Barriers need tearing down TO GIVE credit where it is due, South Lakeland District Council's acting chief executive Mike Jones has lived up to his pledge of releasing into the public domain a comprehensive and detailed report of the suspensions of three senior officers at the authority.

His analysis is welcome, even though much of this sorry affair has already been reported in this newspaper. Four areas of his report are particularly interesting and valuable: how the consultants were appointed to implement the pay restructure; the costs of the investigation; the impact on staff morale; and the role of the media in keeping council taxpayers informed about how their money is being spent.

The most damning passage to anyone used to running any large organisation, never mind a public body, was the selection procedure for the consultants. If Mr Jones is right to say, as he does, that no fully documented procedure took place and that references were verbal, as opposed to written, and that no advice was sought, then lessons do indeed need learning.

The role of these consultants certainly needs further scrutiny and more may well be revealed about the part they played.

The total cost of the suspensions, according to Mr Jones, was more than a quarter of a million pounds, made up of accommodation for hearings, witness expenses, legal fees, interim part-time managers brought in to keep the council going, payment for other staff acting up as a consequence of the suspensions and payments to staff over and above the approved pay and grading structure which caused all the trouble in the first place.

But if the salaries of the suspended officers, who were on full pay for the nine months or so that the investigation took, were also included the cost would be nearer the £400,000 mark, or a little under a half of the million pounds overspend the pay review would have cost per year if it had been implemented.

The irony of this will not have been lost on the 800 council employees who have had to try to continue to provide services under what must have been a substantial cloud of uncertainty.

Indeed Mr Jones is right to acknowledge the impact the whole saga has had on staff morale. He also has some enlightened views on the part the media plays in keeping people informed of council affairs. He rightly acknowledges that those who work for authorities are public servants and robust and challenging media help remind them of their responsibilities in this respect.

All of which fits uneasily with the suspension, just hours after this newspaper was published a week ago, of another senior officer for expressing his concerns at the council's review of pest control.

Mark Richardson, by all accounts a cheerful, hard-working and conscientious environmental protection manager, went public with his worry that a possible axing of a subsidised service to rid households of unwanted infestations, including mice and rats, would lead to price putting people off from reporting the problem, with the subsequent deterioration in public health.

As the senior officer in this particular field, it would seem he was ideally qualified to have a view worth airing before the decision was taken.

But his suspension has had an immediate detrimental impact on the staff morale which needs such careful repair. A union official has talked of a climate of fear, and certainly other officers who have routinely talked to the media, are now refusing to do so.

The council has a press officer, but it was never part of her role to filter every press inquiry, as it now appears she is being asked to do. Such a policy would fly in the face of the open-ness Mr Jones rightly espouses. It would also damage a long-standing atmosphere of trust between the Press and the council, which ultimately benefits the public as a whole by keeping them better informed.

At this delicate time of recovery and relationship repair both internally and with the wider public, the council should not be putting up the barricades and pulling in drawbridges.

That is not the way to win friends and influence, nor is it the way to make staff feel happy and confident in their dealings with the community they serve.