On 12 April the Newcastle Herald reported that Lord Mayor Dr Ross Kerridge accused City of Newcastle staff of waging \u201can insidious campaign of bullying\u201d against his wife. This was based on a social media post made by the Lord Mayor on 12 April 2025. The social media post itself was a response to an earlier Newcastle Herald article about the use of the title Lady Mayoress. The Lord Mayor has now deleted this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018’My social media post was a response to the article in the Newcastle Herald about the use of the title Lady Mayoress. It was in the context of a difficult and challenging first 6 months for both of us. It was not my intention to allege that council staff have bullied myself and Mrs Kerridge and I sincerely apologise for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI retract what I said and have deleted my post.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am excited and passionate about Newcastle\u2019s future and am keen to get on with the job representing the Newcastle community.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI recognise that some members of the community use \u2018Lady Mayoress\u2019 by tradition however we don\u2019t actively seek to use it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI will be making no further comment on this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CEO Jeremy Bath wrote to the Office of Local Government in response to a request from two councillors and several staff who wanted clarification about the use of title Lady Mayoress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I did not seek clarification of the use of the title at the request of the Lord Mayor. He had told me that he was not seeking to use it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Lord Mayor and I met to discuss the allegations of bullying made in his social media post on Tuesday.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am pleased that he has deleted the social media post and retracted his statements about any bullying of Mrs Kerridge by staff.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As a result, I do not intend to investigate this matter any further.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 12 April the Newcastle Herald reported that Lord Mayor Dr Ross Kerridge accused City of Newcastle staff of waging \u201can insidious campaign of bullying\u201d against his wife. This was based on a social media post made by the Lord Mayor on 12 April 2025. The social media post itself was a response to an … Continue reading “Statement retracting claims of bullying by the Lord Mayor”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32381,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32380\/revisions\/32381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}