H&F Council & tax avoidance: Private Eye

An appearance in "Rotten Boroughs" is not something any local authority particularly wants, but it appears our Council has earned another of its regular outings due to the apparently murky financial arrangements surrounding its very highly paid "consultant" Nick Johnson, who is leading our Council's property development scheme over at West Ken, in opposition to the majority of residents who live there.

This follows my story of January 30th which revealed that Mr Johnson, who had been retired early from Bexley Council with a £300,000 payout on the grounds he was 'permanently unfit' to work. He was hired months later by H&F for £950 per day. 

This prompted Teresa Pearce MP, whose constituency includes Bexley and who was formerly a senior tax investigator at PricewaterhouseCoopers, to say to the Independent on Sunday that, while the arrangement was legal, "it's not within the spirit of the law, definitely not". She added: "Within a year of him being judged to be in permanently ill health he was pictured in a hard hat, with a spade, digging, in a brochure for H&F Homes – this is just so barefaced that it's insulting. Whatever he is paid for holding that office should go through the payroll and it doesn't. HMRC should investigate this."

The story has now also been followed up by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism but not, as yet, by the local press.