JERSEY governments have used “compromise agreements” to pay off staff rather than resolving fundamental issues they had raised, according to former prison governor Susie Richardson.
Explaining her shock resignation from La Moye Prison in July three-and-a-half years after taking charge, Ms Richardson blamed lack of support and “frustration with the wider organisation and some of its processes and policies”. HR processes which should have taken 28 days, had taken as long as 18 months to resolve, she added.
Although she had not signed a compromise agreement herself, she said: “I’ve seen far too many people leave with [them] which means that we don’t learn. I knew there was something a bit weird about the government of Jersey when I contacted my predecessor before coming to Jersey and he couldn’t tell me anything because he had signed a compromise agreement,” she said.
The government did not respond directly to a question asking how many such agreements had been concluded in the past five years and what their cost was. But it provided three previous answers to questions posed under the Freedom of Information Law, one of which also failed to respond directly to a similar question about the number of compromise agreements concluded over the previous ten years.
However, it said: “Since 2014 all exit packages and the annual amounts paid by the Government of Jersey in severance payments to employees, which would include compromise agreements, have been disclosed in the States of Jersey Annual Reports and Accounts.”
Earlier responses to questions under the FoI law showed that between 2009 and 2013 £2,517,894 had been paid out in connection with 26 compromise agreements/pay-offs; and that in 2023 £476,253.33 had been paid until the beginning of November that year.
The former prison governor, in an interview with the JEP, acknowledged that changing personnel within government made the task of the civil service harder.
She said: “It’s hard for senior officials to grapple with some of these issues and make some tough decisions without knowing who their leadership is going to be and what the support is going forward. I think that would resolve some of the fear and the insecurities that I see. And I think that some of the HR policies don’t serve the staff or the Island well. But there is real recognition of that and we’ve got a new head of HR who’s committed to really sorting the basics. So I really wish her the very best in that and and hope that she’s successful but there’s a lot of work to be done.”
