Exclusive: Senior council officials engaged in ‘sleazy’ behaviour towards young female staff

This time last year, hundreds of Manchester’s council workers gathered at the Midland Hotel for a glitzy staff awards party. The guests were seated randomly, to encourage mingling between departments, and when the event was finished, many of them filtered out onto the streets and into local pubs and bars. “It usually becomes a bit of a social,” one staff member says. “People go out afterwards.”

One group of workers made their way to Albert’s Schloss, the beer hall on Peter Street, before going on to Dirty Martini nearby. The group included three of the council’s most senior executives – high-ranking men earning salaries over £100,000. But it also included several young women at the opposite end of the town hall pay scale: recently-joined graduate trainees in their early to mid-twenties. The men with them were not so much their bosses as their boss’s boss’s bosses.

What happened inside Dirty Martini has never been reported before. The Mill has seen an investigative report by an outside law firm commissioned by the council that describes “sleazy” behaviour and says the female graduates were not prepared for the “level of creepiness” they encountered.

The report substantiates two complaints about the men’s behaviour, most notably an incident of unwanted touching by the council’s assistant chief executive James Binks, who is in his mid-40s. The woman he targeted is a young graduate who had experienced the care system and is early in her career at the council. Binks is now the chief executive of Rochdale council, who told us last night that it expects the “highest standards of behaviour from all members of our staff”.

A spokesperson added: “We recently received information from Manchester City Council in relation to a disciplinary investigation involving a former member of their staff and are following our normal processes.” The council told us that Binks recognises that his behaviour fell below acceptable standards, but that he strongly refutes that it was in any way sexual.

Sara Rowbotham, the former deputy leader of Rochdale and a whistleblower in the town’s grooming scandal, says Binks’s position is “untenable” and that “he needs the book thrown at him.” She noted that a council is technically the corporate parent of children in care, and the notion of a senior council employee acting inappropriately towards a woman who has experienced care is unconscionable. “When you work for a local authority, those are our children,” Rowbotham told The Mill after we briefed her about our reporting. “We can’t have that kind of behaviour from a senior professional.”

Both local MPs in Rochdale also expressed concern. Labour MP Paul Waugh told us: “The public rightly expect the very highest standards of conduct in public life. These are serious allegations and natural justice demands that any investigation should be as thorough as possible and follows the evidence wherever it leads.”

The second man accused of inappropriate behaviour was more senior still: Paul Marshall, in his early-50s and Manchester’s deputy chief executive and former director of children’s services. The report finds that Marshall made a suggestive comment towards the same young woman. The council has told us he has now left the organisation.

The third man is the council’s HR director Mark Bennett, who is not accused of misconduct in the report, but who witnessed Binks’s behaviour in Dirty Martini. Bennett appears not to have initiated an investigation into his colleagues because it was only eight months later, this summer, when the city solicitor began looking into it after receiving a formal complaint from a group of staff.

When we asked the council why Bennett didn’t act, they initially told us the council “takes allegations of inappropriate behaviour between staff members extremely seriously” but said that they can’t comment on individual staffing issues. After we followed up with further questions about Bennett yesterday afternoon, the council announced that he was leaving the organisation “imminently”. There’s no evidence that the council sacked either Marshall or Bennett, meaning they may have been allowed to resign. 

‘Inappropriate touching and grinding’

James Binks was a high-flyer in Manchester, a former Treasury official who joined the council in 2011 on secondment from Whitehall and stuck around for 14 years, rising to increasingly senior roles, most recently assistant chief executive. A married Cambridge graduate who was known as a quiet and somewhat “nerdy” character, he gives the impression of being a socially conscientious local authority leader.

“Men can promote equality and respect, and call out harassing, sexist and violent behaviours when they see it,” Binks told a gathering in Rochdale last Friday to mark a White Ribbon march about violence against women. “Men can recognise that they can take responsibility, and think about their own actions and values,” he told the assembled crowd of volunteers and campaigners.

But Binks left a different impression on his junior colleagues on the night of the awards ceremony in Manchester. Victoria Duddles, a senior employment lawyer from Weightmans LLP who was commissioned by the council to investigate what happened, observes that “there was a vibe of less than professional behaviour by senior members” during and after the awards.

Duddles reports one woman describing the atmosphere as “sleazy” and notes that although she “had been prepared for seeing managers drunk, she had not expected what she described as a level of creepiness.” Another witness who spoke to Duddles said they found it weird that senior council officers were dancing with young graduates, and that they saw some “odd behaviour”.

The report says that one young graduate “felt she was being worked on” by Binks and Marshall, “who were buying her drinks.” This was the junior staff member who had previously experienced care. According to the report, Binks was seen “inappropriately touching and grinding” on the young woman while they were dancing. The incident was witnessed by the council’s HR director Bennett, who pulled Binks to one side.

Bennett was not the only observer. One eyewitness told Duddles that the young woman looked uncomfortable, and that Binks had his arms around her. Duddles, who upheld the complaint about Binks’s behaviour (meaning that she found that it was well founded), notes in her report that even though two staff members — including Bennett — saw their young colleague looking uncomfortable, neither removed Binks “of their own volition”. Allegedly, Bennett had to be asked by another staff member to intervene.

‘An attempt to cover up what actually went on’

Manchester has made a big deal of its attempts to counter harassment against women.

The council’s much heralded “Women’s Night-time Safety Charter” offers free training and guidance to venues across the city, including training on “how to be an active bystander” and “act against predatory behaviour before it puts any women at risk”. Dirty Martini, the bar where the Binks incident took place, is signed up to the charter.

In 2021, the council passed a motion calling on Greater Manchester Police “to record harassment of women as a hate crime as soon as possible”, but they do not appear to have reported the alleged harassment of a junior employee by a senior council official to the police.

The young graduates might have hoped that these public commitments and the presence of Bennett and Marshall would shield them from further inappropriate behaviour after the men left Dirty Martini — and perhaps create a mechanism for Binks’s conduct to come to light. That doesn’t appear to be what happened.   

Marshall was the most powerful of the three — promoted to deputy chief executive after a successful spell as the director of children’s services, which was recently rated “outstanding”. But when the council celebrated the department’s dramatic improvement this month, Marshall wasn’t mentioned in the press release, and the council said he left this week, just over a month after council leaders received the report from Weightmans.

The report finds that Marshall “worked on” the graduate staff member alongside Binks. After leaving Dirty Martini, she was in a taxi with a colleague. The report isn’t clear on exactly how Marshall ended up speaking to the woman on the phone, but he is alleged to have said to her: “you need to convince me to come back out”.

This allegation is upheld by Duddles, who also notes that Marshall denied being on the call. “This does suggest there may be an attempt to cover up what actually went on,” she concludes.  

Did that possible cover-up extend to a wider effort by the senior executives to avoid the disclosure of what happened that night jeopardising their careers?

One question that we have repeatedly asked the council is about the role of Bennett, who the report says witnessed Binks inappropriately touching the young graduate and pulled him aside. Bennett is the council’s director of HR, and is an experienced hand, having previously performed the same role for Sheffield and York councils.

Why didn’t he immediately initiate an investigation into the behaviour he witnessed and brought to an end? It was only this summer that a group of female council staff members submitted a complaint, first sparking an informal probe by the city solicitor and then the full investigation by Weightmans. One insider notes that the graduates may have waited until their jobs had been secured into permanent staff roles before they complained about the conduct they had faced and witnessed, for fear of retribution by their bosses.

If Bennett had begun an immediate investigation, it would have occurred a year ago, well before Binks left Manchester to take on the £200,000-a-year job as chief executive at Rochdale council, which he began in April this year. Rochdale council says that it followed a standard recruitment process, which included seeking references from Manchester. Rochdale says no concerns were raised, and it’s unclear whether Bennett was involved in the referencing process. 

Then there is the question of whether Bennett passed information about what he had seen up the chain to his immediate manager. Again, we have not received answers from the council or Bennett himself on this point. At the time, his manager was Paul Marshall. 

Manchester chose not to answer any of our 25 questions, but told us last night that Bennett is leaving the organisation imminently, meaning that all three men are now gone. In a statement, they said: 

Where investigations establish conduct falling below the high standards that we expect from all employees, the Council takes appropriate action in line with its procedures. We cannot comment on individual staffing issues, but we would always promptly instruct an independent investigation, ensuring allegations are fully considered, and appropriate action taken in line with the findings.

Rochdale council told us that it has a copy of the report. “We expect the highest standards of behaviour from all members of our staff and like most organisations, we have suitable procedures to deal with disciplinary issues involving council officers,” a spokesperson said. “We recently received information from Manchester City Council in relation to a disciplinary investigation involving a former member of their staff and are following our normal processes.”

Local Labour MP Elsie Blundell told us: “I am aware this is about a situation with a previous employer, but it has become clear that the Council is only going to be able to move forward if responsibility is taken and apologies are made. I hope this will happen swiftly.” 

Sara Rowbotham, the former deputy leader of Rochdale whose role in bringing the grooming scandal to light was popularised by the BBC drama Three Girls, told us she expects the council to dismiss Binks. 

"I think it’s disgusting,” Rowbotham said. “He needs the book thrown at him. The council needs to do what they say. That White Ribbon campaign should actually mean something, not just rhetoric. It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable that a senior professional doesn’t understand appropriate boundaries."

Responding to the claim from Binks that grinding on the woman wasn’t sexual, Rowbotham said: “That’s exactly the problem. Men might think it’s a joke. It’s the equivalent of a 1970s squeeze of the bottom in the workplace. They are dismissing her account, because her word isn’t worth anything.” 

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