Karen Whelan. Good at Wealth Building.

Newham will shortly be welcoming Karen Whelan to the senior staff team. Ms Whelan will come in to head the council’s Community Wealth Building initiative, one of Mayor Fiaz’s pet projects imported from Corbynite Preston.

Ms Whelan has expertise in wealth building as noted in the fact that when she was Chief Exec at Surrey Heath Local Authority, she managed to increase her own pay packet to the tune of 30% in 2018. This was on top of increases which had seen her salary and perks rise from £110,000pa to £158,000pa in previous years.

She must have been doing a really good job, because pay increases to other, more lowly paid staff, when they got them, were limited to 1%-3%.

Despite all of her hard work her pay rise of £46,000 was not welcomed by all of the residents of Surrey Heath. Her rise took her pay package to almost £200,000 pa, more than double what the local paper reported as the income for the next highest earner in the council. In the following year she was able to add a further £15,000 to her pay packet.

It appears that Ms Whelan’s pay rise was the result of a decision by the former Leader of the Council, who had since resigned. Surrey News reported that there was disquiet that Ms Whelan had received such increases at the same time as the council was cutting costs.

Such was the overall disquiet, that an independent investigation was launched into the issue of the pay hikes. Ms Whelan was placed on “special leave” for the duration of the inquiry. Ms Whelan was not suspended as some people believed, she was on special leave, which may sound like a distinction without a difference to some readers.  The report was presented to the council’s Employment Committee in December 2019. Four months later she resigned.

A (heavily redacted) full copy of the report is now available online. Here’s what it says about the payments to Ms Whelan.

Oh dear.

But there was more.

Following a stay at the £400 per night Langham Hotel in Westminster by Ms Whelan, the council “was accused of “leeching off residents” to allow its staff to live “in largesse”. We think that the accusation was a bit harsh. It was only one of their staff after all. This was not her only stay in a very expensive hotel. The report notes how she did the same in Manchester.

In a section that is so heavily redacted that only five of the 30 paragraphs are unredacted, we find that

The ‘matters above’ are the arrangements for the purchase of a vehicle that had been leased for her use.

There was some concern raised about her interpretation of her contributions, suggesting that she had incurred the costs of maintenance, when in fact they were borne by the council.

The report goes into some detail as to Ms Whelan’s repeatedly exceeding the council’s limit on expenses payments. (Sections D and E)

It concludes, “we have found that there were failings on the part of current and former Chief Officers, and that those failings led to financial gain on the part of the Chief Executive”.

Her management of costs seems to have been an ongoing issue at Surrey Heath. Councillors were embarrassed to discover that in addition to spending £22k on refurbishment of the Ladies’ Staff Toilets the council also spent a further £10k plus VAT on a private Ladies’ Toilet on the same floor. This second toilet was suspiciously close to the office of the Chief Exec, who denied that it was for her personal use. But since then it has been designated a gender-neutral toilet. So that’s ok then. It’s now a private, gender neutral toilet, close to the CE’s office.

Whilst her ability to increase her personal wealth is not in question, her ability to increase council or community wealth must be a little more doubtful. Wikipedia, writing of the financial performance of Surrey Heath Borough Council during Ms Whelan’s tenure says the following, “in 2019, the council's accounts report property investment assets valued at £83 million, a reported loss of £27 million.” The justification for Ms Whelan’s stonking pay rise was that she took on new responsibilities and was overseeing the council’s commercial property portfolio. Not very well by the look of it.

Her commitment to the ‘open and transparent’ policy operated by Mayor Fiaz can be seen in this report from Surrey News “In a 2017 email, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Karen Whelan told a councillor: "There are not always minutes of meetings I am afraid for the very nature of FoI."” This informal policy appears to be at variance with the Information Commissioner’s guidance which is to, "retain the records needed for business, regulatory, legal and accountability purposes".

Welcome to Newham Ms Whelan. We look forward to the increase in “community wealth”.