WARRINGTON Council chiefs have come under fire after spending thousands of pounds to attend a lavish 5 star awards ceremony in London at a time when staff are losing their jobs and facing pay cuts.
Chief Executive Diana Terris (pictured right) and Head of Communications Caroline Jones were both part of a table of 10 from Warrington Council who joined more than 1200 senior local government officers, many of whom have overseen redundancies and deep cuts to services, at the black tie awards ceremony in the chandeliered Great Room of the five-star Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, Mayfair, last Wednesday.
Tickets ranged from £1700 to £7200 per table of 10.
Warrington Council, attended the lavish awards ceremony after being nominated for most improved council after previously receiving three red flags from the Audit Commission for financial mismanagement and child protection failings, spent £1,700 on tickets and £1,550 on hotel rooms.
They had been nominated to win the most improved council award but camne away with a runners up price.
Warrington Chamber Chief Executive Colin Daniels said he was staggered to hear of the expenditure at a time when council staff were losing their jobs and being asked to take pay cuts.
He added: “Failure brings its own award, in a period of austerity how can the Council, even begin to justify this expenditure?”
Council deputy leader Cllr Mike Hannon confirmed that both himself and the leader Cllr Terry O’Neill had declined an invitation to attend the event.
Lib Dem Leader Ian Marks said:”At a time when all councils are struggling to make savings to protect frontline services, I find it incredible that the organisers of this Award ceremony chose the five-star Grosvenor hotel for the venue. It is important to celebrate the work of council staff but there is no need to have such an expensive venue. 
It would have sent the right signal to have chosen a much more modest venue so saving every council who attended money.”
The awards, run by the Local Government Chronicle, were hosted by Jon Culshaw, the radio impressionist, who is understood to charge around £10,000 per appearance.
Following networking and fine dining delegates danced to Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’, and played roulette until 2am at a charity casino set up on the balcony.
But Diana Terris defended the decision to attend the event stating:
“Warrington Borough Council was shortlisted for the Most Improved Council at the Local Government Chronicle Awards.
“This prestigious award is a real testament to how far the council has come since being awarded three red flags for poor performance in 2009, and highlights the great strides forward made in ensuring our children and young people are safe, that we are actively narrowing the gap between the least and most deprived parts of the borough
and that we have the right systems in place to attain the highest standards of corporate governance.
“We wanted to use this opportunity to celebrate our success with the staff on the frontline who made our achievements possible, so seven frontline workers, from our social work, youth and employee engagement teams were invited to take part on behalf of the many hard-working staff who had participated in the process.”
She also pointed out the council took a standard level alcohol-free table at a cost per head of £170, with two officers paying for their own tickets and one receiving a corporate ticket from the company who sponsored the category in which they were shortlisted.
The cost of the seven tickets paid for by the council for the frontline workers was taken from the corporate contingency budget.
Overnight accommodation was provided as the awards ceremony did not finish until after 11pm, after the last train had departed, so officers stayed at a cost per room at government rates of £155.
All attending staff paid for their own drinks and sundries.
Council chiefs' in 5 star celebration row
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
14 Comments
I just don’t like that woman!
Councillors O’Neill and Hannon were wise not to attend, but they should have stopped anybody from Warrington Borough Council from attending.
As EM Forster would say “just connect”
Just shows how out of touch WBC is! Councillors O’Neill and Hannon were right in declining to attend, however, they should have stopped any other WBC employees from attending. Despite Councillor O’Neill’s protestations OUR council is most definitely Officer lead! It’s time the CE was told to go since she has nothing but her own interests at heart.
A corporate contingency budget , is that the same as the ‘Executive Fund’ which came to light last week – a slush fund for councillors to do whatever they like with. Chief officers and the Labour administration are a disgrace, how dare they squander money on jollies whilst making job cuts, leading to inferior services for the people of this town. The Leader and Deputy Leader have missed a trick, along with delining the invite they should have also blocked anyone else attending on council money. As for coming second to Oldham – oh the shame!!!!!!!!!
Everything she touches is a disgrace, when is she going to resign. its the officer at the top to blame. They should be disciplined.
Having plumbed the deepest depths of local government disorganization, maladministration, gross corporate misgovernment, there was only one way for them to go. Most in similar circumstances would have been pleased they had lifted selves off the bottom and just continued the improving trend without accompanying fanfares.
That the award was given by and feted with what are essentially fellow travellers throws doubt on the reliability of the adjective “prestigious”, particularly as some of those present had also made it into the Private Eye hall of infamy (aka Rotten Boroughs). That “Warrington Borough Council was shortlisted for the Most Improved Council at the Local Government Chronicle Awards” is a sad reflection on the disparate views, between Officers and Rate Payers, of what Local Government is all about.
There were only two pleasing aspects of this situation:
1) The elected members of all parties tactfully opted out and some even questioned the appropriateness in these difficult times.
2) The timely note of realism from Warrington Chamber Chief Executive Colin Daniels in saying “Failure brings its own award, in a period of austerity how can the Council, even begin to justify this expenditure?”
The new Localism Bill means that our councillors now have a chance to remind these money grubbing incompetents where real power lies in the council. They can start by reversing last year’s pay increase. Or they can impotently stand by meekly complaining as they have again here.
Incidentally, I’ve attended several awards ceremonies at the Grosvenor House and there are plenty of cheaper hotels nearby. Obviously a jolly for officers that believe that because they only have one ‘inexcusable act of maladministration’ and hundreds of redundancies to their name in the last year deserve to congratulate themselves with council money. Shameful.
Incidentally if anybody wants to keep tabs on these things. The company which paid for one of the tickets was Agilisys, an IT provider specialising in public sector contracts.
Remarkable how the CEO steps up to the plate (no pun intended) to accept the rewards and plaudits of that office but somehow appears to shy away whenever confronted with the realism of its responsibilities. At which stage as we have seen, it has been left to the elected members to pick up the pieces and respond to criticisms. This surely is sufficient enough to reverse last year’s unjustified pay increase?
Personally, my view is that even if the council had become the best in the country, they wouldn’t have been able to justify the increase.
Some other issues:
I know how these awards usually work. The council will almost certainly have submitted its own entry, omitting any inconvenient truths. I don’t understand the need to crow about becoming less terrible than you were.
I’m baffled as to why ten people went.
The report omits travel costs. Even assuming they went standard class, there is a good chance that would have come to over 1000 pounds. First class would have been double. Obviously it omits all other expenses.
Finally, is it appropriate for officers to be accepting free tickets off companies in this way?
So there should never be any awards/praise/pats on the back for good performance in the public sector? 7 out of the 10 who attended were front-line workers and given the climate of redundancy, pay freezes and pension changes, surely a few quid recognising their efforts (and the teams they represented) is money well spent if it enourages them to continue improving services. If the private sector runs these kinds of events in other sectors (and you appear to have attended a fair few ‘grey_man’), then they must see a value/benefit in them. Why should it be different for councils?
Whether you or the CEO like it or not there is a world of difference between private sector junkets and public sector ones. Money for private sector functions comes from private sector companies, whose existence is dependent solely on people willingly buying shares etc to fund those companies and the profits they make. So they stand or fall by how they control their expenditure (banks apparently excluded). Public sector money comes from tax and associated revenues. In other words it is extracted from all or most of us whether we like it or not. All monies in the public purse have to properly accounted for. In these cost cutting austerity times if Councils across the country were found to have pots of dosh allocated in the budgets for Grosvenor like functions there would rightly be an uproar, because it’s our money and should be properly spent. There clearly was disagreement about the Grosvenor because elected members opted not to attend. Which in turn tells you a lot about the Council.
Finally the premise on which WBC particpated in the event at the Grosvenor was not based on a full and factual disclosure of recent happenings within WBC. Something is not right when one part of WBC allegedly claims to have improved, whilst another was found to be guilty of “an extraordinary and inexcusable act of maladministration”, and then for the CEO to state WBC has “the right systems in place to attain the highest standards of corporate governance”. Repeating something which wrong doesn’t make it right.
Thanks for the knowledge that public sector organisations are funded by the public purse. I also surprisingly do agree they need to be very careful how they spend our money, it sounds like the Warrington council folk are sensitive to this to, hence them paying for their own booze. My point was that private sector organisations do not hold ‘junkets’ for the hell of it. They do it because they feel that the costs of ‘rewarding’ staff with these perks for good performance will be paid back in greater performance levels and hence, greater profits. The article seems to suggest that the council paid for tickets for the ‘Magnificent 7’ front-line workers, while the 3 senior bods paid their own way. While £2750 isn’t peanuts, Warrington clearly felt it was a price worth paying to reward staff and celebrate the success that some of their teams have.
Oh and there are nearly 400 councils across the country and events like these can be a good way of promoting what has worked well in one council, sharing ideas and good practise so that others can follow (I dare say these employees might have picked up a few tips too). If that does happen, it could actually save money. I couldn’t comment on Warrington’s suitability to be nominated as I’ve never worked there and don’t know much about them, but it’s not unusual for an organisation as complex as a Council to be both improving in many areas, while having some pockets where significant issues remain. I would imagine that Warrington (and plenty of others) would fall in that category. A lot of good hard-working people work in the public sector without much recognition, try not to begrudge a few of them the odd night in the spotlight.