Private certifier gets nailed – depaNews November 2010

Bernie gets nailed but who is Phillip Hayward?

Please stop sending us links to the decision of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal in Building Professionals Board v Cohen (No 2)(2010) NSWADT 266.

It gives us no pleasure (well, not much) to see someone who renounced employment in local government like Bernie did, fined, having his certificate of accreditation cancelled and banned from re-applying for two years and being disqualified from being an accredited certified director or otherwise involved in the management of any business doing this stuff for five years.

And that was nowhere near as severe as the BPB wanted because the BPB was sick of the constant number of complaints and allegations against him.

We can't speculate about Bernie's work at Liverpool, Parramatta and other places, but we would be surprised if this is how it operated while he worked in local government.

But in providing a character reference of sorts for Bernie, someone who should know better made it clear that they think local government is loose with process and that person is Phillip Hayward, Honorary Secretary of the Institution of Surveyors and a bloke with a pretty impressive looking history. His personal profile on the Institution of Surveyors' site reveals that since 2005, not only has he been a non judicial member of the General Division of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but he "is a member of the Disciplinary and Accreditation Committees of the Building Professionals Board."

He gave evidence on Bernie's behalf in the Administrative Decisions Tribunals and there is a summary of that evidence in paragraph 19 of the Decision where it claims he made "a case for some understanding to be shown of loose practice by certifiers from Mr Cohen’s background, that of a senior inspector in local government."

We will be taking up the appropriateness of this bloke’s offensive and defamatory observations against local government employees both with Mr Hayward and the BPB.