Still questions over who knew what and when in Cammy Day affair

Former council leader Cammy Day resigned after allegations of inappropriate behaviour

That it has taken a Freedom of Information request from The Herald newspaper tells its own story, but maybe the fact that it has been admitted at all is a positive sign of a new attitude within the City Chambers.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, and of course it’s entirely possible there was nothing in it. But given recent events, and indeed detailed claims made recently on social media, we are entitled to know how such a complaint was handled, by whom and what conclusions were drawn.

Readers of this column last month may remember I referred to a complaint about a Labour councillor going back to around that time. This is a complaint of which I knew senior figures had been made aware and which did not come to light. Is this the same complaint, or a different one?

It’s now been reported there were actually five complaints against Day between 2018 and 2023, and given he was the deputy leader in the SNP/Labour coalition for most of that time, was then SNP leader Adam McVey aware? McVey was very quick on the draw to make allegations about others, so what happened?

What I do know is that at the height of the inquiry into the abuse committed by now deceased senior social worker Sean Bell, a complaint was received about me regarding the way I asked questions in a meeting, and far from being all hushed up, Day made sure it was public before I knew anything about it.

Yet all the while, Cammy Day would surely have known he had faced allegations of an altogether more serious nature.

I also know that Chief Executive Andrew Kerr was determined to take the complaint against me to the Standards Commission – which then took a year and a half to clear me – but I’m now told he was kept in the dark about the complaint about Day, as was the monitoring officer Nick Smith, which is in itself extraordinary and needs to be fully investigated.

Maybe it didn’t involve anything criminal, but it certainly sounds like there were issues about Day’s conduct, and now it is also alleged that the Ethical Standards Commissioner dismissed a complaint in September 2020 and the details kept secret. Did the council refer him, or was it an external complaint? We should know.

And here is another very strange thing. I now learn there were suspicions in 2019 about complaints which had gone nowhere, but when this was raised with police, officers apparently said the relevant emails had been lost in a computer glitch so there was nothing they could do.

Given the Council’s IT track record at the time, this would seem plausible, even if rather convenient, so have the emails been recovered?

Senior officers are now in the process of setting up an investigation which presumably councillors will need to approve at the next meeting, on February 6, and I understand someone has already been selected to lead the probe, which seems a little too easy.

Edinburgh Council has tried to breeze past too many serious problems on the altar of its own reputation. Enough is enough.