The news Rochdale Boroughwide Housing and the Council do not want you to know!

Chairwoman of RBH, Gill Walch

The attempt to recruit a new Chief Executive for Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) has floundered at huge cost to local taxpayers. The blame for the failure on this occasion is being laid at the door of Chairwoman of RBH, Gill Walch, who is alleged to have seriously compromised the recruitment process in an attempt to get the candidate of her choice the job.

Headhunters were appointed to help the council find suitable candidates; we are told they came up with a shortlist of internal and external candidates who were put through a number of interviews and tests that whittled the shortlist down to two - the two external candidates.

The two candidates were interviewed by a panel consisting of members of RBH and Councillors. At the end of the interview process the panel were split right down the middle between the two candidates, the RBH contingent all plumping for one candidate and the Council contingent the other. After a long day and much wrangling it became clear that neither was going to move their position and hence all parties agreed to meet again.

In the meantime Ms Walch took it upon herself to call Councillors on the panel and make personal comments and allegations about the candidate she did not want to get the job, a very serious breach of acceptable protocol.

The Councillors in question, one of whom it is believed is local magistrate Brian Davies (Labour Councillor for North Heywood) reported the approach to the Council and a row broke out between the RBH board and the Council with the Council calling for the head of Ms Walch and Ms Walch refusing to accept she had done anything wrong.

With the interview process so severely compromised the decision was taken not  to appoint either candidate.

Over the past three weeks the Council has, in a series of meetings with RBH board members, attempted to have Ms Walch removed from her position and is believed to have threatened to remove and replace the whole RBH board if Ms Walch does not stand down.

With Ms Walch adamant she will not go, Rochdale Online has been informed that the Council has now reported the matter to the District Auditor.

Rochdale Online has persistently asked both RBH and the Council to issue an official statement to the media but nothing more than obfuscation and breathtaking understatement has been forthcoming to date:  "RBH recently sought to recruit a new Chief Executive, but the recruitment process was not successful. RBH will continue working with Rochdale Council in order to make an appointment in the future."

Councillors on the interview panel have also been surprisingly reticent to keep their constituents informed; Councillor Davies said: "Because of the nature of the allegations I am unable to make any comment". Conservative Councillor Michael Holly took legal refuge saying: “I am sure that you will appreciate that as a director of RBH I am bound by the requirements of the responsibilities of directors under the Companies Act and as such I cannot respond to your request.” We asked Mr Holly to point out which of the 1300 clauses in the Companies Act he interpreted as preventing a councillor from commenting on matters directly affecting his constituents, to date we have not had a reply.

We are also led to believe that at a meeting of the ‘Privy Council’ last week Councillor Allen Brett was also very keen to keep you in the dark, erroneously blaming one particular councillor for ‘leaking’ the news to Rochdale Online rather than calling for the Council to be open and transparent.

We have deliberated on whether or not we should run this article for three weeks but have decided that on balance the right of local people to know how their taxes are being squandered outweighs the risk of RBH and the Council being sued by the candidates – allegedly the reason behind the attempted news black out.

You have a right to know, it is your money being wasted.

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Note:

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) is a not for profit company which is responsible for managing council homes on behalf of Rochdale Council. The organisation was set up on 1 April 2002. It is a company wholly owned by the council but managed by a board of directors.

The company manages around 14,500 properties and provides all the landlord services to these properties.