What Weca’s cocked-up hirings reveal about its chief executive Stephen Peacock

It’s catch-up time for me after a brief period of incapacity. Sorry, but it’s back to the West of England Combined Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committee on July 14, the first under new mayor Helen Godwin, and to public questions on pay to contractors. These were Kevin Slocombe of Cives and Nicola Beardmore of Latitude 83, paid, respectively, £150,000 from July 2024 to March 2025 and £113,700 from July 2024 to January 2025. Suzanne Audrey had the floor.

These questions prompted a surprise statement from the chief executive, Stephen Peacock, which I reproduce here in full.

Stephen Peacock: “There have been some recent questions that have been raised about procurement. And I welcome the opportunity to really clear this up. There were, last summer, some former senior officers in the organisation who were responsible for running a compliant process for the procurement of two consultants that I asked them to bring in.

The decision to bring that specialist resource in was necessary to address two specific organisational needs. Improvements in communications, which you just heard from the mayor, are now working better but back then were not working. I don’t think there’s any debate about that. And also improvements in the overall organisation, which had been subject to a “best value notice”.

The two individuals that I asked to bring in brought specific relevant track records that meant they were the right people at that right moment.

Earlier this year, the new monitoring officer brought to my attention the fact that the process that former officers had followed to bring in those people was not in compliance with our own internal procurement rules.

This was not a breach of public procurement law, but the regulations I should say, but it did fall short of our internal standards. When this information came to light I instructed officers to sort it out, to regularise it with one of the consultants who was looking to be kept on for a few months more, but the other was already scheduled to leave. So we just took the decision to regularise one but not the other.

Work to improve our understanding of the internal processes, which were in place and still are, forms part of the ongoing work on organisational improvement. So we have taken that on board and are making sure that it’s put into place in terms of the communication processes that are there and need to be followed. Thanks, chair.”

So let’s break it down.

I welcome the opportunity to really clear this up.

This is highly unlikely. Peacock has been put on the spot and told to explain himself. Spoiler alert: he won’t clear anything up.

There were, last summer, some former senior officers in the organisation who were responsible for running a compliant process for the procurement of two consultants that I asked them to bring in.

Peacock is blaming senior officers who have left Weca. This only hung together for about a couple of hours that day when the authority released an email in response to an FoI request. It clearly showed that the two key officers involved were Ben Mosley, the assistant chief executive who was in the room when Peacock read the statement, and Selonge Russell, head of finance and running procurement until July 2024, who was sitting next to Peacock in the meeting.

One thing that is clear: Peacock was responsible for throwing huge amounts of taxpayer-money at Slocombe and Beardmore, both former colleagues of his at Bristol city council. 

The decision to bring that specialist resource in was necessary to address two specific organisational needs. Improvements in communications, which you just heard from the mayor, are now working better but back then were not working. The two individuals that I asked to bring in brought specific relevant track records that meant they were the right people at that right moment.

What would be more accurate would be to say that Slocombe was brought in to handle the rogue mayor, Dan Norris, who had ripped through previous comms teams, sparking resignations and pay-offs to gag bullying claims. One PR, who was sympathetic to Norris, lasted just days. On his exit he broke down in tears over his treatment by Norris and his turbulent sidekick, Alex Mayer.

Slocombe could certainly boast comms experience. But his eight-year term as consigliere to Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees where he could throw his weight around as head of the mayor’s powerful office divided opinions. 

The fact that Norris had lost his political adviser, Mayer, when she was elected as an MP, and Slocombe was steeped in Labour should have raised questions about his suitability. It would have been unlawful for Slocombe to act as a political adviser. One hopes he didn’t. 

The Slocombe hiring is also put into perspective by the recent advert for a director of comms and corporate affairs at Weca for between £102,000 to £138,000. (For 2023-2024, the head of comms cost £83,153.) Why didn’t that process begin in April 2024? Better to throw huge amounts of taxpayer money at a Labour loyalist and trusted former Peacock colleague?         

Beardmore is a less visible entity since she prefers to tick the box for no publicity. How many local government officers don’t have a LinkedIn profile these days? Few, I would suggest. What such a profile would show is that Beardmore narrowly avoided a brush with fame at Shropshire council. As The Bristolian has previously reported, she was a council-appointed director to a council private venture, IP&E (“inspiring partnerships and enterprise”), that had to be closed after losing money – even while working for the council, of course. The council leader had to quit the company after being caught not declaring a relationship with a director of an accountant that worked with IP&E. All very rum.

Beardmore’s other moment in the limelight came after local democracy reporter Adam Postans reported that Bristol city council paid £218,005 for her to be the Clean Air Zone’s communications and engagement director. Quite a bounty. Beardmore, 54, also briefly acted as head of paid service at Bristol when it was temporarily headless during the Rees era. Not exactly deep in leadership experience, no professional qualifications that I can discover, but loyal. Perfect for Peacock. Curiously and perhaps needlessly, she was hired to undertake work on restructuring when senior officers within Weca were already capable of undertaking that.                     

Earlier this year, the new monitoring officer brought to my attention the fact that the process that former officers had followed to bring in those people was not in compliance with our own internal procurement rules.

The new monitoring officer! Bob Brown joined at the end of May 2024. He was in situ when Slocombe and Beardmore were hired. How did it take him almost a year to work out “the process that former officers had followed . . . was not in compliance”? (Perhaps as public anger rose over these huge payments, Brown was obliged to check that everything was above board and then … ooops … didn’t like what he found.) Oh, and the reference to former officers, as I have pointed out and as the FoI request shows, is plainly misleading. What some may also call a lie. Curiously, Bob Brown did not attend the meeting. Odd for a monitoring officer not to make the new mayor’s first gig. It must have been a personal emergency. Brown was replaced by Steve Hellard, the new deputy monitoring officer. Of course, he’s not that new to Brown: Hellard spent 20 years at Sedgemoor district council, working, more often than not for … yes, Bob Brown.   

Work to improve our understanding of the internal processes, which were in place and still are, forms part of the ongoing work on organisational improvement. So we have taken that on board and are making sure that it’s put into place in terms of the communication processes that are there and need to be followed.

Blah, blah, blah. Move along, nothing to see here. Except that current officers were responsible for the procurement, not former officers as Peacock says twice. Clearing this up? More like really hoping to get away with it. And this is not an isolated incident. Readers will recall Peacock’s failure to recollect the Grant Thornton report in January’s Scrutiny committee – about as likely as an Anglican vicar forgetting the existence of the New Testament.

Incidentally, the chair of Overview and Scrutiny, Jerome Thomas, seemingly a wholly-owned subsidiary of the chief executive, made this summing-up statement to the unitary leaders a few days later:

“In response to questions about procurement the CEO commented that in two instances internal procurement rules had not been followed and that this had been regularised with lessons learnt.”

I don’t know what Thomas is in this gig for, but it’s not the taxpayers.       

Words matter. The truth matters. It’s up to mayor Helen Godwin to make up her mind if these things matter to her.

Coming soon: the Audit Committee that Stephen Peacock couldn’t get to…