A year ago TDC published a report from Independent Monitoring Officer (IMO) , Quentin Baker, into the governance of the council. The report was commissioned on the orders of the council’s independent auditor, Grant Thornton who following its annual inspection of TDC’s accounts in 2021 publicly expressed serious concerns about the way the council was being run under the leadership of Chief Executive Madeline Homer
Both the auditor and the IMO's reports exposed a catalogue of mismanagement , misconduct and bullying at the council with the finger of blame being clearly pointed in the direction of Chief Executive Madeline Homer.
Within three weeks of the IMO report being published Homer was gone. She is said to have left the council with a reported pay off of £327,000 and a clean reference , despite her widely alleged mismanagement, misconduct, and bullying whilst in post.
The council also picked up a bill, said to be around £100,000, for legal and other costs associated to Homer’s departure. This brought the total cost to the council of ridding itself of its rogue Chief Executive to close on half a million pounds.
The bill has of course fallen oon the shoulders of Thanet’s hard-pressed tax payers, some of whom have likened Homer’s payout to rewarding failure or awardng a bully a bad behaviour bonus.
But the IMO report, which turned out to be the final nail in Homers very expensive coffin, was not what it seemed.
The public version which the council published on its website, whilst condemnatory of TDCs management on Homer’s watch, was only 11 pages long. The full version which has never been published because of unspecified “legal advice” is 26 pages long plus several more pages of attached documents.
I have decided, in the public interest, to publish the orginal unedited, IMO report.
Please read it and ask yourself whether TDC's Tory, Labour & Green Party councilors did the right thing by voting overwhelmingly to spend £500,000 to pay off a chief executive who , on the balance probabilities, engaged in misconduct and mismanagement and the bullying of staff.
Since her departure almost a year ago, and the exit of her bullying boyfriend council Director Gavin Waite with a said to be £73,000 payout, I have been trying to get to the bottom of why councillors voted to pay off, rather than sack the despicable duo.
Sadly, the new de-Homerised, and supposedly more accountable and transparent council, is actively blocking my every step to get to the truth at a great and growing cost. I wonder what they have to hide?
Bearing in mind the vastness of the evidence against them it beggars belief that Homer and Waite were allowed, on the say say so of TDCs lilly livered and cowardly councillors to leave TDC with thier pockets stuffed full of tax payers cash.
To their shame and discrace, even Labour and Green Party councillors who are suppossedly in favour of dignity at work and opposed to bullying, willingly joined in the sickinening payout jamboree with councillor and fomer trade unionist, Steve Albon, paying a sickening, anal licking, tribute to Homer whilst he and his councillor colleagues knew what she and her boyfriend did.