Trouble brewing for several years
THERE have been calls for intervention of national government since a 2016 Wragge report, which looked at allegations of serious misconduct over the sale of land.
It revealed plots of council-owned land were sold at below market value, with the former deputy leader, Mahboob Hussain, found to have sold three former councilowned public toilets for £35,000 to a friend of his, two days after a district valuer said they were worth £130,000.
The ‘Wragge
Opinion’, leaked to the Local Democracy Reporting
Service last year, then claimed the report itself was full of apparent bias, breaches in procedures and claims of ‘racially motivated language’ allegedly used by the investigator.
Its authors said that what they found “undermined the credibility and objectivity of the Wragge Report that was eventually published”.
Last year, an award to hand over a contract to transport vulnerable schoolchildren to school was halted after it emerged the company in question was run by former council employee Azeem
Hafeez, the son of Mahboob Hussain.
And only last week it wasreported that the council’s own internal review had “no written record” to approve the high risk contract.
Kerrie Carmichael, leader of Sandwell Council: “The leadership team in Sandwell council is focused on embedding the positive changes we have seen in recent months and, while we are disappointed in this announcement, we will continue with this work and demonstrate the political determination to move forward and drive improvement and change.
“As recognised by the recent review into governance by Grant Thornton, we feel we have really turned a corner and demonstrated improvements.”