Tag Archives: Veale Wasbrough Vizards

PAYOFFS TO FAILED COUNCIL MANAGERS NOW TOTAL NEARLY £900K!

The BRISTOLIAN has learned that in the last year the city’s council taxpayers have doled out an astonishing £875,000 to council leaders for leaving! That’s OVER HALF A MILLION QUID going to failed service directors, and MORE THAN £300K being forked out for two former council bosses to put their feet up at home!

Jan Ormondroyd: doesn’t badly run councils for free, you know

First up, Bristol’s former Chief Exec THE BRADFORD SUN QUEEN, Jan Ormondroyd. She mysteriously ‘quit’ in a bit of a hurry in July 2012 and was handed a SECRET CASH HANDOUT in of around £50k in pay for work she never did – a figure way beyond any redundancy entitlement for a post that wasn’t redundant anyway.

The 57 year old was also given a whopping pension enhancement that saw Bristolians stumping up a further £135k or so. So the total bill to the council taxpayer for the SUN QUEEN to sit at home retired is not far short of £200k.

Stephen McNamara - no wonder he's smiling with a six figure payout from YOU!

Stephen McNamara: with a six figure payout courtesy of YOU, no wonder he’s smiling

Former legal boss, STEPHEN ‘LYCRA’ MCNAMARA followed the SUN QUEEN out the back door last Christmas. Having reinterpreted the law to suit the city’s richest man Steve (“Tax is for the little people”) Lansdown and landed Bristol with an expensive and UNDEFENDABLE JUDICIAL REVIEW into the ASHTON VALE Town Green, Lycra was considered surplus to requirements – and allegedly made redundant. Although, strangely, the post of Chief Legal Officer and Monitoring Officer, Lycra’s old job, still appears to exist and is not redundant at all.

To ease 55 year old Lycra on his way, he was “retired” and given a pension enhancement worth around £60k, three months pay worth around £14k per month, and a further £40k in “COMPENSATION FOR LOSS OF OFFICE”. Of course, Lycra thinks he’s too good for B&Q, so he has a tasty post-retirement ‘consultancy’ with expensive law firm Veale Wasbrough Vizards – best known for (have we mentioned this before?) representing a Catholic private school facing a paedo priest scandal.

The BRISTOLIAN can also reveal that another FIVE council managers, all on six figure salaries, last year shared “exit packages” worth £548K – that’s almost £110k each!!! Obviously all these payments massively exceed pay outs available through the redundancy policy created by Ormondroyd herself to, erm, prevent “excessive pay outs to top managers”.

Perhaps Ormondroyd’s redundancy policy – like taxation, in the opinion of McNamara’s chum Lansdown – only applies to “THE LITTLE PEOPLE”?

Welcome to austerity – Bristol style.

ALLOTMENTS FOR SALE! WHO’S GETTING RICH OFF THE GREAT GREEN SPACES LAND GRAB?

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Battle lines are being drawn in St. Werburgh’s between green-fingered local residents and sharp-suited corporate vultures over a blatant INNER CITY LAND GRAB following the announcement that the Lynmouth Road allotments will come onto the open market next month.

The one-acre parcel of land, with a guide price of £20,000, is being AUCTIONED OFF on 25th September by Clifton-based estate agent HOLLIS MORGAN. Its brochure notes that “there may be some long term development potential”, and suggests the possibility of vacant possession – which would only happen with the eviction of allotment holders. To rub salt into the wound, Hollis Morgan made the announcement just after National Allotments Week!

The Lynmouth Road site had been owned by training provider SCOUT ENTERPRISES (which readers with long memories may recall was heavily involved in compulsory workfare schemes, from Project Work through to Work Programme) before it went tits-up late last year.

Since then the ‘independent assurance, tax and advisory firm’ GRANT THORNTON has been in charge, and now its crack team of ‘recovery and reorganisation’ specialists – Richard Hicken, Nigel Morrison and Lynn Taylor – is ready to ASSET-STRIP THE ARSE OFF THE ALLOTMENTS.

Of course, this being Ashley ward, they face stern resistance from BS2’s mighty Green Party councillor duo SIR AUGUSTUS ‘THE DORK KNIGHT’ HOYTY-TOYTY and his sidekick ROB ‘BOY WONDER’ TELFORD. By “stern resistance” we do of course mean firm promises to “ensure it is referred to the relevant planning committee”, the possibility of a petition, and the submission of “strong objections” – TAKE THAT, THE MAN!

Meanwhile, the legal side of the St. Werburgh’s land grab is being handled by none other than VEALE WASBROUGH VIZARDS, the current home to baldy-headed former Bristol City Council lawyer-in-chief STEPHEN ‘MAHNA MAHNA’ MCNAMARA, and – as we may have mentioned before – best known for representing Catholic private school St. Benedict’s during a paedo priest scandal.

Whilst it isn’t known if McNamara is directly involved in this deal, he has certainly in the past been connected to what you might politely describe as ‘odd’ green-spaces-to-developers deals. One notable one also involved GEORGE FERGUSON before he ~~bought~~ won the Mayoralty and appointed the never-knowingly-overinformed Sir Hoyty-Toyty to become his ever-loyal Minister of Blue Peter Appeal Milk Bottle Top Collections.

So the Lynmouth Road allotment holders might be wise not to put too much faith in the likes of Hoyty-Toyty to draw a particularly deep line in the sand over their green space.

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HARRY POTTER AND THE USELESS SOLICITOR

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Little change at the City Council Legal Department as keen ‘Bristolian’ reader McNamara replaced by Nevin

Can we at The Bristolian be the first to welcome Bristol City Council’s new boy wonder legal boss LIAM ‘MALFOY’ NEVIN to town?

The spooky fresh-faced former public schoolboy recently jumped ship as Town Clerk in Stratford-upon-Avon to take over from our old friend STEPHEN ‘LYCRA’ MCNAMARA, after the sweaty-crotched baldy-head took early retirement to spend more time with his cycling accessories and Bristol Rovers plaque of honour for his outstanding contribution to local stadium planning in the south of the city.

It will be a hard act to follow, even though McNamara’s ‘retirement’ takes him only 500 yards from his old office to a cushy CONsultancy at the gated complex of glossy law firm Veale Wasbrough Vizards – best known for representing Catholic private school St Benedict’s during a paedo priest scandal.

Following such an IMPRESSIVELY OAFISH predecessor, rosy-cheeked Malfoy really has to pull out all the stops in his drive to demonstrate he can be an even bigger tool of the law, while taking a very interesting approach to managing the huge cuts required in his fiefdom.

In mid-February, on discovering he runs a legal department that can no longer afford, err, lawyers, Malfoy thought it would be a terrific wheeze to send – instead of, y’know, a qualified solicitor or something – one of his secretaries down to the County Court to represent the council at a hearing.

Alas, the judge was less than impressed with this fine example of local authority “efficiency saving” and sent said secretary packing back to Shitty Hall to tell Malfoy that m’lud would hold him in CONTEMPT OF COURT if ever he dispatched an unqualified representative to his court again.

A contempt of court charge – that will definitely save Bristol’s taxpayers lots of money!

Well done, Malfoy. You’re going to be fun to have around aren’t you?