Dear Dame,
I often read the evidence that your best Hornets dig up about the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; and about other local authorities in London.
I think today's Chief Executives in Local Government could learn from the dedication, drive, and commitment of some of the "Great" Local Government Chief Executives of a bygone era. One such person is Heather Rabbatts.
Heather Rabbatts used to be the Director of Personnel at Hammersmith and Fulham Council in the nineteen eighties; where I first became acquainted with her. She became Deputy Chief Executive at Merton Council. She was eventually headhunted to sort out the London Borough of Lambeth in the mid nineteen-nineties. She brought two men from Merton with her to Lambeth to help her. Her salary was £80,000 and I can tell you that it should have been much more than that with all the excreta she had to contend with.
When Heather Rabbatts arrived at Lambeth, she quickly established that there had been a “litany of fraud.”
Rabbatts, a qualified Barrister, found that in the Directorate of Administration and Legal Services only four staff members out of a total of sixty were professionally qualified lawyers!
No wonder things were so bad at the Council!
She competency tested the staff in every Department throughout the Council to establish if they were capable of doing the jobs for which they were being paid.
She found that a large number of them with good jobs and good salaries could not read or write.
The Union suggested that she should arrange literacy training in one fly on the wall television documentary that I watched. I am pleased to say that she was having none of it. People got the sack if they were no good!
The Evening Standard reported that Heather Rabbatts discovered, after she had been at the Council for about nine months, that Ted Knight (Red Ted, the former ultra left-wing Council Leader) had a licensed bar in the basement of the Town Hall. She described him as “a malevolent force.”
She applied to the magistrates for the licence to be revoked. I remember back in 1988, a Senior Officer of the Council telling me that Knight was in that Town Hall more often since his surcharge and disqualification from public office than when he was an elected member of the Council; and that was true.
Heather Rabbatts’s contract for two years was renewed for a further two years; making four years in total. I think she must have been burnt out when she left. She eventually became a Governor of the BBC. I heard that Hackney Council tried to interest her in going there but I cannot remember what happened.
When the Millennium Celebrations at the Dome came around, Tony Blair wanted Heather Rabbatts there. (I am certain that she was a Labour Supporter.) Her teenage son refused to accompany his mother to the Dome. He had barely seen his mother during her time at Lambeth Council, because she arrived at the Town Hall at 9am every weekday and did not leave until 11pm. She kept her weekends free for family; quite right.
Heather Rabbatts was also a Non-Executive Director of British Gas at that time. Every time that British Gas dug up a road in Lambeth, the Union complained that the Council suffered a loss because the road was not restored to its original condition. They claimed that there was a conflict of interests between British Gas and the Council because the Council's Chief Executive was on the Board of British Gas. She gave the payments she received from British Gas to the Council.
Heather assiduously acquainted herself with the work and operations of every Directorate in the Council in order to diagnose what was wrong so that she could provide a policy prescription and effective operational practices. She sat on counters interviewing the public and interviewed tenants in Housing Offices. She was often vilified for any changes that she introduced but remained resolute, steadfast, in her determination to pull that haywire Council round.
Can you imagine anyone like this in Local Government today?
Name and address supplied.
Would she have given our CE a job? No, doubt it
ReplyDeleteJust imagine if the Kensington and Chelsea TMO had managed to appoint a Chief Executive with Heather Rabbatt's ability, drive and commitment. Instead they appointed Mr Robert Black, a former Art student from a college in Aberdeen. I told him when he started at the TMO that the staff needed "competency testing" and he told me that he "could not sack incompetent workers." This myth is promulgated far too often in the public sector. I told Mr Black that if he followed the correct procedures useless workers could bve sacked without having to pay thousands in redundancies or compensation at Employment Tribunals. People remained safe in their well paid jobs at the TMO and look what happened.
ReplyDeleteRobert Black told them what a great job they had done on the Friday after the Grenfell Tower fire.
ReplyDeleteHeather Rabbatts was appointed a Dame by Her Majesty, The Queen. I met her when she was a student at the LSE.
The best local North Kensington Councillors have been Ian Henderson and Monica Press. Monica was superb, was interested in really getting results to local issues.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame Monica Press and Ian Henderson were not councillors when Gordon Perry ran the TMO. They would never have stood for what went on then.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, Ian and Monica might make a return to local politics now that the control freak at the top of the Kensington Labour Party has had her card well and truly marked, and has no future in Westminster politics.
DeleteIan is a great bloke! He saved a Housing Association estate from the recking ball. People will get these well built homes let to them on tenancies at affordable rents for many years to come; thanks to Ian. When I think about the achievements of those socilaists who shafted him, some of whom falsely suggested that he "is really a Tory," I feel sick to the stomach.
DeleteIf Emma Dent Coad resigns, Monica or Ian should be encouraged to go for St. Helen's.
DeleteA high powered Administrator / Barrister is what the TMO needed. Not a Senior Housing Official from the People's Republic of Camden nor an Art Student from an Aberdeen College.
ReplyDeleteCouncillors who served on the TMO Board, Labour and Tory, knew what how bad it was. All of these Councillors are people of reasonable intelligence. Elizabeth Campbell, Quentin Marshall, Tom Fairhead, Maighread Condon-Simmonds, Emma Dent Coad and Judith Blakeman
With the exception of Judith Blakeman, they should all hang their heads in shame.