PRCA-UK CEO’s Spouse @Wadds Cited by X for Violating Rules
With X flagging @wadds for violating rules, what did the spouse of PRCA's CEO allegedly do wrong? Or, is there a cover-up at hand?
In the U.K. PR industry trade association — the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) — things keep getting curiouser and curiouser.
The trade body’s quest for normality hit another snag, in recent days.
As what arguably might be noted as “The End of an Era” in the U.K. PR community, the @wadds social media handle on X (formerly Twitter) is no more.
Owned by past CIPR President Stephen Waddington (the husband of PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington, once known as @Mrs_Wadds on X), @wadds now displays the tell-tale message, “Account suspended.”
Unlike the prior X handle of @Mrs_Wadds (see one charming example of her past tweets, below), the shut-down of @wadds does not appear to have been voluntary.
Sarah Waddington appeared to delete her X account voluntarily in Q4 2024, in anticipation of becoming “interim CEO” of the PRCA and the scrutiny it would bring when people discovered belatedly that James Hewes had essentially left the PRCA months prior, with no notice to the industry.
By the time the news became public of her new role on 2 January 2025, the @Mrs_Wadds handle on X was long-gone.
To reiterate, following a period some weeks ago when Stephen Waddington’s X account oddly flagged his posts on X as “not loading right now,” Mr. Waddington’s X account is now flagged by X as having been “suspended” for apparent rules violations, according to the automated message attached to his @wadds handle, at this writing:
Since originally joining Twitter as a user in January 2008, @wadds has been one of the global PR industry’s most prolific users of the platform now known as X.
@Wadds has had some 25,000 followers on X and has posted more than 91,000 times.
His posts have often documented Mr. Waddington’s precise whereabouts and boasted of his employer and client work, by name, as well as his friendships and his “frenemies” status of specific individuals. (Note: Former Ketchum / Waddington boss @tbonegallagher also deleted his X account in recent months, too, in a move that I personally believe to be interconnected with @wadds.)
And maybe that documentation trail is precisely the problem, for both Mr. and Mrs. Waddington and, now, for the PRCA, too, given past history.
Mr. Waddington has made no secret of his politics:
The X platform outlines its policies on rule violations, here:
As noted, Mr. Waddington can appeal the decision by X to shut down @wadds, if he feels it was an error.
Likewise, he is also free to alert me to any additional information for this blog post.
If true as the X flag alleges (that Mr. Waddington “violate(d)” “rules” on the X platform), then this matter potentially should be referred to the PRCA’s Standards Committee (given Mr. Waddington’s position as a PRCA Fellow) and the U.K. Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) complaints council (given Mr. Waddington’s past role as President of the CIPR).
Both the CIPR and the PRCA have code of conduct standards tied to adhering to truth, honesty, and integrity in all professional dealings, including the social media space.
As such, if a prominent PRCA / CIPR figurehead is doing things on a major social media platform that are deemed rule-breaking, it raises concerning questions of whether some form of misconduct is afoot.
Too, @wadds has been keen — as documented on X — to see other people kicked out of PR trade associations and have their careers decimated for committing offenses he deems expulsion-worthy:
On 28 July 2026, prior to his X account being flagged for platform rules violations, I sent to Stephen Waddington a detailed email inquiry.
My email to him is relevant here, because it indeed outlined serious issues meriting response. My e-mail posed several questions to Mr. Waddington and requested his reply.
I copied my e-mail to numerous individuals, including to his wife Sarah (Hall) Wadddington (also a past CIPR President) at her PRCA staff e-mail address, as well as to the multi-decade PRCA legal counsel of record Lewis Silkin LLP / Lucy Lewis (NOTE: Lewis Silkin also has concurrently served as legal counsel of record to Omnicom / Ketchum, Grayling M&A interests, Ray Eglington’s PR firm — Four, and PRWeek / Haymarket, among others).
I also copied current PRCA board chair Kirsty Leighton; past PRCA board chair Sarah Scholefield (Grayling); current PRCA HR Director / “mental health first aider” (and former admin assistant to Francis Ingham + 25-year Grayling / Huntsworth alumna + alleged Lord Peter Chadlington admin assistant) Karen Wilkinson; and other present / previous PRCA comms staff.
See partial excerpt, below (Note: Ms. Whatham is now no longer on the PRCA’s staff, although at present she remains listed on the PRCA staff website):
As clear from the e-mail excerpt above, I planned to register an inquiry to the PRCA Standards Committee… if only the Standards Committee could sort itself out, first. (The committee has been in the throes of turnover and chaos for much of 2026, which naturally raises additional concerns.)
My extensive e-mail to Mr. Waddington included evidentiary items and screenshots embedded throughout the message, of multiple, prior, public-facing posts that Mr. Waddington (@wadds) had made on the Twitter (now X) social media platform, a few dating back well-more than a decade … including during his multi-year stint with Ketchum PR (Omnicom) that overlapped with Ketchum’s excessively lucrative Russian Federation / Vladimir Putin agency-of-record heyday.
My e-mail to Mr. Waddington included some screenshots, including the following ones (all below are listed in sequential order, from oldest to newest):
https://wadds.substack.com/p/monday-briefing-francis-ingham-remembered
In addition to the above screenshots that appeared in my e-mail to Mr. Waddington with copy to PRCA leadership / staff, these additional screenshots also appear (or, past-tense, appeared, prior to their deletion) on X, relevant to the larger areas of concern:
Stephen Waddington opted not to reply to my July e-mail or acknowledge it in any way.
I’m still waiting — three months later — for any reply whatsoever.
Neither did PRCA personnel reply who were copied (including his wife, PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington) or the PRCA’s legal representation + PRCA employee tribunal counsel of record + Bell Pottinger adjudication panel “advisor” legal contractor, Lewis Silkin LLP:
More recently, I tried to make contact with the last known direct counsel to the PRCA from its law firm, Lewis Silkin. However, Ms. Lewis also refuses to acknowledge my queries. This refusal to respond by Ms. Lewis leads me to believe she is being instructed by her client(s) not to respond to me.
Over subsequent months this year following my July 2026 e-mail to Mr. Waddington, additional questions remain unanswered, such as…
…why the massive personnel turn-over in the Waddington PRCA’s “Standards Committee”;
…why none of my questions as submitted in good faith to the PRCA Standards Committee in 2026 have been addressed;
…why Ipelegeng Thibedi still shows up three months later as an active PRCA board member and with the wrong employer affiliation (see screen shot, below, taken today, at this writing), when a filing to U.K. Companies House of 5 August 2026 confirms she was “terminated” from this PRCA post;
…why the 2024-25 year-over-year cash collapse of the PRCA association occurred (Sarah Waddington earlier served on the PRCA’s board of management from 2023-2024, prior to her being secretly named “interim CEO” for two entire months from 1 Nov 2024 to 1 Jan 2025 before the PRCA’s membership was ever alerted to it);
…and why the abandonment in more recent weeks of the PRCA’s much-ballyhooed “Sector for Solidarity” initiative as repeatedly pre-announced publicly by CEO Waddington across much of 2026 (see separate, upcoming blog post on that latest development, later).
As for @wadds’ apparent / alleged X rule-violations, it does smack of bitter irony…
Under his wife’s CEO control, the PRCA issued this call in January 2026 for — essentially — the boycott / banishment of X as a socially acceptable platform for U.K. Government comms (with obvious signal intended for the whole of the industry), by claiming the Elon Musk-owned platform itself was errant, as per Mrs. Waddington’s syntax error- and typo-riddled letter of 7 January 2026:
“…a platform whose governance and enforcement standards remain in doubt” (???)…
Pot, meet kettle!
PRCA CEO Sarah (Hall) Waddington — who in 2017 used her Twitter / X feed of @Mrs_Wadds (account since removed) to go viral with a tweet of her own calling for a book ban of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” as a bizarre #MeToo maneuver — has maintained her alternate X handle @Hallmeister, which still allows her to use the platform to surveil other people’s tweets.
Source / Below: https://www.bbc.com/bbcthree/article/348b95fd-81d6-46d4-827e-73c727b8ceb6
The PRCA’s Sarah Waddington also owns another handle on X — her @WeArePRoofed handle, from which she last tweeted on 14 March 2023… two days prior to the death of her former Socially Mobile CIC board co-director + PRCA director general:
In addition, Sarah and Stephen Waddington maintain their @Socially_Mobile X handle for their U.K. nonprofit that focuses on indoctrinating DEI dogma within the U.K. industry’s workforce pipeline.
Its last tweet was issued on 5 September 2024, only weeks prior to Sarah Waddington being secretly named “Interim CEO” of the PRCA on 1 Nov 2024. Members and the industry would not find out about this news until 2 January 2025 (giving plenty of time for the Waddingtons potentially to ransack years and years and years of competitor archive data on PRCA servers and do whatever they wanted with it).
Meanwhile, CEO Sarah Waddington has disallowed the PRCA from tweeting anymore from its formerly very popular X handle @PRCA_HQ (which still notes some “32K Followers”).
This choice to abandon the platform has left PR industry followers of @PRCA_HQ on X twisting in the wind, with no content about PRCA association news, events, people, and offerings.
Prior to her shutting down its content flow, much of @PRCA_HQ postings in 2023 and 2024 were used to propagate glowing accolades about Stephen and Sarah Waddington themselves:
The PRCA’s X-posting about-face, post-2025, also begs the question if this Waddington boycott of Elon Musk / Donald Trump … er, sorry, I mean, of @X… has helped nail the coffin shut for the PRCA’s connection to and relevance with a global PR industry audience, exacerbating the PRCA’s recent-year cash collapse:
The PRCA has not even bothered to update its still-existing X handle with the association’s new branding / logo, introduced this past spring of 2026.
This is the last documented tweet from the PRCA’s X handle, dated 23 December 2025, promising, “See you in 2026“…
…only for PRCA members and PR industry X users never to hear from the PRCA on the platform again.
As many times as I have reached out directly via e-mail to either Waddington (Sarah and / or Stephen), asking for information — in a manner that not only has been valid but also transparent as to why I’m seeking specific confirmation of facts — it stuns me how Team Waddington now engages in a “code of silence“… and also appears to demand it of others.
Meanwhile, their approach flies in the face of Team Waddington’s public posturing against “silencing“… as long as the situation doesn’t involve them.
For example:
If only this same logic were being applied by Team Waddington to themselves…
So, there again, I ask why Stephen Waddington’s handle (@wadds) has been flagged on X for violating the rules of the platform.
Did @wadds actually do something wrong on X? Or is there something else going on here… something else being covered up?
Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, has been a long-time whistleblower of corruption in the PR industry — including about PR industry leaders in positions of power who have attacked colleagues in order to stifle dissent, intimidate other would-be whistleblowers, and bury evidence of past documented misconduct.