Council fails to pay 200 interpreters for more than three months
Mayor Jason Perry’s omnishambles council could find itself dragged through the small claims court by dozens of angry service providers because a faulty payments system has failed to make payments to around 200 freelance translators and interpreters for three months.
The council’s total debts to the hard-working suppliers is estimated to be tens of thousands of pounds.
It has emerged that Croydon Council’s internal payment system collapsed overnight at the end of July. Three months on, the translators are still waiting for their money and “pulling our hair out over the lack of communication”.
CTIS – the Croydon Translation and Interpretation Service – has ground to a halt, with important meetings with often vulnerable clients having to be cancelled due to non-payment of fees. CTIS personnel have been left out of pocket for amounts from a few hundred to several thousand pounds.
Despite numerous complaints from the translators and various assurances from senior council managers, a payment deadline of this week has come and gone with no money paid by Croydon’s cash-strapped council.
The situation has also highlighted that the council has no system in place to make emergency payments to its casual workers when its computerised payments system breaks down.
And Inside Croydon has established that Jason Perry had no idea whatsoever about the chaotic situation at council headquarters, prompting one Town Hall opposition figure to urge the Tory Mayor to “get a grip”.
The 200 members of the CTIS team provide translation services across around 75 languages and dialects, plus British Sign Language and deaf-blind support. Day-to-day demand is heavy across Arabic, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Ukrainian, Urdu, Farsi, Tamil and Pashto.
CTIS mainly covers high-stakes social care, safeguarding and child protection cases. CTIS, which has operated for more than 30 years, also organises languages support for Bromley Council, Wandsworth Schools, and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust.
In Croydon, its freelancers provide vitally important support to allow the council’s full-time staff to do their jobs, and is especially necessary in a borough where the Home Office has one of its largest immigration control centres in the town centre, at Ruskin Square.
The translators work in face-to-face meetings at Fisher’s Folly and via conference calls and video calls across children’s and adult social care, early help services, schools, mental health assessments and family court hearings.
“The impact on residents who need linguistic support is grim,” according to one regular translator, who asked not to be identified in this report.
“When I had to pull out of bookings recently, vital legal meetings — including pre-proceedings child protection meetings — could simply not go ahead.
“I’m not sure social workers understand why interpreters haven’t been available lately, or whether they just assume people aren’t turning up for their bookings.”
Of the unpaid fees, the translator said, “While a few hundred pounds might sound small to council bosses, it hits self-employed household budgets hard in the current economic climate.”
With the council’s computers malfunctioning since July, the translators asked if emergency hardship payments, in lieu of invoices being settled, were a possibility.
“It’s bewildering that they didn’t set them up immediately.”
The translators appear to have been caught in the cross-fire of a turf war at Fisher’s Folly. In one email, David Wheeler, the council’s business and service compliance operations manager, wrote: “The delay has been caused by central processes that we are currently negotiating with the accounts payable team and governance…
“We do not agree with their position.”
Said the translator: “Hearing that CTIS and central accounts/governance are actively arguing while workers go unpaid is alarming.” Some of the workers have become concerned about whether they will ever get paid and whether the bankrupt borough has run out of money once again.
“Without straight answers from the top, the situation has become ridiculous.”
To make a bad situation worse, in one chain of emails, a senior council official broke all kinds of data protection laws by sending out a mass email – with every address clearly seen in the cc field.
At the end of September, Simon Robson, Croydon’s director of operations for adult social care, wrote from his office on the second floor of Fisher’s Folly “to apologise unreservedly… for the delay in recent payments to you”.
Robson’s email continued: “As David Wheeler has advised you, we have moved to a new system that supports all things CTIS but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances the payment processes became delayed – hence the issue that has arisen in the last few weeks.
“We have been working extremely hard with our new provider to ensure that this issue is managed as quickly as possible – please be aware it is not the provider’s fault – so moving forward the payments process will return to the timescales you have been used to over many years.”
Another month later, the problems have still yet to be fixed.
“Since colleagues can no longer afford their bills, many of us have stopped accepting bookings,” the translator told Inside Croydon.
“That means essential meetings are actively being cancelled or postponed, leaving vulnerable non-English speakers stranded without professional support.
“The failure sits squarely with finance and accounts, yet nobody higher up is taking proper ownership.”
And they add: “Communication from the council has been pretty dismal.
“We keep getting fobbed off with vague lines about holding on and how ‘every effort is being made’.”
Several translators say that they have repeatedly been asked to re-invoice for unpaid amounts, and issued with multiple purchase orders for the same booking.
Some are contemplating taking the council to the small claims court, a quick and inexpensive way of appearing before an independent judge, who can order payments to be made, plus costs. It would represent an ignominious new low for the basket-case council.
Councillor Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, has written to Mayor Perry over what he described as “an alarming situation”. According to King, neither the Mayor nor Yvette Hopley, the Sanderstead councillor who serves as cabinet member for health and adult social care, had been made aware of the situation by council bosses.
King wants emergency payments to be made to all affected interpreters, and for outstanding payments to be made within a week.
Mayor Perry has failed to reply to King’s urgent email.
Today, Councillor King told Inside Croydon: “It is shocking that the council has treated its own interpreters in this way.
“More alarming still is that neither Mayor Jason Perry nor his cabinet member was aware of the situation until I brought it to their attention.
“This raises serious questions about how the council is being managed, how information is being communicated to those in charge, and whether basic oversight is being exercised.
“It is further evidence of the serious organisational problems within Croydon Council and raises fundamental questions about the Mayor’s grip on the organisation he is responsible for leading.”
Jason Perry is paid £86,000 per year as Mayor of Croydon.
