Sandwell’s Improvement Journey™: £1.5 Million, Zero Answers, and a Lot of Shredded Paper

Sandwell’s Improvement Journey™: £1.5 Million, Zero Answers, and a Lot of Shredded Paper

Sandwell Council loves a journey.
Customer journeys.
Improvement journeys.
Governance journeys.

Oddly, none of them ever seem to arrive anywhere.

Let’s recap the actual journey residents have been taken on over the last decade:

• A flawed external investigation
• A solicitor later reprimanded for racist remarks
• A corrective review exposing bias and misconduct
• A senior King’s Counsel opinion
• Promised apologies
• Approved actions
• And then… silence

All quietly swept under the civic carpet.

We had the Wragge investigation, led by a lawyer later disciplined by his own regulator.
We then had the Cox Review, commissioned by the Council itself, which reportedly found bias, governance failures and improper political interference.
Then came the Jenni Richards KC opinion, advising on what should happen next.

What happened next?

Nothing.

No publication.
No apologies.
No Maxwellisation.
No accountability.
Just a lot of Freedom of Information refusals and a leader telling Full Council she “didn’t know what the Cox Review was” — despite emails proving otherwise.

Meanwhile:

• Councillors asking awkward questions were deselected
• Scrutiny was softened, chaired, reshaped and neutralised
• Officers who refused to change reports were shown the door
• Senior figures left with enhanced settlements and confidentiality clauses
• External auditors nodded along
• Commissioners focused on process, not truth

And the public picked up the bill.

By conservative estimates, £1.4–£1.8 million of public money has been spent on this saga — for a conclusion that amounts to:

“Let’s all agree never to talk about this again.”

Grant Thornton signed off governance improvements.
Commissioners declared progress.
Leadership declared the matter closed.

But here’s the problem:

You don’t fix governance by burying evidence.
You don’t restore trust by suppressing reports.
And you don’t demonstrate Best Value by refusing to explain why £1.5 million bought no outcome.

This isn’t ancient history.
The reports are still suppressed.
The recommendations were never delivered.
The lies were never corrected.
The costs were never fully disclosed.

So yes — questions are still being asked.
And they will keep being asked.

Because improvement journeys that end in a paper shredder aren’t improvement at all.

They’re just cover-ups with better branding.

#SandwellCouncil #GovernanceFailure #Transparency #PublicMoney #Accountability #FOI #SuppressedReports #CoxReview #GrantThornton #Commissioners #ImprovementJourney