Part Five of an investigation into Stockport Council’s handling of Michael Parnell
Throughout this series, one name recurs more often, and in more capacities, than any other council figure: Dave Goddard, who led Stockport Council for much of the period covered by this investigation and who has since been elevated to the House of Lords. The documentary record — his own emails, and the council’s internal logs — shows a man who was, at various points, the political head of the authority responsible for the underlying dispute, an informal briefer of a campaigner and the press, a direct pressure on his own frontline staff, and, on at least one occasion, a complainant to the police in his own right.
Taken individually, none of these roles is necessarily improper. A council leader can reasonably take an interest in a matter causing his authority repeated difficulty. Taken together, and sustained over years, they raise a fair question about how much distance existed between the man overseeing the council and the operational handling of the case against Michael Parnell.
Briefing the campaigner
On 13 July 2009, the day Parnell was convicted of assaulting council employee Frank Croughwell, Goddard emailed local campaigner Sheila Oliver directly from the council Leader’s account to relay the outcome — including the judge’s unflattering assessment of Parnell’s evidence. When Oliver pushed back, raising a figure of 71 occasions on which police had been called out over the affair, Goddard’s reply left no room for misreading: “I hope you will forward this information to your media friends, if you don’t be assured I will.”
A week later, on 20 July, he wrote again, this time setting out in detail the bail conditions imposed on Parnell following his arrest for breaching the newly-imposed ASBO — a one-mile exclusion zone around the Town Hall, with no exception for attending public meetings. Goddard noted, of Parnell’s reaction to the conditions, that he “was less than enthusiastic,” before signing off with a remark about a recent by-election result: “Glad you enjoyed the Stepping Hill by-election it makes it all worth it.”
Pressure on staff
An internal council incident log from the same week records something more direct than informal correspondence with a campaigner. On 14 July 2009, with police having declined to attend a protest outside the Town Hall on the basis that Parnell was not currently breaching his order, the log notes: “Dave Goddard and Cllr Smith enquired via JC as to why we are allowing Mr P to continue to demonstrate.”
Separately, in his own account of events the following day, Parnell told council staff that he had been personally invited back to the building to collect meeting agendas by “Jonathan Vali and Dave Goddard” the night before — an account recorded by staff at the time, though not one confirmed independently by Goddard himself. Mr Vali always treated Mr Parnell with the utmost respect.
A complainant, not just an observer
The record shows Goddard did not remain solely on the sidelines. A handwritten note on a Freedom Wide Incident Number record dated 19 September 2009 lists Goddard himself as the complainant in a Public Order Act, section 5 report, timed at 20:50. A further Greater Manchester Police compliment slip, referencing a log entry from September 2010, is annotated “Councillor Dave Goddard reported to police.”
This matters because it moves Goddard from the role of interested political observer to that of a direct party to at least some of the criminal justice activity generated by this case — the same activity his own council was, elsewhere, defending, resourcing, and prosecuting.
Several hats, one dispute
By the time this chronology is taken as a whole, Dave Goddard held, at different moments, the roles of: the political leader of the authority whose funding decision triggered the original grievance over adoption support for Parnell’s daughters; an informal correspondent briefing a member of the public on prosecution outcomes, complete with a threat to brief the press; a figure personally pressing his own staff on operational decisions about a named resident; and a complainant to the police in his own right.
It is reasonable to ask whether that combination of roles served the council, or Michael Parnell, well. Nothing in the documents reviewed for this series shows Goddard acting outside his formal authority as Leader. What they do show is a level of personal, sustained engagement with one resident’s case that goes well beyond what most people would expect of a council leader’s role — engagement that continued for years after the funding dispute that started it all was never itself resolved.
