Who Guards the Guards?

I'm told by a highly reliable source that one of the many revelations to emerge from the ongoing Employment Tribunal against North Lanarkshire Council is that senior managers ordered the destruction of important paperwork about the Council's job evaluation scheme (JES).

Now this is shocking on a whole number of counts.

First of all, the new JES was the most significant human resource issue to be dealt with in a generation and senior officials within the Council were well aware of the importance of keeping efficient and accurate records detailing how different jobs were scored and graded by the JES process.

Secondly, the outcomes of the Council's JES was already being vigorously challenged in the Employment Tribunal and so to destroy vital evidence when litigation was underway looks to be a deliberate act - an attempt to bury the evidence, if you like.

Thirdly, in this modern day and age absolutely no one, especially one of Scotland's largest councils, would be dumb enough not to 'back up' important records on a hard disk to keep them safe and secure for future reference.

So the big questions for senior officials within North Lanarkshire to answer are:

1. Exactly which records have been destroyed?
2. Which jobs have been affected?      
3. When was this instruction issued and by whom?
4. Why were the paper records not backed up?
5. Who is being held accountable and in what way for this shocking mess?

And you would think that local politicians would take these points up, on a cross party and all party basis, and help get to the bottom of exactly what has been going on.