Extraordinary meeting takes place after TV documentary uncovered deaths of three young care leavers from Barnet, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Cabinet member Pauline Coakley-Webb (left) and council leader Barry Rawlings (right)

Barnet Conservatives have hit out at the Labour administration over its refusal to publicly apologise over the deaths of three young care leavers.

Opposition group leader Peter Zinkin presented a motion to councillors which called for the resignation of the council leader and a cabinet member over the council’s “failure” to honour its role as a corporate parent, but the motion was amended by Labour before being approved.

The opposition leader spoke at an extraordinary council meeting last night (Tuesday 2nd) which was called after the deaths of 18-year-old Nonita Grabovskyte in December 2023 and two other young care leavers were not made known to most councillors until last month.

Cllr Zinkin said: “We called this meeting to pressure the Labour administration to apologise to the families of the young people who had died and to apologise to all councillors as corporate parents for the failures of governance that happened to make sure everything possible is done to stop it from happening again.

“It is not a criticism of officers nor is it a forum to debate the learnings from the three tragic cases that led us here tonight.”

At the inquest into Nonita’s death, the coroner said the council’s failures had been contributing factors.

Cllr Zinkin questioned how the council could perform its duties when problems were “secret and hidden” and criticised the council’s last cabinet meeting, in which the annual corporate parent report was discussed, over what he viewed as a lack of “contrition”.

Labour amended the motion to note the opposition’s calls for resignations, however neither the leader or cabinet member agreed to resign.

Pauline Coakley-Webb, cabinet member for family-friendly Barnet, listed the changes the council would make including “ordered activity” on a range of young people who were in transition.

There will also be practitioner workshops “to generate multi-agency learning”, placement reviews to “ensure children are in the right home” and operational panels in the “onwards and upwards service” to improve support for care leavers who do not meet the criteria for adult social services.

However Cllr Coakley-Webb insisted protocols had been followed when it came to notifying the council of the deaths.

She said: “Statutory duty is to notify [government watchdog] Ofsted and the secretary of state, guidance is that also the leader and lead member for children’s services are notified in their statutory role.

“If we look back over previous years across different administrations this was the protocol which was followed.”

Cllr Coakley-Webb added officers went “further than the statutory duty” in the three cases explaining the corporate parenting panel was informed of the death of Nonita and the children’s scrutiny committee was informed of all three deaths in January 2024 and June 2025 respectively.

The two-strong Reform UK group also presented a motion that called for the resignation of the council leader and cabinet lead for children’s services, but this was voted down.

Council leader Barry Rawlings said the council had accepted the coroner’s finding and determination. He said that in October, the coroner stated: “The learning that Barnet has taken has been the right learning by the right people going in the right direction.”

Cllr Rawlings added: “Learning lessons is most effectively done in an atmosphere of calm reflection and not from knee-jerk reaction. We have to reflect on what’s happened and take our time.”

Cllr Coakley-Webb said strengthening the briefing protocols was the “right thing” to do and said all cabinet members would be notified of the death of any child or young person in care.

After the nearly hour-long meeting, the Conservative group’s motion with the Labour amendments was carried unanimously.

The story has been corrected to clarify that the Conservative motion was not outright rejected but instead amended before being approved by both Labour and the Tories.

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