A FORMER leader of Tameside Council has stepped down from her role as head of a key panel.
Cllr Brenda Warrington is currently one of 10 Labour representatives suspended from the party as it investigates the Trigger Me Timbers WhatsApp group.
And as she feels her position as head of the authority’s children’s services scrutiny panel is ‘too important,’ she has resigned from the role.
Cllr Warrington also cites a ‘media circus’ and ‘distractions’ as she finds herself caught up in the controversy surrounding Gorton and Denton MP Andrew Gwynne.
In a statement, seen by The Correspondent, she says: “As you are aware, a Commissioner’s report into Tameside Children’s Services, undertaken last year, highlighted significant failures, which in turn resulted in changes to both the corporate and political leadership of Tameside.
“The work of the CS Scrutiny Panel is far too important to allow any distractions to undermine the good progress that has and will continue to be made to improve the lives of the children of Tameside.
“Therefore, in view of the current climate, considering the media circus that has been created, I feel it best that I step aside, as Chair of the Panel, for the time being.
“However, I will be maintaining an active interest in the work of the panel going forward.”
Cllr Warrington says she has told Tameside Council’s leader, Cllr Eleanor Wills, about her decision to step down.
She was appointed to the role in September, returning to frontline politics after she was ousted as leader by Cllr Gerald Cooney in May 2022.
Tameside Council’s children’s services department, which is rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted, has been in the spotlight since a withering report by government-appointed commissioner Andy Couldrick.
Now former chief executive Sandra Stewart questioned the evidential basis for claims of a ‘toxic’ and ‘bullying’ working environment.
But Mr Couldrick added: “I believe the council has not adequately understood, cared about, or engaged with its role and responsibilities towards its most vulnerable children.
“Children and families have been let down, and not exclusively by service leaders, but by the whole council, political and corporate.
“Tameside MBC has provided poorly performing children’s services for too long. The overall picture is of an authority unable to effect sustained improvement over a considerable period.
“It is my view the council currently does not have the capacity and capability to affect the necessary and sustainable improvements without oversight and support.
“The council, corporate and political, is quick to blame for failure – individuals, frontline staff, partners, advisors, Government departments.
“I have been left with a powerful sense of a council slow to spot, and slower still to accept responsibility for, its weaknesses and challenges.
“These failures have not been caused by individuals, nor by the actions of partners. They are caused by an organisation that has failed to establish the conditions for good children’s services to thrive, that has not sought the right advice and support or not used it well.
“This must change under the relatively new political and corporate leadership.”