Council chiefs have recommended two improvements to the way the authority hires private companies after a report was published into the links between the former deputy mayor of Bristol and a series of three companies the council procured to provide leadership training for women and people from multi-cultural backgrounds.
The one-page report into Bristol City Council ’s Stepping Up Programme has been included in the agenda for the next Audit Committee meeting on Monday, and reveals that the council did not follow its own rules and procedures on how it procures contracts when it engaged a company to run the programme. The report says ‘a waiver was subsequently approved retrospectively’.
The report states that former deputy mayor and city councillor Asher Craig used a different name when registering as a director and chair of a company contracted by the council to undertake the Stepping Up programme, and did not initially declare an interest when she was first appointed.
The council report details how the then deputy mayor had a ‘connection and familiarity’ with the woman running the courses and two of the companies involved, which should have been declared. The report says former Cllr Craig has been a director of the Stepping Up Leadership CIC since March 2020, under another name Jennifer May Craig.
The report says that, while this is ‘not uncommon’ for councillors to use a different name as councillors as they do in business, it ‘can create the perception that arrangements are not open and transparent’.
The Stepping Up Programme began in 2017 and 2018 at City Hall, initially as an in-house leadership training programme aimed at giving a boost to council staff who were under-represented in management roles. For years, the council’s bosses have tended to be white men, with women and people from different backgrounds under-represented in senior roles. Almost immediately, the programme was praised as ground-breaking, and was unlike anything else being provided to public organisations in the country. In 2019, it won the first of many awards that have been received since.
After starting as an internal programme, in July 2018 those involved set up a separate company and the council hired it to run the programme. The report to the council next week said that the first company was called Smart People Solutions, which was engaged by the council for two years and paid £217,100 over that period.
In August 2020, a different company, called Davidson & Partners, was engaged for the next two years and paid £380,496 and then, after a gap of nearly a year, since April 2023, a third company called Stepping Up Leadership CIC, has been engaged to run the programme and has so far been paid £40,000.
The report outlines how, even though three different companies were engaged, the programme was delivered by the same person. She is not named in the report, but Smart People Solutions and Stepping Up Leadership CIC are both run by Prof Christine Bamford.
The audit committee report said it has been trying to find out more details about which companies were engaged by the council to run the Stepping Up programme, how much they were paid, and how they were hired by the council.
“The council has been unable to provide us with information to determine who was involved in the scoping of the specifications for any of the three companies. However, through our investigations, we are able to conclude that there was a connection and familiarity between the individual who developed and delivered the programme and the Deputy Mayor,” the report states.
“Whilst this connection was not declared, our review of the council’s constitution has confirmed that was no requirement for any such connections to be declared. However, there is a risk of a conflict of interest, and going forward, we would expect declarations to be made, recognising ethical standards in public life.
“The council did not follow its contract procurement procedures rules when it engaged Smart People Solutions Ltd,” the report added. “The programme commenced before any contractual or procurement procedures were undertaken and a waiver was subsequently approved retrospectively. A contract was put in place, although this document was not dated so we are not able to determine whether it covered the whole period that Smart People Solutions Ltd were engaged,” it added.
By the beginning of 2020, the council was paying Smart People Solutions so much money to run the Stepping Up Programme that it was getting close to reaching a threshold where even more robust procurement rules would have to be followed, and the report said that the council was risking being challenged by a third party – another company that might have been offering a similar training programme could have challenged the council and said it wasn’t being given the opportunity to bid for it.
At that point, the council did undertake tendering processes, and in the summer of 2020, chose a supplier called Davidson & Partners Ltd, although only one bid was received. The programme was, in practice, still run by Prof Bamford again. In 2023, Stepping Up Leadership CIC took over the contract, and the report said that time, the council managed the process for them. “In both cases, only one bid was received. The same consultant continued to deliver the programme at both these companies,” the report explained.
“The Deputy Mayor is a director of the Stepping Up Leadership CIC and declared this interest with the council in 2021, but did not declare the interest in 2020 when first appointed,” the report said. “As part of our review, we identified that the Deputy Mayor used two different names as a councillor and as a company director.
“Whilst we understand that it is not uncommon for elected members to use a given name instead of their legal name, the council should be aware that this can create the perception that arrangements are not open and transparent and should consider how such situations are appropriately managed,” the report added.
“In addition, we found that the contract with the Stepping Up Leadership CIC was not recorded on the council’s current contracts register, whereas the previous contract was,” it said, adding that there were two ‘improvement recommendations’ the council should follow.
The report concludes by recommending that councillors ‘declare their interests as they arise, such as directorships, and consider how close relationships and the use of other names could be declared’. It also recommends that ‘all contracts should be recorded on its contracts register’.
Away from Bristol City Council, the Stepping Up programme has expanded nationwide. It is now run by a separate company called Stepping Up Academy – its website names Prof Bamford as its chief executive and Asher Craig as the chair of the Stepping Up Leadership CIC. Its website said it has offices in London and Edinburgh and it has grown to be an award-winning company, and has been hired or endorsed by organisations across the Bristol area and further afield, including the West of England Combined Authority, the Ministry of Defence and the BBC.
Asher Craig stood down as the deputy mayor and as a city councillor at May’s elections, and now has a consultancy with its own website. This week, along with many other councillors who stepped down in May, she was sworn in as an alderman or alderwoman of the City of Bristol, in a ceremony at an extraordinary meeting of the city council at City Hall.
Earlier this year, former councillor Craig denied involvement in procurement exercises relating to the Stepping Up programme, and said she was not ‘involved in any way’ with the financial management of the programme.
She said at the time: “In line with council and procurement policy, no discussion took place with me prior to submission of tender proposal or during the delivery of the programme.”