Paul Simpson, of “Plane Crash” Homes for Lambeth, will need more than a crash helmet to save him this time. Picture kindly and irrevocably licensed by Paul Simpson from his Flickr under CC-BY-2.0. Edit: In an attempt at rebranding, Paul is now going by Paul Hutchinson Simpson.
Lambeth is one of the most deprived Boroughs in London, having many vulnerable residents with housing needs including over 400 homeless people. Unfortunately, a flagship scheme intended to solve the crisis, council-owned property developer Homes for Lambeth (HfL), has failed catastrophically according to a review by independent peer Lord Kerslake, a former head of the Home Civil Service, the recommendations from which have been accepted by the council at its Cabinet meeting of 5 December 2022. In the five years since 2017, the company has only begun the construction of 65 homes – a mere 13 a year. Whilst Kerslake did not single out any member of staff he did criticise the HfL’s relationships with the council and communications with the public.
The Witchfinder was amused but also dismayed to discover that his former Labour Party colleague Paul Simpson has been responsible for some of the areas criticised for years, the report only cementing your author’s opinion, formed nearly two decades ago, that Simpson is a serious brand risk, who should not work in management or sensitive roles. There have been general concerns raised about Labour cronyism in the Borough and the governance and spending controls of Lambeth Borough over HfL. The case raises questions about whether appointees to HfL had appropriate qualifications, experience and performance history and whether proper recruitment processes were followed. Casual investigation found further matters, expanded upon below, that underline Simpson’s failures as a communications professional and also child protection issues, around the manner in which he has distributed pictures of his own child online. After careful consideration, I feel there is a compelling public interest in writing about this.
Have you ever had a work colleague, who is particularly difficult and unpleasant to work with, only to experience the frustration that management do not agree? The sort of person who will boast like a contestant on the Apprentice, only to deliver disaster? The sort of person who at a widget company will endlessly extol their widget-making and strategic widget management prowess. Then when their latest model of widget turns out to catastrophically flawed, a … “plane crash” … as it were and has to be withdrawn from sale, when they can no longer avoid accountability, they will turn on a dime and deny it was anything to do with them! It is not an uncommon experience, whether in corporations or, for example, local government. It is an experience I have shared.
The Short Version
This article, I am afraid, is a deep dive. It is intended for journalists doing background research into the Homes for Lambeth Scandal, HR Departments doing employment due diligence and Lambeth residents / activists. It is necessary to refer with precision to a number of documents and quote from them. However, the super-short easy read summary of what is set out below is this:
Paul Simpson is a ‘communications’ ‘professional’ and former Labour Party staffer. He got jobs at Lambeth and in HfL. There have been concerns raised about Labour cronyism in the Borough. It is not clear from Simpson’s CV as set out on his LinkedIn account that he was fully qualified for the role with which he entered HfL. When I asked what qualifications Paul had for one part of a job he got, he ignored me and HfL replied point blank refusing to answer, leading me to the inference there was no justification to give. In his role at HfL Paul boasted of being in charge of lots of things, many things which the Kerslake review said went wrong. It is to be inferred he had some responsibility for the failures, even if not all of it. When I put questions to HfL, the response which must have been authorised by Paul was dishonest and clumsily attempted to bully by threatening defamation proceedings could be issued by HfL (which is undermined by the fact it is being wound up and the threat was made by an HR officer).
I had similar experiences when I worked with Paul in 2004 to 2005 at the Labour Party and there were similarly bad outcomes for his project – the seat whose election he was responsible for was the only one in Enfield which was lost in the 2005 General Election. Because of his behaviour, I am worried that Paul could really harm some people if he had seniority over them in any role whatsoever. I discovered that Paul’s online presence was shoddy contrary to his own doctrines. He had inappropriately distributed pictures of his child (albeit, I stress, legal images) and those images had been harvested and archived over a period of years by third parties, likely without his knowledge.
I feel morally obliged to raise these concerns in emphatic terms to make them available to anyone else who feels aggrieved and to help organisations which might otherwise employ or engage Paul Simpson to protect themselves. My article will be available as to anyone he has worked with, or works with in future, who feels aggrieved and if anyone chooses to sue Paul or an organisation in relation to Paul, is admissible in court or in the employment tribunal under s1 (1) Civil Evidence Act 1995.
A media inquiry containing the central allegations of this article was sent to HfL, Simpson and other interested parties on 16 January 2023. A near final draft of this article, including an earlier draft of this summary, was put on 24 January 2023. No denial nor objection was received from Simpson nor HfL by the deadline, save as below and that a more junior member of staff asked not to be named (to which I agreed). There was an offer of extension of time for persons named in the article to take legal advice, which was not taken up.
Now to the detail:
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