RBH disciplinary panel clears Gill Walch

Date published: 08 February 2008

In July 2007 RBH's Chairwoman Gill Walch was accused of misconduct so serious as to require the cancellation of the second recruitment process for the new Chief Officer for Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH). However, she has been now been cleared by an RBH disciplinary panel.

As well as the recruitment process being cancelled, an external investigation has taken place by the Audit Commission into the accusations as well as the appropriateness of the processes employed and the failure on both occasions to appoint a suitable person.

A letter from Council Executive Leadership Team member Margaret Carney to RBH included a full statement of the Council's allegations about the Chairwoman's conduct and its consequences. That letter made five requests that it asked RBH Board to agree to, the first of which was Gill Walch, the Chairwoman of the Board resign from the Board.

In normal circumstances RBH would have set up the Disciplinary Sub-Committee to examine the allegations and consider whether any action should be taken against Gill Walch.

In fact there has been a long delay due to the need for the Audit Commission's investigation to be completed before a disciplinary hearing could take place. RoFTRA argued that RBH should follow barrister's advice that it was unreasonable for anyone accused in this way to have to wait months for the chance to clear their name.

In December the RBH Board decided, in view of the length of time that had passed, to act within its disciplinary process and its appointed Sub-committee held the disciplinary hearing on 9 January. Gill Walch attended with her representative to respond to the allegations and the panel took time before interviewing her to read her written responses to the allegations.

The hearing itself lasted for over three hours with RBH's Acting Managing Director presenting the allegations and Gill Walch and her representative present and available to be questioned by each other and the panel.

Ms Walch received formal notice on the result in a letter from RBH's Company Secretary dated 14 January. It states that following the hearing, "the sub-committee found that the allegations against you were not proven and that as such there has been no breach of the RBH Code of Conduct for Board Members".

However, despite a request for the information on Tuesday (5 February) Rochdale Online has at the time of publication been unable to ascertain from the Council or RBH if Margaret Carney and councillors on the RBH board, and in particular the councillor who made the initial accusation, were called to give evidence at the disciplinary hearing.