A councillor has labelled the results of a local authority's whistleblowing survey as being "poor". The Vale of Glamorgan Council's governance and audit committee discussed the results of its staff survey on whistleblowing at a meeting this week. The survey, in which 323 members of staff participated, revealed that only 58% of respondents stated that they were willing to report concerns - a drop from 67% in 2018.
Where respondents gave reasons why they would not be willing to report whistleblowing incidents, a fear of potential consequences for themselves emerged as a common theme. Vale of Glamorgan Council member, Cllr Mark Hooper, said: "The results are pretty poor actually and it has a marked impact on peoples' willingness to want to whistleblow as well, which I think is a scary figure that came out of it."
Data from the findings also revealed that the majority of participants in the survey, 26% of them, were members of staff at schools. The next highest amount of participants by service area were adult services and learning and skills, both at 9% each. Head of Regional Internal Audit Service, Mark Thomas, said: "There has been a huge amount of effort put into trying to promote this in the Vale, probably more so than in many other authorities, but that perhaps hasn't translated into people coming through."
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Many areas, including ICT services, regeneration and planning, policy and business transformation and resource management and safeguarding only turned out participants amounting to 1% each of the total 323. Independent member of the governance and audit committee, Gareth Chapman said: "Obviously there is a low turnout of 323 staff... 323 staff from how many staff in the council?
"If it includes schools as well as the workforce of the council, I should imagine we are talking 4,000 - 5,000 people." He later added: "...[in] all those teams 1% is quite appalling really in some respects and that is why you need that raising of awareness of the policy in certain areas. " The council's findings did highlight that 68% of all respondents could identify all 10 key areas of malpractice referred to in the authority's whistleblowing policy.
It also revealed that 75% of respondents had heard of the council's policy. A council report on the findings highlighted: "... although 25% of staff reported that they were not aware of the policy, a high number of staff recognise actions which would be defined as malpractice and are a risk to the Council and residents." A Vale of Glamorgan Council spokesperson said: “This annual report went to the Council’s Governance and Audit Scrutiny Committee on Monday evening and its Appendix B details the significant work undertaken to promote the whistleblowing survey to staff.
"The Reach was extensive, with emails sent to all Councillors and staff, an effort noted at the meeting by the Head of Regional Audit. A dedicated phone number and email address has been established for anyone that wants to speak out on this subject, communication channels that are open to Councillors, Council staff, agency staff and contractors. This number is also available for the public to report any instances of fraud or breach of legal duty.
“In total, 75 per cent of responders said they were aware of the Council’s whistleblowing policy, while 58 per cent indicated that they would be prepared to whistleblow, a figure not dissimilar to other Local Authorities. In fact, of 17 Local Authorities contacted by the Monitoring Officer, six had received no notifications of this type in 2021/22, two had received one notification and two had received two notifications. Several proposals, including the creation of an easy-to-read summary document or information sheet, were suggested by responders as a way to raise awareness further.
“Developing an online course, video or team training session were among other comments submitted and the Council will now consider implementing such measures. Awareness-raising sessions will be added to Directorate and Team meeting agendas across the Authority and a summary of the policy will be distributed to managers and supervisors.
“A targeted promotional campaign will be launched in the New Year focusing on the protection afforded to whistleblowers and the options for reporting. This is in on top of an annual campaign designed to encourage staff to report issues. The Council will continue to produce regular reports on this topic, which will be reviewed by both its Cabinet and the Chief Executive.”
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