By Peter Tremayne
The woman who hired former council cabinet member Louis Gardner was present at the Corserv board meeting which meekly agreed to “note” his appointment. You can download the minutes of that meeting, obtained under FOI, here: redacted minutes of CAL Board meeting on 10 Mar 2025
On Monday 10th March, a dozen board members met at 9am in Truro. Newquay Airport managing director Samantha O’Dwyer, who had already resigned but who was working out three months’ notice, joined the meeting remotely.
We now know that Ms O’Dwyer emailed councillor Gardner to offer him £70,000 a year three days after announcing her own resignation.
But crucially, five days before this Corserv board meeting, Cornwall Council chief executive Kate Kennally had learned of (then) councillor Gardner’s appointment.
Ms Kennally, as the shareholder representative, could have told Corserv not to proceed. She could have advised then council leader Linda Taylor that councillor Gardner, as the cabinet member responsible for Newquay Airport, was in an untenable position and that he should be sacked from the cabinet immediately. Ms Kennally could have told any of the board members that such was councillor Gardner’s conflict of interest that the damage to the council’s reputation would be incalculable. She could have demanded that Ms O'Dwyer be sacked immediately. Ms Kennally could have called the police.
But instead Ms Kennally took legal advice and decided that she did not need to do anything. This was, she decided, a matter for Corserv.
Whether this tells us anything we did not already know about the council’s chief executive is a moot point.
But it is what happened at the Corserv board meeting - and what did not happen - which underlines several points about why the new Cornwall Council administration will need more than a “conversation” to restore public confidence.
It is just about credible, given the staggeringly incompetent lines of reporting between Cornwall Airport Ltd and its parent company, that chief executive Neil Edmond did not know until 10th March. But this would be credible only if we believe that Ms Kennally did not tell him. Mr Edmond has said, in a Freedom of Information answer, that he does not know when he first learned of the appointment.
The day after the Corserv board meeting, Cornwall Reports published news of “Gardner-gate” and the whole narrative started to change.
What is crystal clear now is that no amount of warm words and treacle can repair the damage caused to the public trust. The new council leader, Liberal Democrat Leigh Frost, has spoken of the need for a “conversation” about how County Hall and Corserv handled Gardner-gate.
A conversation is not enough. For as long as Corserv remains an arms-length company, there needs to be structural change to the relationship between its management and its shareholder. Having a chief executive who, alone, represents the shareholders' interest is clearly another accident waiting to happen.
County Hall officials are apparently not keen on having councillors back on the Corserv board. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a growing sense that only councillors should be on the board.
The reputation of the Council is totally shot to pieces and there is no way on earth that a mere conversation is going to resolve the huge issues facing our newly elected members. The reason most of you have been elected is because the “thinking” electorate voted for you in a huge effort to sort the offending officers out. The relationships between the senior officers and the many “arms length companies” is bordering on illegal, if not lawfully certainly morally! The Gardner scandal is just the tip of the iceberg and the police should definitely keep digging. The newly elected members should be pushing really hard for a FULL investigation if they are to stand any chance of improving the Councils standing and reputation with the Cornish tax payers!
Paul
Very well said, not a lot can be added to it but the new council will stand or fall by how it deals with what you quite rightly highlight.
A bland ”conversation” will merely facilitate the delivery of yet another sugar crusted, sparkle dusted turd, by playing straight into Kennallys hand while fatally instantly compromising the new councils avowed attempt to rebuild trust where there is presently none.
There had been for almost the entire life of the previous council a very strong prima facie case for the summary dismissal of both Ms Kennally and Mr Mason for their catastrophic often disastrous and always embarrassing stewardship of Cornwalls governance, encapsulated in the eye watering levels of debt accrued by their wilful indulgence in the the unacceptable pursuit of the dark art of casino capitalism.
This disgraceful situation taken in isolation ought to persuade any reasonable person in possession of the facts that there has been considerable misbehaviour in public office, quite apart from the Spaceport sideshow currently under investigation, which must under no circumstances be allowed to become a smokescreen for much greater misdeeds elsewhere in Cornwall Councils sclerotic network of crass incompetence.
Currently Councillor Frost has the encouraging demeanour of a man on a mission to right past wrongs which will take courage and considerable ability to face down the current dictatorship ”upstairs” which emasculated the previous leader and moulded her in its own image of fully compliant, always technically correct, crass incompetence that rendered the whole institution impervious to any attempts at reform.
Under no circumstances must this situation be allowed to repeat itself given that two senior heads on a plate will largely resolve the current dilemma, Councillor Frost and his shiny new cabinet had best grasp the nettle sooner rather than later, by cracking on unequivocally to get the dirty deed done and dusted, as the essential first step in actually rebuilding a credible modicum of trust in OUR council.