BURY Council's former chief executive failed to adhere to child safeguarding procedures in order to protect the ex-council leader and his party ahead of an election, an investigation has found.

Mike Owen's handling of Simon Carter — a former Labour councillor convicted of child porn offences — was influenced by an ulterior motive to help Cllr Mike Connolly, according to a disciplinary panel.

Mr Owen and Mark Carriline, the council's former executive director for children, young people and culture, have both resigned following two investigations into how they dealt with former Tottington councillor Carter — who admitted possessing indecent images of children and was sentenced to a community order in September, 2015.

A report which will be discussed at an extraordinary council meeting this Thursday concludes that Mr Owen 'demonstrated a misguided desire to 'help' the former leader which manifested itself by inappropriate briefings, a desire to control the proper flow of information and a failure to adhere to the council's policies and procedures'.

It adds that Mr Owen wanted to 'protect the former administration and its leader from public scrutiny in the run up to the 2015 elections'.

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The council's Human Resources and Appeals Panel said that Mr Carriline was 'overly compliant to the wishes of the former Chief Executive and became inadvertently tainted by Mr Owen's ulterior motive, and in doing so lost sight of his statutory duties'.

Cllr Rishi Shori, who took over from Cllr Connolly as council leader last year, ordered the investigation and has promised the 'fullest possible disclosure' of its findings to the public.

On April 1, 2015 Mr Owen was informed by a senior officer at Oldham Council that Carter had been dismissed from its library service in 2011 after being caught accessing images of children on a local authority computer.

Carter had since been approved as an adopter and was a governor of two schools.

Two independent investigations — carried out by Malcolm Newsam CBE and Charles Bourne QC — found that Mr Owen took no action to inform Bury Council officers charged with safeguarding children of these accusations, but did inform Cllr Connolly.

A report following the Newsam review describes Mr Owen's behaviour as 'inexplicable', adding that informing Cllr Connolly risked Carter being alerted to the accusations and putting any police investigation at risk.

A note of a meeting on May 12, 2015 records Mr Owen saying that he was 'protecting the reputation of the Labour group'.

At another meeting last October, when Cllr Shori called for a review, Mr Owen is reported to have said he was 'doing a favour to the Labour group' by protecting it and Cllr Connolly from the political impact of a scandal.

Mr Bourne concluded in his review that 'the close working relationship with the former leader, rather than any political bias' explained Mr Owen's actions.

Mr Owen gave evidence that he had been told by police on April 1, 2015 not to involve Children's Services, but police have contradicted that and Mr Bourne concluded that the former chief executive 'has either mis-remembered or invented a self-serving detail'.

Mr Carriline was not aware of the accusations until April 8, 2015, when he was informed separately by another Oldham Council officer.

However, it has been found that he subsequently delayed the start of an investigation and failed to comply with safeguarding requirements — including not informing the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) and only telling the two schools' headteachers rather than governors.

Mr Newsam concluded that Mr Carriline had 'placed political considerations above his statutory safeguarding duties', but Mr Bourne said that political bias was not a factor in his failures.

No formal action was taken to initiate a safeguarding investigation until April 13, 2015 — almost two weeks after Mr Owen was first informed.

Mr Newsam's report does, however, praise the council's 'good services to vulnerable children and families'.

The council was given a 'good' rating by Ofsted in 2016, and Mr Newsam said: "I am not surprised by this. The quality of staff and managers I have interviewed has been impressive."

He blamed the failures in the Carter case on senior managers deviating from 'ordinary and well-crafted procedures' and 'failing to do the most straightforward things well'.

Ahead of Carter's sentencing hearing in September 2015, Cllr Connolly — who served as mayor last year — provided a character reference letter on Bury Council letterhead.

It said that he had known Carter for more than 12 years and found him 'trustworthy, honest and reliable', adding that he was 'utterly surprised' by the charges against him.

Mr Bourne's report states that Cllr Connolly 'accepts that it was a wrong decision to give the reference and wrong also to use council paper'.

Sparing Carter a jail sentence, Judge Timothy Stead said that he had been impressed by the letters of testimony.

It has also emerged that, in July, 2015, Mr Owen wrote to Bury Council's Conservative group to outline the 'definitive managerial, legal, and operational response' to the Carter accusations.

He claimed that there had been an 'immediate strategy meeting', that 'all measures that were the duty of this council were put in place', and that the council acted 'swiftly and effectively'.

Mr Bourne concluded that the letter was 'flattering' but not necessarily intended to mislead.

The Bury Times understands that the Conservatives did not submit this letter to the Newsam investigation — the first that took place — and that the opposition party would not be interviewed by Mr Newsam.

The extraordinary council meeting will be held at 7.30pm on Thursday at Bury Town Hall. The council intends to make redacted versions of both the Bourne and Newsam reports available to the public.