBC is full of dross but the evidence is that where clever people swing a 4-day week they do not use the spare day for leisure but do extra work elsewhere. 

Names below in surname alphabetical order.

Version 3 - 07/08/23 (Addition in Blue)

Jan Britton - this **** got away with (metaphorical) murder. Most of his misdeeds are secret, but he was instrumental with Eling and others in institutionalising corruption in the benighted Borough. He used an encrypted Blackberry to conceal his misconduct and leave no "paper trail". He colluded with Paul Reeves (see below) with regard to the evidence at a criminal trial and then lied in the witness box. Incredibly, given his all-powerful status, Sandwell Council itself reported him to West Midlands Police where his son was working at the time. Needless to say the Bent Blues did nothing. The good news was that when his disgrace belatedly came he was booted out without the usual mega pay-off - just receiving the money he was contractually entitled to. The bad news is that local government is a sick world. You might wonder who on earth would employ someone with such an appalling - and well-documented - record but the answer is Joe Harris, the Leader of Cotswold District Council. He and others decided that four councils in the area need a useless liar mired in corruption scandals to run their administrations, and so Britton walked straight into a job with Publica Group which runs the quartet.

Kim Bromley-Derry - appointed as Interim Chief Executive in a rigged process following the sacking of disgraced David Stevens this guy was allowed to retain his position as a Group Director of property developer, McLaren Construction Group. When the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael Gove, put bent Labour Sandwell into "special measures" he bizarrely appointed KBD as the lead Commissioner - despite his conduct (particularly in respect of the Imogen Walker affair). Gove also permitted him to retain his McLaren directorship.

Brian Carmichael - husband of the lying "Leader" of bent Labour Sandwell, Kerrie "Dim Kez" Carmichael and on the taxpayer payroll at SMBC. Dim Kez reports that he is employed as an "Architectural Technologist" who also does "private work on private properties".

Cllr Steve Eling - This is a slightly odd entry in this list since Eling was not an employee of Sandwell Council but the political Leader of it whilst also working at another Labour basket-case Council, Rotherham. Thus he was raking-in pay at one council and allowances at the other.

Eling was reported by a number of Sandwell employees as having a vile temper and he institutionalised the corruption which was already rampant when he was one of two Deputy Leaders. Rotherham MBC claimed that he was working for them as a “political officer” but that this was NOT a politically-restricted post.

As the corruption intensified on his watch at Sandwell the long-serving and (too) loyal Cabinet secretaries were suspended after Eling thought they had exposed the Monitoring Officer in what appeared to be misconduct. A Councillor in the private section of the Council House where the Leader’s Office is situated was heard screaming, “I want the f*ckers out and I don’t want the f*ckers back”. Many sources say this was Eling and he has never formally denied the allegation. (As it was, Eling was totally wrong and the secretaries were not the whistleblowers. They were all reinstated with an apology and a small compensation payment. The principal senior employee doing Eling’s dirty work was hapless s.151 officer Darren Carter who moved on to Reading Council despite his track record.)

Since Eling was splitting his time between Sandwell and Rotherham (and actually living for most of the time in a pretty north Derbyshire village) he needed a right-hand man to be his enforcer at Sandwell whilst he was absent, and he chose a ludicrous figure, Cllr Richard Marshall. The pair met with me and in return for exposing two other of their senior Labour Councillors (which I was doing already) they offered to  feed me confidential Council information or, as they put it, there would be “more leaks than Wales”. 

To that end the pair set up a WhatsApp account to send the confidential information to me. Most of the feed is available at my posts dated 5th November, 2017: Steve Eling - You Are A F*cking Liar!

Amongst much appalling output the pair (a) asked me to give the female Assistant Chief Executive “a good kicking”, (b) suggested they might arrange a travellers’ site next door to an enemy’s property development so the travellers could “shit in the gardens” of the new houses, (c) alleged that a fellow Labour Councillor's Partner was a transexual or, as they put it, “a cock in a frock, and (d) envisaged a married Labour Councillor “sp*nking” over a female Councillor “in her bikini” since this would be better than the male “doing his wife” - also a Labour Councillor.

Despite Rotherham Council having full knowledge of all this, and in the sick, sick, world of local government, they made Eling their “Equalities Officer”. Eling was suspended by the Labour Party and did not contest his Council seat but remains the Chair of an important local charity, Warley Woods Community Trust, who think he is wonderful and are content to ignore his truly shocking track record (of which this extract only details a small part).

Adrian Hackwood - according to Hackwood himself, he started at SMBC as a techniical assistant way back in 1989 but became a Neighbourhood Repairs Officer from 1995 "to present" - although a SMBC document states that he joined the Urban Design and Building Services Team as a "Stock Condition Surveyor". However he also states that from August 2009 "to present" (nearly 14 years) he has also run his own Company "Hackwood Property Assessors" providing building surveys, reports, inventories etc. He also claims to be contacted with "Elmhurst Energy".

Naseem Khan - the recently convicted fraudster has been dismissed by the bent Labour Council despite his close relationship with many Labour Councillors - notably the deeply corrupt liar Simon Hackett and also Lachrymose Luke Giles. He was running four limited companies whilst employed by the taxpayer and failed to declare any of them to his employers. Oh and here is the fraudster out and about with Cllr Pam Randhawa - the Chair of Sandwell Police's Independent Advisory Group!

Paul Reeves - this POS (happily now gone) infamously ran a gardening business, Paul's Gardens, whilst working for the Council. Astonishingly, disgraced liar and former Chief Exec, Jan Britton, made Reeeves head of security at the height of the Eling-era corruption. Previously he had worked hand in glove with wifebeater Leader, Darren Cooper, in using social media to "troll" me and my wife. Here is an example of his malicious and defamatory handiwork concerning my wife:

Of course, as regular readers know, Reeves has some great pals in corrupt West Mids Police. They declined to charge him and Jan Britton after the pair (a) colluded in respect of their evidence at the notorious "C*cksucker Trial", and (b) lied on oath in the witness box - both Reeves and Britton made exactly the same false statement. 

Kelly Robinson - an Operations Manager of long standing at bent Labour Sandwell who states on LinkedIn that she is also a "property developer", being a Director of Pepperbox Properties Limited (which is confirmed by Companies House).

David Stevens - another disgraced Chief Exec who was sacked by short-lived "Leader" Rajbir "The Boy Blunder" Singh, who himself did a moonlight flit amidst lurid rumours. The truth has yet to come out on the sacking but we live in hope ...

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Version 1 - 06/07/23; Version 2 - 15/07/23; Version 3 - 07/08/23;