From the editor: Sheffield council still hasn't said 'sorry' to the city

It couldn’t have been clearer in its findings. What wasn’t so obvious, to me at least, was whether what was put forward by our local authority in response was actually an apology or not.

They certainly had time to prepare it – reporters knew unofficially that councillors knew the contents of the report last week. Yet the quotes include neither the word sorry or apology. It also was not public in the way most of us would define the word.

You may, or may not, be interested to know that they emailed us a link when our reporters asked for information. When we requested clarifications, nothing was forthcoming.

Pretty much as you would predict.

But, stop there. Since the tree disaster we have had a new chief executive, new communications boss and new cabinet member in that area. How on earth could nobody see that the only thing to do was hold up their hands and say, sorry we got it wrong?

Let me just remind you that this is our city’s council, we pay their wages and we elect them.

They are there to represent Sheffielders – nothing more, nothing less.

So who is actually steering our ship now? In recent weeks – yes, during a pandemic when leadership saves lives – the council’s interim chief executive left without any public announcement other than a snippet on the council website. Presumably somebody is in charge right now but clearly the strategy from the town hall is that Sheffield shouldn’t be told loudly enough to be heard.

The leader has done no interviews with journalists for months yet, despite wanting to leave that vital role before lockdown, clings on without any profile.

A recent internal email described the head of the press office as the ‘interim heat of communications’. Quite the typo.