After Partygate, Kate Josephs pledged to 'restore trust'. Three years on, how's it going?

How busy is Kate Josephs, the CEO of Sheffield Council? Not so busy that she doesn’t find time to exercise, admittedly by waking up at the bewildering hour of 5.30am, but busy enough that it has taken a full year of pestering the council press office to arrange this interview. If you start the clock from when Dan first tried, a few months after she returned from paid leave following the scandal that left her job hanging in the balance, then it has taken almost two and a half years. 

This is not, a council press officer later insists, because she has been avoiding it. There were local and general elections in quick succession last year and then, in the months since, she has simply had a very busy schedule. It’s perhaps not surprising that the council is keen to stress the point. Josephs is supposed to be the head of a new, more approachable, more transparent Sheffield Council, an antidote to the culture that gave rise to the obfuscations and flat-out lies of the tree-felling scandal. Dodging the press would not be a good look.

But Josephs also readily admits she’s “not super comfortable” with the idea of an article all about her. She would much rather “talk about the work we’re doing and the changes we’re making” at the council, she tells me. Part of that is simply down to her nature; despite being extroverted, she’s never courted the limelight. No one who did would become a senior civil servant, the job she had for 20-odd years before returning to South Yorkshire. “It’s part of the reason why doing this feels weird,” she says. “I don’t feel it’s my job to be out there promoting myself.”

Of course, that’s probably not the main reason she’s nervous about sitting down for a lengthy chat with a journalist. Three years ago, on 14th January 2022, a journalist at The Telegraph turned her, in an instant, from a relative unknown to an object of national fury. An explosive article revealed that — on 17th December 2020, when London was in strict lockdown — Josephs marked her final day as director-general of the very taskforce that designed lockdown laws by throwing a “boozy” leaving party at her office in Whitehall. The government’s internal investigation later noted there was an intention to follow social distancing guidance “by observing a one-way system, social distancing and other precautionary measures,” although this still would have been against the rules. More to the point, these good intentions quickly evaporated. The party began between 7 and 8pm and Kate Josephs finally left at around 12.23am, “after tidying up”. 

As an article in the Star notes, the council’s press team had spent weeks beforehand denying that Josephs attended an illicit gathering at 10 Downing Street. This was technically true — the party took place around the corner — but not in spirit. “I am truly sorry that I did this and for the anger that people will feel as a result,” Josephs tweeted at the time. “Sheffield has suffered greatly during this pandemic, and I apologise unreservedly.” 

According to a Labour councillor, her new colleagues were just as shocked and furious as the public. “There was quite a bit of real, genuine anger, both about the night itself and the council not knowing about it,” they tell me. “People had built Kate up in their minds as the saviour of the council after the tree scandal and then you have that knock of confidence early on.” Another councillor insists her leaving was “absolutely on the cards”.

In the end, Josephs stayed. She tells me she would have resigned if asked, although having to walk away after just a year in post would clearly have been devastating. “For me, it’s not just a job or a line on my CV,” she says, “I truly care about it.” As the daughter of two social care workers, who grew up in Doncaster during the collapse of the mining industry, she has spent her entire adult life “motivated by wanting to do something” for those she’d seen struggling around her. It’s why her first civil service job was at the Department of Social Security — not the most glamorous but where she “could make the biggest difference to the place I came from” — why she leapt at the chance to run a South Yorkshire council, and why she was determined to stay. “I felt the biggest way I could make up for [Partygate] was by working as hard as humanly possible for the city.”

It’s easy for those who haven’t gone through it to underestimate how torturous it is to be publicly shamed. There's a reason being held in the stocks was once used as a criminal punishment. At another point in our interview, Josephs remarks that she has learned throughout her life “not to waste time worrying” about what other people think of her, but such attitudes naturally crumble in the face of widespread censure, even more so when it feels deserved. “You could tell she was not just going through the motions,” a councilor tells me. “She clearly did regret it.” 

But was the cover up — evasive denials given to the Star — worse than the crime? Her explanation is that, as a former civil servant, she felt “bound by constraints” over what she could and couldn’t say, especially as an admission of guilt would have implicated other people in government. 

Josephs knew the Partygate scandal was going to come up — I was asked to send a list of conversation topics on three different occasions while arranging our chat — and she weathers these questions with the same calm, sombre mien she wore in interviews immediately after her return from paid leave. So I’m caught off guard when she abruptly starts to cry.