A.O.B.
UnCivil, UnEnforced, UnOfficered
Published: 01 October 2008
In August in this space I cautioned local-authority chief executives against making themselves look ridiculous by allowing their PR teams ‘to get stuck in a perpetual fog of excitement, routinely hyping U-turns and nebulous aspirations’. Leave the spin to Westminster, I suggested, as we at The Governance Partnership always do.
I wrote as I did having seen a borough council newspaper that devoted three whole pages to cover ‘a ‘huge step’ in parking policy. This ‘huge step’ amounted to no more than putting traffic wardens in a different uniform, renaming them ‘civil enforcement officers’, and bringing in a new contractor.
This firm is to see that the council’s wardens are no longer ‘unfair and rude’ to motorists. At one road crash, a traffic warden on piecework had ticketed a badly-damaged motorbike as its injured rider was being carried into an ambulance.
How silly, I suggested, to hype a simple rebranding exercise (not for the first time) at the cost of inviting the electors and council-taxpayers to ask an obvious question.
The question: how can the council be said to have done its due diligence if in the first place it chose a parking enforcement contractor that allowed traffic wardens to be ‘unfair and rude’?
I return to this story because it now emerges that the council has spun itself into an even deeper hole.
Indeed, the council has since made itself look ridiculous throughout the national media, as well as embarrassing a Government department and politicians up to and including Cabinet level.
This is because the council’s new parking-enforcement contractor did some due diligence of its own. Mindful of the £10,000 fines and bad publicity that now await employers who hire illegal immigrants, the contractor asked the 100 ‘civil enforcement officers’ it would be taking over from its predecessor to produce their immigration papers.
Of this 100, forty-eight promptly quit or vanished. Some produced forged passports.
Why did the council not know it was involved in lawbreaking on such a scale? It is not as if the issue of illegally-employed traffic wardens is new. Allegations circulated last year that perhaps 80% of London’s ‘civil enforcement officers’ were illegal immigrants.
But for the council in question, it just gets worse. The previous contractor has reacted to the scandal by telling the media ‘we work closely with the Home Office’. The Home Secretary and Immigration Minister will love the borough council for that one.
And what, by the way, was this loquacious council’s own comment on such a spectacular own-goal? At first, they considered it ‘inappropriate to comment’. Now they have published a short item in the council newspaper admitting only that ‘a number’ of parking wardens have ‘resigned’, and asserting that there is ‘no evidence’ that these people – half the original payroll – were working illegally.
If you’re a council chief executive, might it be worth checking if these ‘civil enforcement officers’ are now working for you?
Indeed, the council has since made itself look ridiculous throughout the national media, as well as embarrassing a Government department and politicians up to and including Cabinet level.
This is because the council’s new parking-enforcement contractor did some due diligence of its own. Mindful of the £10,000 fines and bad publicity that now await employers who hire illegal immigrants, the contractor asked the 100 ‘civil enforcement officers’ it would be taking over from its predecessor to produce their immigration papers.
Of this 100, forty-eight promptly quit or vanished. Some produced forged passports.
Why did the council not know it was involved in lawbreaking on such a scale? It is not as if the issue of illegally-employed traffic wardens is new. Allegations circulated last year that perhaps 80% of London’s ‘civil enforcement officers’ were illegal immigrants.
But for the council in question, it just gets worse. The previous contractor has reacted to the scandal by telling the media ‘we work closely with the Home Office’. The Home Secretary and Immigration Minister will love the borough council for that one.
And what, by the way, was this loquacious council’s own comment on such a spectacular own-goal? At first, they considered it ‘inappropriate to comment’. Now they have published a short item in the council newspaper admitting only that ‘a number’ of parking wardens have ‘resigned’, and asserting that there is ‘no evidence’ that these people – half the original payroll – were working illegally.
If you’re a council chief executive, might it be worth checking if these ‘civil enforcement officers’ are now working for you?
Ross Davies is a partner in The Governance Partnership.