Edinburgh council: City leader claims £175,000-a-year chief executive Andrew Kerr may be victim of bullying

Tory councillors' treatment of Edinburgh's £175,000-a-year chief executive Andrew Kerr is verging on bullying, council leader Adam McVey has claimed.

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The Tories tabled a motion of no confidence in Mr Kerr after an investigation by the council’s monitoring officer found “illegality, maladministration and injustice” in the city’s secure accommodation for young people over a decade or more and referred to failings in management at all levels. The motion was defeated without discussion at the last full council meeting.

But Cllr McVey said comments by Tory councillors and continued references to the motion came close to harassment.

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He said the councillors' code of conduct had recently been changed and now made clear that "habitual targeting" of a council officer could be regarded as bullying.

Cllr McVey said: "A motion of no confidence in itself is not bullying, but putting a motion of no confidence down and continuing to attack an officer in the press at the same time as continuing to bring more or less the same thing to committees, then it is approaching that stage."

He also argued the Tories had not followed the proper process for motions of no confidence.

“They should not have brought it as an amendment to a report on a different matter,” he said. “Such motions should be put down as motions in their own right with time for the officer concerned to respond.”

Andrew Kerr has been chief executive of the city council since 2015Andrew Kerr has been chief executive of the city council since 2015
Andrew Kerr has been chief executive of the city council since 2015

Tory group leader Iain Whyte rejected the bullying allegation, saying: “It's just nonsense. The man is paid more than the Prime Minister and he's meant to be publicly accountable. If I'm saying things that the public would say or think, then I don't see why I should be censured for that.

“People who take on jobs as chief executives and these kind of roles know there is a large public element to them and they should be accountable for what they do and, more importantly in this case, what they don't do or don't demonstrate that they've done, to give assurance to people about our services, and often our services to some of the most vulnerable people in the city.”

Cllr Whyte said an amendment he tabled at last week’s policy and sustainability committee, which Cllr McVey ruled out of order, was not attacking the chief executive, but criticising the failure to debate the motion of no confidence at the full council meeting.

“What we were complaining about was whether the council had done a proper job of scrutiny when there was no debate, when there was no discussion at all of the issues affecting the young people over a great many years and the wider implications for the culture of the council,” he said.

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When he announced the motion of no confidence in Mr Kerr ahead of the full council meeting, Cllr Whyte said it came against the background of the Tanner report into the organisational culture of the council as well as the report on the secure units.

“Publicly and privately he has been telling us for some years that he has fundamentally changed the culture in getting to the bottom of all these things. My concern is the culture of the council hasn't changed over the last six years with Andrew Kerr in charge.”

Mr Kerr, chief executive since 2015, declined to comment on the bullying claim.

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