Suspensions at Cheshire East

Yesterday, we published the first of the two articles about Cheshire East in the current edition of Private Eye magazine's Rotten Boroughs column. As is often the case, it featured Michael Jones, the council's leader until he resigned eighteen months ago.

Today, it's the second story which we cover with more suspensions at the council – last week we detailed the continuing suspensions of the council's chief executive Mike Suarez and Bill Norman, Director of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer.

Private Eye said:

A more recent scandal to hit Cheshire East, as the last two Eyes have reported, has been the admission that the council manipulated its air quality figures favourably in a "deliberate and systematic" manner for at least three years.

We can reveal that two senior officers, environmental health supremo Tracey Bethany and senior environmental health enforcement officer Phil Mason, have been suspended by the council to cover up – sorry, to get to the bottom of – what had been going on.

A third officer, environmental protection team leader, Nick Kelly, is off work with stress. Who can blame him?

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