Manchester’s leaders facing staff backlash over sexual misconduct

Dear Millers – first, some good news: we won a big gong in London last night!

Here's Mollie collecting her British Journalism Award from telly's Jeremy Vine for her extraordinary investigation into the University of Greater Manchester, which was recognised by the judges as the best piece of local journalism in the country this year. The story has prompted a major fraud investigation by the police, the suspension of senior university officials and several mentions in parliament, and as luck would have it, we have another update coming up this weekend. Huge congratulations to Mollie and all the others (Joshi as editor, Natalie our lawyer, Jake our illustrator, and all the others who quietly help when we need them) whose work goes into a successful investigation like this.

Now for today's story. Since we published our story about misconduct by senior executives at Manchester City Council, its ripples have been spreading. We've seen the suspension of Rochdale's council chief executive, coverage in the national press and increasing pressure on leaders in both Manchester and Rochdale to explain why they seemingly didn't act until the information came out via The Mill.

That pressure, as we report below, is coming not just from journalists but from rank and file staff. Manchester's elected leader Bev Craig and the council's chief executive Tom Stannard felt the need to convene a video call earlier this week, attended by an astonishing 2,500 staff, in which they tried to explain their response to the scandal and answer questions from their colleagues. Scroll down for more details on that, and the latest updates from Rochdale too.

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🚆 Andy Burnham has announced which railways will be the first to be integrated into the Bee Network next year. Lines from Glossop and Stalybridge will join the network on 13 December 2026, the same day tap-in, tap-out ticketing will be introduced at national rail stations across GM. Six more railways are set to join the Bee Network in 2027 and 2028, in what does appear to be extremely good news for local transport. “We are on the cusp of delivering a fully integrated, world-class transport system for our global city-region," Burnham said. "These changes will make everyday journeys easier and open up new opportunities for people across Greater Manchester.”

🗿 Great relief for Wigan antiques shop owner Grant Adamson, who appears to have dodged a possible fine for putting a sculpture of a naked gladiator outside his shop. Adamson was told a fine could be coming his way if he failed to remove ‘Golden Balls’, as the sculpture is known, from the shopfront, but he stood firm, telling BBC Radio Manchester he was prepared to take the matter to court. But Wigan Council changed tact, sending a follow-up letter telling Adamson to disregard the first one, and allowing the golden gladiator — which was originally used to advertise the 2000 film Gladiator starring Russell Crowe — to remain in pride of place outside Grant’s Bulldog Force. Adamson said they had “seen sense”.

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Manchester's council leaders are facing a growing backlash from staff over their handling of sexual misconduct allegations

On Monday afternoon, more than 2,500 Manchester council workers joined a video call chaired by the council’s leader Bev Craig and its chief executive Tom Stannard. You might expect that Craig and Stannard were giving an end-of-year pep talk to their staff, or thanking them for their work this year. 

In fact, the call was organised at short notice in an attempt to quell what has been described to The Mill as a growing sense of anger about allegations of sexual misconduct by senior council executives and how they were handled.