Chromatic v Westminster City Council: On the Procedural Consequences of Failing to Admit a Mother Into Her Own Safeguarding Conference

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⟡ “Can You Come Out and Re-Join?” — The Teams Link That Nearly Cost a Mother Her Rights ⟡
On the procedural absurdity of being digitally locked out of your own Child Protection Conference

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Filed: 12 July 2025
Reference: SWANK/WCC/CPACCESS-20240605
📎 Download PDF – 2024-06-05_Correspondence_Westminster_CPConferenceLinkFailure.pdf
Summary: Record of Westminster's failed attempt to run a CP Conference — mother was logged in, ignored, and nearly excluded.

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I. What Happened

On 5 June 2024 at 10:30 a.m., a Child Protection Conference was scheduled by Westminster City Council via Microsoft Teams. Polly Chromatic, the mother of the children involved, was present in the waiting room — logged in promptly at the designated time.

The meeting did not begin.

At 10:32 a.m., she emailed to ask if it was going ahead. Laura Savage responded only to say, “Can you come out and re-join please.” No apology. No acknowledgment of technical failure. Just a last-minute redirect, as though this were a casual coffee call — not a meeting with life-altering legal implications.

This was not an isolated glitch. It was a habitual pattern of administrative chaos that places the burden of technical management on the parent — while accusing that same parent of disengagement.

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II. What the Complaint Establishes

• Procedural breach of access: The meeting was mismanaged and risked excluding a key participant.

• Distortion of attendance record: Failure to acknowledge presence undermines parental credibility.

• Power imbalance disguised as technical error: No accountability for their failure; implicit blame directed at the mother.

• Systemic minimisation of institutional error: The burden to “log out and try again” placed entirely on the recipient.

• Safeguarding procedures compromised by digital dysfunction.

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III. Why SWANK Logged It

Because digital exclusion is still exclusion — and in the realm of safeguarding, it becomes legal distortion.
Because procedural incompetence is not neutral when used to invalidate a parent’s presence or voice.
Because this is not the first time a conference has been mishandled, and Westminster continues to weaponise chaos by turning access failure into absence blame.
Because when the stakes are as high as child removal, the fact that no one can run a Teams meeting is not merely embarrassing — it’s judicially dangerous.

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IV. Violations

• Children Act 1989 – failure to ensure procedural fairness in safeguarding process

• Article 6, ECHR – Right to a fair hearing

• Article 8, ECHR – Right to family life

• Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) – principles of transparency, inclusion, and parental engagement

• Local Safeguarding Procedures – failure to facilitate and confirm access to child protection meetings

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V. SWANK’s Position

This wasn’t safeguarding. It was technical eviction.
A mother was present. She was ready. And Westminster couldn't click “Admit.”

SWANK rejects any system in which procedural failure is weaponised as evidence of parental non-engagement.
We will document every delay, every silence, every missing Teams button that becomes an excuse to marginalise a mother who showed up.

Access is not cosmetic. It is constitutional.

⟡ This Dispatch Has Been Formally Archived by SWANK London Ltd. ⟡
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Filed with velvet contempt, preserved for future litigation.
Because evidence deserves elegance.
And retaliation deserves an archive.

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Use requires express permission or formal licence. Unlicensed mimicry will be cited — as panic, not authorship.

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