A councillor who told a call handler from Sri Lanka to ‘speak English’ while reporting a fly-tipping incident has apologised.
Janet Cleverly, an independent on Newport City Council, has been reprimanded over her ‘derogatory and humiliating’ comments, and told she must complete extra training.
She phoned the council’s customer service line and spoke to a call handler, who had only been in the job for four weeks after moving to the UK from Sri Lanka in 2022.
During the conversation, in August 2024, the handler tried to explain there were ‘disruptive sounds’, and asked her to repeat certain information.
But Cleverly then interrupted the handler and said: ‘I’m sorry, can I speak to somebody who’s speaking English?’, according to a report by the Ombudsman.
A few minutes later, when the call handler was trying to clarify details, she said again: ‘Sorry? I can’t understand anything you’re saying. Speak English.’
The councillor followed up the call with an email to the cabinet member responsible for environmental matters, which read: ‘The person I spoke to, could not speak English properly…
‘I am all for equal opportunity but this person took all my information wrong after I had to repeat everything 3-4 times and spell everything lots of times.’
Councillor Janet Cleverly, an independent on Newport City Council, has apologised after telling a call handler to ‘speak English’
A customer services manager listened to a recording of the call, and raised concerns over Cleverly’s ‘unnecessary’ tone.
This prompted an investigation, despite the call handler not wanting to pursue a complaint.
A council monitoring officer assessed that the call handler’s English was fluent, and Cleverly’s comments were ‘consciously or otherwise, racially motivated’ and ‘discriminatory’.
The customer service team manager said Cleverly had been ‘derogatory’ and ‘highly inappropriate’.
She said the called handler, who had only been in the role for around four weeks’, was left feeling ‘belittled and inferior’, and that she was not up to the job.
For her part, Cleverly told the ombudsman that she had ‘lots of BME friends’, meaning people black and minority ethnic backgrounds.
She said it had been a ‘really frustrating’ phone call, and disagreed that the handler had spoken in a clear and fluent way.
However, she also apologised, and said she felt ‘absolutely awful’ about upsetting the handler.
Parts of Thursday’s committee hearing took place in private to protect the identity of the call handler, who was not present.
Cleverly told the panel: ‘I was absolutely mortified by my actions that day.’
The committee found Cleverly had breached three areas of the council’s code for members relating to equality, respect and consideration of others, and disreputable conduct.
The ombudsman, Michelle Morris, found that her ‘underlying motivation’ was that she was ‘irritated from the outset by the way the call handler spoke’.
Cllr Kevin Whitehead, who leads the Bettws ward’s independents, said the phone call showed a ‘lack of etiquette’ from his colleague but challenged any suggestion there was a racial element to the matter.
‘I don’t think there was an intent or anything – [it was] poor etiquette and poor form,’ he said.
He added Cleverly – who had shown ‘a lot of contrition’ – had a long career helping young people and the Bettws community, and had received messages of support from people of diverse backgrounds.
Chairman Andrew Mitchell said the ‘extremely concerned’ panel had considered a suspension, but agreed instead to censure Cleverly and require her to promptly complete further training.
The council’s deputy monitoring officer had earlier explained a censure is ‘a formal reprimand’.