I read on the BBC website that Powys County Council's disgraceful 'whistleblower hunt' has drawn a blank. I had some sympathy with the Council in its difficulties when it discovered a few weeks ago that proper criminal checks had not been carried out on 44 of its staff who had access to children. Mistakes happen in large organisations and I called for an immediate overhaul of procedures to ensure that it could never happen again. that seemed proportionate to me.
But I have condemned totally the Council's secrecy about the matter. The public should not have learned about this from the BBC. It really was beyond condemnation that the Council decided to spend thousands on an external 'investigator' to track down the 'whistleblower' - who with the help of the BBC put information in the public domain which the Council should have done itself. I have issued a press release calling on the Council to tell us how much this misguided inquiry cost the Council Tax payers of Powys. It really wouldn't surprise me if the Council tried to use some excuse about 'confidentiality' to avoid telling us.
2 comments:
Glyn Probably Powys were really pissed off because the BBC homed in on them instead of doing a little more research and looking at the picture across Wales. I know at least one Council Leadership in South Wales which nearly had a heart attack when it was informed how many employees were working with children without CRB checks. It was much greater than the Powys figure.
As always, it wasn't so much the issue as the failure to be open about it.
If the Council had made a public statement when the problem was discovered, there could not have been a leak.
If you let me know which the other South Wales council is, I rather fancy being a whistleblower myself!
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