‘He wants John gone’: Mayor ‘goaded’ council boss in fiery meeting

Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun expressed frustration the council’s former chief executive John Ajaka had not handled the budget to his liking months before the bureaucrat was sacked, an inquiry has heard.

The public inquiry into alleged dysfunction and maladministration at Liverpool City Council heard the once-friendly relationship between Mannoun and Ajaka, a former Liberal MP, had soured in the lead-up to a fiery meeting last April during which Ajaka told Mannoun to “shut the f--- up”.

Ajaka, the council’s 10th permanent or acting CEO in eight years, was stood down a week later, pending an external investigation into his behaviour at that meeting. A mayoral minute to terminate Ajaka’s contract passed with the mayor’s casting vote at a council meeting on May 29.

Mannoun’s former executive assistant Lauren Myers on Wednesday recalled a conversation she had with the mayor last February or March when she had “asked him what he was doing with John”.

When Mannoun asked her what she meant, Myers had said: “It’s very obvious your relationship has broken down and the two of you can’t work together.

“I asked if he would manage to rein in his feelings until after the [council elections in September] because the staff were change-fatigued, and we had a revolving door of changes in leadership, and for stability of the organisation, if he wanted to proceed with moving towards the termination of John’s employment could he hold off until after the election.

“The mayor made comments that Mr Ajaka wasn’t doing what he wanted to do with the budget, and that he was refusing to make the hard decisions.”

The inquiry was also shown a text message Myers sent a colleague early last year which referred to Mannoun and had read: “He wants John gone but doesn’t want to pay him out.”

Under questions from counsel assisting the inquiry, Trish McDonald, SC, Myers said by that time, last April, it had been “clear there were issues with the [council’s] budget”, which was in deficit.

“It would not be a good look to be terminating the CEO because that would involve money of a higher quantity to be paid … on top of the existing budgetary issues.”

The inquiry heard Mannoun sent staff, including Ajaka, an email about changes to the budget, and sent Myers a text message referring to the email and said: “[Ajaka] will still lose it, he will hate this”.

Myers said she had responded to Mannoun’s message by saying the “tone and pitch of [the] email” were “perfect” as she had “many discussions previously with the mayor where I was very critical of the way he spoke to staff, in particular the CEO, no matter which CEO it was, the executive team.

“His language in his emails could often be perceived as insulting or demeaning or disrespectful.

“So I was commending him that on this particular correspondence he had done a much better job than examples I had seen in the past.”

Myers said she had not attended the April 16 meeting about the budget and staffing matters when Ajaka had told Mannoun to “shut the f--- up”, but said she watched Mannoun and the deputy mayor walk out of the room and “could tell immediately from their faces that something had gone wrong”.

Myers said Ajaka had walked over to her desk after he left the room and told her: “I did something quite bad.”

“He told me about the language he had used with the mayor. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have done it, but he just kept goading me, over and over, and every time I tried to talk he kept talking over me. It just pushed me too far’.”

Myers told the inquiry Ajaka “seemed remorseful and knew he shouldn’t have conducted himself in that manner”.

The hearing continues in front of Commissioner Ross Glover. Mannoun is yet to give evidence.

The Office of Local Government inquiry is scrutinising councillor conduct, the council’s handling of its finances, and state government grants for infrastructure, property purchases and employment.

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