Opinion: Kate Josephs’ bid to regain trust with the people of Sheffield will take time and action

The decision is finally out: Kate Josephs has returned to the £200,000 per year top position at Sheffield Council despite the partygate scandal.
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As you will read in the news, it comes after nearly half a year of secretive deliberations and investigations by the council.

In her first interviews since she went on paid leave she said nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. Yes, that is true but her rule-breaking party in the Cabinet Office was no accident. It was pre-planned. Considering she was director general of the government’s Covid taskforce at the time she should have known it was wrong. She went anyway and she was one of the last to leave despite “Covid secure” measures going out the window, according to the Sue Gray report.

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Kate Josephs: Sheffield Council chief executive will donate part of her £200,000...
Kate Josephs, Sheffield Council's chief executiveKate Josephs, Sheffield Council's chief executive
Kate Josephs, Sheffield Council's chief executive
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If you are in such a high position of power and paid eye-watering sums of taxpayer money, you are held to higher standards and people rightly expect you to at the very least not break the rules you helped set.

Kate acknowledged that no version of the event should have happened, reiterated that she will always feel sorry for it, welcomed difficult conversations with people about how this has affected them and said she will donate a proportion of her salary to local causes for the rest of her time as chief executive. This is a good start but regaining trust with the people of Sheffield will take more than that.

The decision made by the council’s cross-party committee wouldn’t have come as a surprise to most. Kate was seen as a great chief executive for Sheffield who did good work in the year before this emerged. And of course, even the Prime Minister at the centre of partygate has not yet lost his job.

Whether people agree with the outcome or not, Sheffielders will have to live with it.

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Kate said herself that actions over time, not words, will show whether she can be trusted to lead the council again and she is committed to proving that.

But she isn’t the only one at the council who needs to learn from this saga.

The decision was made by a cross-party committee behind closed doors and almost nothing was disclosed about how that decision was reached over the nearly six month process until now.

Without full transparency how can the public trust that decisions made on their behalf are the right ones?

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If the council has learned from the tree felling scandal it should publish the investigator’s report, the full cost of everything on the council – which is apparently still being invoiced – and be honest about whether it really needed to go on for as long as it did and if not, tell us what caused the delay.

As Kate and the council move on from this and deal with the monumental tasks at hand, we can only hope they do better.