Respect and Congratulations for Letchworth's town council staff

Philip Ross, former Town Mayor, praises and congratulates the six women who have won their employment tribunal.

I would like to write to add my congratulations and record my respect to the women who have won their employment tribunal against the HELP-run Letchworth Town Council. The case was always about how the women had been treated not just in their contracts but in their every day work under these people.

The judge listed the disgusting attacks that women were subjected to including abuse, threatening behaviour and pornographic images. It is of little surprise to discover that HELP tried to use arguments around ‘super-injunctions’ to have the case heard in private as they believed it would be damaging to them as a group and individually.

Cllr Bryan Ellis has links with JK Rowling’s charity foundation, she must be appalled at the way they have acted. Refusing to go to arbitration or ACAS, all they agreed back in February was to pursue the women for all the costs (some £20,000).

Perhaps having lost Cllrs Ritchie et al will do the decent thing and pay the costs themselves? They also decided to set the dogs on the six women and hired a barrister who describes himself as a ‘Rottweiler in court’. The judge would have none of it and instead commended our previous council for its actions in both drawing up fair contracts and in it’s policies of helping the homeless, disabled and under privileged in the town.

The elephant in the room was that HELP’s aim all along had been to try and save Stuart Kenny at the Foundation. In this they failed as he left last year having lost a High Court battle against the old council; leaving the Foundation in financial difficulties and with his town centre strategy in tatters. HELP are fighting a lost battle in a war that is over. It is time to move on. The Foundation has new progressive and enlightened leadership which would benefit from working with a town council. HELP  need to go.

The only point Cllr Lovett is correct about is that it is for the people of Letchworth to decide. They should resign en-masse and let a new generation with a new agenda take their place.

A healing and caring agenda that will draw a line on the past and look to the future and will discuss, debate and consult on how to get the best for Letchworth and its people.

This is a time for new beginnings and a new Letchworth as we can have a low or zero cost council that works in partnership with the Foundation and other bodies for the benefit of the many not the few.

Philip Ross