I have taken the time to extract the text from all four Private Eye articles for ease of reference. At some point, I may do the same for the dozen or so newspaper articles that have appeared in both local and national press.
Anyone who reads Private Eye regularly knows that featuring something so often (with more to come, perhaps?) is quite a big deal. The articles appear on the "Rotten Boroughs" page, and Private Eye is published fortnightly. Given that this page likely receives submissions and leads about scores of UK councils, only a fraction of the stories make it to publication.
Essex County Council has now likely appeared in Private Eye more times in the last three months than in the preceding 12 years. Twelve years ago was when the Lord Hanningfield scandal (Google it) engulfed the council. People at the highest levels of politics, on both sides, read Private Eye, and being featured in "Rotten Boroughs" is a marker of a council's reputation. Essex County Council likely felt a bit smug, given the difficulties in neighboring Thurrock. Not anymore.
Local councillors with political ambition would do well to remember that there will come a tipping point where their reputation will be better served by not continuing to protect the interests and reputations of the officers who report to them. This is not just about O'Callaghan, but also people like Paul Turner and Gavin "£300K" Jones, the Chief Executive, who is now said to have been directly line-managing O'Callaghan during much of the period in question:
Anyway folks - here are the articles (I
think I have done in them in the right order)
ESSEX GULLS
ESSEX county council suffered ridicule earlier this year after it was revealed it had paid £493,000 to internet prankster Simon Harris for "digital consultancy". Harris had trousered that enormous sum, basically, for running the authority's Facebook page.
A report to the Tory council's audit, governance and standards committee now finds "no evidence" of a procurement exercise or "value for money" for a total of £1.5m expenditure. Kirsty O'Callaghan, the former "head of strengthening communities", who has unsurprisingly left her role, made verbal contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. The authority has hidden behind pandemic necessity to explain its poor governance, but its own records show that excessive payments started in, er, 2017. O'Callaghan set up multiple companies while working for Essex and made Harris the "content director" of one of them, Socialkind Ltd. Harris even attended O'Callaghan's birthday celebration at Claridge's.
Concerns were first reported to the authority in 2021. What did the council do in the intervening two and a half years? Not a lot. Since the committee meeting, officials have launched further "investigations" and are expected make recommendations about action. They might start by questioning the terms under which O'Callaghan left the authority, and whether she had existing relationships with other recipients of taxpayers' money, as Harris doesn't appear to be the only one.
ESSEX GALS
KIRSTY O'CALLAGHAN, a senior public the pandemic, has been accused of paying thousands of pounds to her mates for unspecified projects (Eye 1623). Inspector Knacker has been informed. We have the figures.
O'Callaghan approved £8,000 for Anna Harris friend but failed to mention she was an old university friend. Another beneficiary was Shalaleh Barlow - a director of local employer Central Law Group - who enjoyed holidays in Lisbon and Menorca in 2021 with O'Callaghan, who referred to her as "Aunty". Barlow received £50,000.Barlow is also a director of the Better Divorce Course Company Ltd, alongside former Olympic rowing gold medallist Jonathan Searle, who was paid for projects worth £49,000, with vague titles such as "online resilience course, £6,500" and "Covid community consultancy, £2,500". The council has no record of how this money was actually spent. Searle's son, Jake, received £6,000.
Essex Council posted these financial details on its website earlier this year, but it has kept its lips its investigation and O'Callaghan's clear conflicts of interest. Is it not curious that O'Callaghan had personal relationships with all the recipients of taxpayers' money she approved? Was their trip to Claridge's to celebrate O'Callaghan's birthday paid for by the taxpayer? A whistleblower's report to Essex Police suggests the council's "highly defensive response" indicates the authority has plenty to hide.
KIRSTY'S KINDNESS
HE largesse of Kirsty O'Callaghan, Essex County Council's former "head of strengthening
communities", who gave hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of vaguely defined work to her mates (Eyes 1623 & 1625), did not only extend to her friends. She also appears to have done quite nicely herself.
O'Callaghan set up a private company, SocialKind Ltd, in 2020. Her co-workers were Emmy McCarthy and Simon Harris, the "internet prankster" who was paid £493,000 by Essex to run a Facebook page during the pandemic. While O'Callaghan was still at Essex, SocialKind received £80,000 for "projects" from Suffolk county council, which should have raised eyebrows with Essex bosses.
Following a whistleblower's complaint against O'Callaghan and her departure from Essex CC in March 2022, she joined Mid and South Essex NHS Trust as "director of community mobilisation, transformation and resilience". After March 2022, SocialKind received a further £35,000 from Suffolk CC. O'Callaghan was registered at Companies House as SK's sole director. She attempted to cover her tracks by creating a new business, Social Kindness Ltd, later renamed Kirsty O'Callaghan Ltd.
At the NHS trust, O'Callaghan presented to her new colleagues a plan to hire a "digital community leader" described in documents as an "influencer with 100k plus following" as part of creating a "community assembly". Might that influencer have been the ubiquitous Mr Harris? Sources believe so.
We may never know, because the proposal was not taken forward, O'Callaghan having jumped ship when the NHS's counter-fraud team got on the case after learning about the shenanigans at Essex CC.
KIRSTY WORK
Back in in February, Essex county councillors asked their audit, governance and standards committee to investigate payments made to external contractors by Kirsty O'Callaghan, the council's former "head of strengthening communities".
As previous Eyes have reported, during the Covid-19 pandemic, while working for Essex O'Callaghan signed contracts with individuals with whom she had personal relationships, lined her own pockets by setting up multiple private companies, and was investigated for alleged misconduct. She left the authority shortly afterwards.
The overwhelming evidence seen by the Eye suggests this is a corruption scandal, but Essex continues to sweep it under the carpet. Maybe Labour's new corruption tsar should investigate? Last week the committee reported its findings. It only considered 10 questions, but we learn that Essex has received external legal advice and cannot "confirm nor deny" allegations of misconduct. That advice remains unpublished. The committee has seen "no evidence that declarations of interest were made" - which is curious, given O'Callaghan's private consultancy had a commercial contract with neighbouring Suffolk county council while she was working for Essex.
Though O'Callaghan's emails could be retrieved, providing there was a "business need", Essex hasn't bothered to do so. Councillors suggest O'Callaghan may have deleted her emails. One company, TryLife Ltd, received more than £330,000 to create a mobile phone application - half of which was signed off by O'Callaghan. TryLife wasn't an employer of interest when the scandal first materialised but, given O'Callaghan's personal connections with the individuals she commissioned, questions are now being asked about whether she knew staff at TryLife. To make matters worse, the app wasn't delivered and the authority is now seeking a refund.
Essex apparently wants to draw a line under the saga, but it still has huge questions to answer.
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How’s that one working out?
They've definitely just stated she's a thief.
