BPB nails idiots at Griffith City Council

Well, it had to happen somewhere, but in all the years of BPB accreditation of council staff, the BPB has never found any cause for alarm in any Council.  That is, up until a recent investigation into work being carried out at Griffith that required BPB accreditation, but was carried out by people without that accreditation.

Here is a link to the BPB’s report.  It is relatively tight-lipped about how, when the BPB’s accreditation requirements are notorious in the industry, some people (who were not members of ours) ended up doing work which required BPB accreditation.  Those people reported to a Manager (who was not a member of ours) who seemed to think that all perfectly fine, and they in return reported to a Director (also not a member of ours) who seemed to have no awareness or concern, if he knew at all.

Clearly here is clear evidence of a direct causal relationship between doing something completely stupid and not being a member of ours but Griffith has always been a place reluctant to pay market rates of pay if they are required to attract and retain staff.

Whether they did try to attract staff who were BPB accredited, and simply couldn’t do so because they weren’t prepared to pay proper rates, and then decided to let anyone at all do the work, we don’t know.  But we will be engaging with the GM to try to find some kind of explanation about how this farce could roll out and how we can avoid it happening again, anywhere else. 

Griffith, and particularly the management at Griffith- the GM, Director and Manager - have let us all and the industry down.  What a significant cluster****.

Local government always said that the accreditation by the BPB of council staff was unnecessary.  There were sufficient checks and balances - of the qualifications and experience of people doing the work and their supervision by people who also had experience doing the work - for there to be more than enough proper governance and control of the process.  The reality was that the checks and balances applied by councils could never be matched by the private sector. 

And, despite the years of oversight by the BPB, the BPB was never able to find the industry lacking. 

Now they have.  All of those involved at Griffith let us all down.

It’s in the Minister’s office but nothing’s happening. It has been:

since the Government and the Minister were appointed on 5 April 2023. We are still waiting for the legislative changes required.

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