“Suspended” Lord Chadlington (Grayling) Remains as a PRCA Fellow
Huntsworth / Grayling Group originating founder Lord Peter Chadlington may be out at the House of Lords, but he's still favored at PRCA Fellows.
Why is this man still a “Fellow” of the U.K.’s Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), months after receiving a “suspension” notice from the U.K. Parliament House of Lords, for cause?
The U.K. Parliament House of Lords announced publicly in March 2026 that Lord Peter Chadlington (Peter Gummer) — founder of the London-based Huntsworth PR agency mega-conglomerate (rebranded in 2022 to “Accordience” and now, just last month, rebranded yet again to “Grayling Group“ and inclusive of the Grayling PR firm) — had received a 12-month “suspension” from the House of Lords.
Mr. Gummer “resigned” / “retired” from the House of Lords, before said “suspension” could go into effect.
The “suspension” was reportedly based on substantiated evidence tied to Mr. Gummer’s alleged involvement in pandemic-year commercial dealings / misconduct pertaining to faulty / unusable PPE medical supplies, that reportedly cost U.K. taxpayers millions.
The House of Lords report is 85 pages long.
Mr. Gummer disputed the charges / findings / outcome, in his written appeal included in House of Lords public-facing documentation (excerpt below):
Notably, this issue of Lord Chadlington’s “suspension” from the House of Lords was covered extensively in U.K. news media.
But, interestingly, the PR trade rags (PRWeek and PRovoke) refused to touch this story with a 10-foot pole, despite Mr. Gummer’s profile as one of the PR industry’s (certainly the U.K. industry’s) biggest historical figureheads.
When I asked the Googles this question (below), here is what it spat back out at me…
“Did either PRWeek (Haymarket Media, which is advised by the same law firm — Lewis Silkin LLP — as the PRCA) or PRovoke Media cover on its news sites Lord Peter Chadlington’s “suspension” from the U.K. House of Lords?“
Nope.
Talk about “burying the lede!”… these pubs buried this news entirely…
So, why is Peter Gummer — the former Lord Chadlington and founder of Huntsworth — still a “Fellow” in the PRCA?
Does the PRCA take the view that the House of Lords misconduct report doesn’t matter?
Or is there another reason?
Grayling / Huntsworth (rebranded in 2022 to Accordience and now since rebranded again) CEO Sarah Scholefield served as PRCA Chair from 2022-23.
In July 2022, Ms. Scholefield told a roomful of PRCA members that things in the PRCA were going just splendidly — better than ever!… (full clip below):
I ask again:
Why is Lord Chadlington FPRCA still a PRCA Fellow and on the PRCA’s website as such, having also received a “suspension” notice from the U.K. House of Lords on serious allegations of matters deeply and negatively impacting U.K. taxpayers?…
The answer must be pretty darn complicated…
…Especially given that I asked this specific question of PRCA Fellows Chair Alison Clarke on 13 June 2026, in a detailed e-mail chronicling all of Mr. Gummer’s more illustrious headlines and links to the House of Lords misconduct reports (plural), which actually extend for multiple years:
(It should also be noted that Mr. Gummer was reported to have “stepped down” from Huntsworth more than a decade ago, but clearly, his influence has still held significant sway over the PRCA, ICCO, and global PR industry, for many, many years.)
Partial excerpt of my e-mail of June 2026, to PRCA Fellows Chair and Past Grayling PR (Huntsworth holding company) CEO Alison Clarke, below:
The PRCA’s Fellows Chair, Ms. Clarke, has notable Grayling / Huntsworth connections.
Ms. Clarke served as CEO of Grayling herself years ago and, I believe, reported to Lord Chadlington directly.
This may have been during years in which the PRCA’s current “Director of People and Culture,” Karen Wilkinson (who was originally hired on the PRCA staff as PRCA Director General Francis Ingham’s secretary / admin) was reported to me by Francis Ingham to have served as Lord Chadlington’s long-time secretary, prior to her PRCA / Ingham staff admin role.
Upon receiving my e-mail, Ms. Clarke kindly responded to me that her PRCA Fellows Chair role was only “titular” and that she had no say in such matters as her former boss’s PRCA Fellows status.
I never heard any more about it.
But I then noticed that the PRCA “Standards” Committee (with “expulsion” powers in the PRCA’s membership and career-ending powers to defame people, at a whim) indeed has a Grayling PR executive serving on it.
This Committee has oscillated between six members — as currently, at this writing — or only four members, as earlier this year, which is out of compliance with the PRCA’s own bye-laws…
It was on this additional matter that I raised concerns, in writing, on 3 August 2026, via an e-mail that never received any response, other than CEO Waddington’s OOO reply; (see partial excerpt below, along with Ms. Waddington’s auto-reply):
The Grayling PRCA “Standards” Committee person is still serving, alongside very new add-ons to the PRCA “Standards” Committee, which otherwise has been in quite a bit of chaos this year, which I myself have documented:
I also noticed that Grayling Group CEO Sarah Scholefield — who famously placed the late Francis Ingham under “investigation” in Q4 2022 only several months after telling members that things in the PRCA were going splendidly and announced an “investigation” to the trade press weeks before Francis Ingham was ever notified by Scholefield’s PRCA Board in writing of such — is a PRCA Fellow, too.
To boot, Ms. Scholefield has also been the PRCA’s “Whistleblowing Officer.”
Ms. Scholefield is busy.
Ms. Scholefield has also overseen quite a musical-chairs situation with the re-naming (2022) and re-re-naming (2026) of the (former) Huntsworth / (former) Accordience / (now) “Grayling Group” PR outfit:
As a point of disclosure, I just received this week a terse, unsigned (by a human or by name) PRCA notification — and without any provision of evidentiary citations of any alleged misconduct on my part, nor any names of any person making apparent allegations or protests about my own presence in the PRCA Fellows myself — that, essentially (to paraphrase), the PRCA dislikes me intensely and feels I should no longer be welcomed in the PRCA Fellows.
Yet Lord Chadlington remains on the Fellows roster, without fear… and plenty of favor.
For the record, I intentionally dropped my PRCA membership in January 2025 after Sarah Waddington was announced as “Interim CEO.”
I did so, because I found it beyond troubling that she had secretly already been serving in that role for two months without proper disclosure to members or to the industry, in a massive ethics and conflict-of-interest violation, due to Mrs. Waddington’s then continuing to serve in post with her husband’s own for-profit PR firm, Wadds, Inc., while also PRCA “Interim CEO.”
It’s simply wrong for a PR industry trade association CEO (who is supposed to be serving all members and the larger industry) 1) to remain blatantly active with their (and their spouse’s) own for-profit PR agency gig, and, 2) to remain a blatant promoter of their OTHER PR non-profit side-hustle that’s said to be “sponsored” by the very PR trade body over which the same person is CEO.
That’s how crazy things have been (meaning, conflicts of interest) at times, in the PRCA’s World of Waddington.
It suppose it’s a foregone conclusion that I would now receive PRCA hate mail.
I presume Team Waddington is irked that they cannot kick me out of the PRCA, because I already left, nearly two years ago (and because of Team Waddington).
They obviously think that kicking me out of Fellows is the next-most gratifying (for them) and demoralizing (for me) payback that they can muster.
That’s not to say that retaliation hasn’t already been long-running. Team Waddington dumped me off the Fellows list in Q1 2025, without notice or due process, but then hastily added me back, when I asked about it.
Then, in more recent months, CEO Sarah Waddington accidentally-on-purpose “forgot” to invite me two months ago (September 2026) to the PRCA Fellows annual luncheon at — where else??? — the House of Lords.
(Congratulations to every other Fellow who received their engraved invitations, on time and straight away.)
I inquired to both ladies (PRCA CEO Waddington and Fellows Chair Ms. Clarke) about why I was never invited this year to the PRCA Fellows luncheon, but neither lady has opted to acknowledge my e-mail, much less respond.
This obvious, vexatious snub to target (bully) me runs afoul of PRCA bye-laws / policies on due process and anti-retaliation.
But it’s also a clear snapshot on precisely how these folks operate.
Amid this PRCA silent treatment + social ostracization targeting me, new revelations about public-facing messaging from Team Waddington — positioning Mrs. Waddington as a long-suffering “stalking” victim — have come to light.
PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington has newly claimed in 2026 to now have a U.S. based “troll” — a term she routinely conflates in interviews with the word “stalker.”
I wrote of this news, just last week.
We all know where this is going.
There are some people who simply never are to be questioned. And I apparently broke the new PRCA “rules” (at least the unwritten ones) by asking questions that too many people don’t like.
A female U.S. colleague to whom I sold my PR firm in 2018 — and with whom I co-hosted this below podcast that interviewed then-PRCA Director General Francis Ingham (since deceased) in 2019 — once told me that a litmus test for ethics that she has applied in her career is this:
“What does it take to get fired around here?”
It’s a germane question in the PR industry, particularly nowadays:
When are the lines gray, versus black / white?
As this troubled industry has evolved, however, this question has now morphed into a far more dire and sinister one.
Bluntly:
“What does it take to get blackmailed, suicidal, or even murdered around here?”
It’s a relevant and germane question, as looming matters (plural) of death threats have been flying all over the place at the PRCA, for years.
When we spoke with Francis Ingham in November 2019 on the “Ms. InterPReted” Podcast (Part 1 here; Part 2 here), my co-host and I were visited for the first time with the appalling testimony that PRCA Director General Francis Ingham received literal death threats during the PRCA’s adjudication of the infamous Bell Pottinger PR firm expulsion, ultimately branded as the PRCA’s bold stand against racial hatred in South Africa.
In this clip (above), Francis Ingham described to us his personal, harrowing account of receiving death threats, in the wake of the Bell Pottinger expulsion.
I would only learn years later on my own (after Francis Ingham’s death) that this (in)famous PRCA case was decided by members of the Omnicom / Ketchum and Huntsworth / Grayling PR firm multinationals, among others.
A number of Bell Pott adjudicator firms held deep, lucrative Russian interests.
In addition, the Lewis Silkin LLP London law firm — legal counsel of record to the PRCA, to Omnicom (a Bell Pott competitor), and to Haymarket Media (PRWeek) — was also allowed to serve as paid referee of the PRCA “process” (with Lewis Silkin’s services presumably paid for by one or more of Lewis Silkin’s own aforementioned clients, so we imagine how THOSE play-calls were managed!).
I also only recently learned some years after Francis Ingham’s equally harrowing death — that certain “judge-and-jury” outfits had been members of the AKOS Russian PR Association.
Francis Ingham also quite famously later expelled AKOS in 2022 from the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) (where Ingham concurrently served as chief executive), following Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s former PR client’s, Vladimir Putin’s, February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Got all that?!
Francis Ingham’s 2022 decision — some five years after Bell Pott — to expel the AKOS Russian PR Association from ICCO (and to expel any PR agency from the PRCA that continued doing business in / for Russia following the Ukraine invasion) made him excessively unpopular with some impacted agencies and their agency leaders, given the gazillions in lost revenues and lost executive bonuses that this decision spurred of forcing an exit from the Russian market.
Throughout 2022, Francis Ingham’s angst skyrocketed — and his mental health plummeted — after this additional headline ran in September 2022, in PRWeek, proclaiming in the headline that Francis Ingham was on a “Russian blacklist,” clearly implying his life was on the line (yet again!):
However, in January 2026 (nearly three years after Francis Ingham’s death), I received yet another, shocking tip from someone I personally consider to be a highly credible subject-matter expert.
This person told me that certain PRCA / Bell Pottinger headlines published by PRWeek in 2018 were based on false reporting, as no police reports pertaining to some very specific allegations EVER HAPPENED, this person said:
I immediately reported this stunning revelation of a potential false police report, to PRCA Board Chair Kirsty Leighton (I did not reveal the name or likely identity of the tipster).
I was told by Ms. Leighton in a (rare) response that I would receive follow-up, as I requested.
But then I never did.
The very next month, however, in February 2026, PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington took to the U.K. PR podcast airwaves, claiming she was a long-time “stalking” victim and that she now had a U.S. “troll,” whom she opted not to name (see Minute 8:20 of clip below).
I only discovered these new Waddington remarks less than a few months ago, when a colleague urgently phoned me up to say they had heard this podcast in only recent days themselves and wanted to know if I knew who this “U.S. troll” was.
In other remarks, CEO Sarah Waddington also claimed that Metropolitan Police “cocked it up” (her words) on her (and her husband Stephen’s) prior U.K. “stalker” police reports that they themselves registered to the Met, dating back years ago.
I sent an e-mail on 1 October 2026, asking CEO Waddington about these issues (partial excerpt, below).
Yet again, Sarah Waddington opted not to respond to me, in any way.
I find CEO Waddington’s lack of response to me to be not only obfuscating in nature but also egregiously uncivil, unprofessional, and — one can argue, given the context here — unethical.
Like numerous others I’ve sent, this e-mail was also sent to the PRCA’s “Standards” and “Complaints” designated e-mail addresses, but these, too, have been ignored persistently this year, leading me to believe that both those e-mails boxes at the PRCA are accessible only by Sarah Waddington herself.
…Which, if true, is patently unethical.
Now that I’ve asked publicly if those alleged police reports were authentic, it appears now I’m the one in trouble, on false and ridiculous grounds that are unspecified and unsupported.
If the Bell Pottinger past alleged PRCA police reports never existed (as was reported to me this past January by an exceptionally credible source), then is it true that the Waddington “stalker” police reports of years ago ALSO don’t exist, either?
Is there a pattern here, of fabricated police reporting?
Is there a pattern of coordinated + postured “victim” status, leveraged as a public-sympathy play?
These are some of the alarming yet exceptionally evidence-based and reasonable questions I have already tried to pursue with PRCA personnel, but no one appears keen to respond — not in the least bit.
There is so much complexity here (beyond obvious!), relative to the PRCA’s own personnel (past, present, and deceased), as well as never-ending issues of Russia dealings and for-profit PR contracts with rogue governments, etc., etc.
There is simply too much baked-in conflict-of-interest, promulgated by hangers-on who have far too much to hide, and who — in my opinion — are using / abusing their new-found PRCA power, riding the coattails of Francis Ingham’s hijacked but now diminished legacy, in ways to cover up past problems (and KEEP them hidden from an industry disserved by its largest trade media, who are 100% in on it).
I suppose the stakes, for everyone, are just too high.
For his part, the U.K. PR industry’s Stephen Waddington (husband of PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington) — a Ketchum (Omnicom) alumnus during Ketchum’s Russian Federation contracting heyday and former London flatmate to the deceased Francis Ingham — has now taken to the podcast airwaves himself.
In September 2026, Mr. Waddington appeared on a U.K. PR industry podcast via Propellernet, abruptly claiming — from out of nowhere — that he and his wife, PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington, “NEVER TALK ABOUT WORK” (his words).
What do they talk about instead? And what “keeps them going”?
HENS.
As in, chickens.
???
Yes, you heard that right, ladies and gentlemen of the PR Universe.
Hens.
On its face, Stephen Waddington’s initial claim that he and CEO Waddington “never talk about work” is so ludicrous, that one of the podcast co-hosts chuckled out loud, clearly thinking (correctly!) that Mr. Waddington had to be joking.
But he wasn’t. Mr. Waddington was trying to come across seriously on that point.
Then Mr. Waddington dropped the “hens” remark, which I liken to the pop-culture reference of “SQUIRREL!” as the tell-tale outburst, begging people to look the other way from whatever is really going on.
Mr. Waddington made this curious, unforced remark about his and Mrs. Waddington’s “flock of hens,” after a different PRCA Fuse podcast in February 2024 interviewed both Stephen and Sarah Waddington together, in which Sarah Waddington spoke extensively about the couple do almost NOTHING but talk about work, in their “working marriage” (Mrs. Waddington’s words).
As always, my efforts to reach out to CEO Waddington to inquire (with copy to Stephen Waddington) have been ignored.
Was this “We never talk about work” thing a “plausible deniability” chess-move by Team Waddington?
Personally, I fear such — although the PRCA is free to chime in with their own “version” of the truth. (As you can imagine, the months-long silent treatment and boxing-out they’ve exacted toward me have rendered me quite cynical.)
Another exceptionally disturbing gaslighting claim… this one persistently touted by Mrs. Waddington:
The Waddingtons are “BORING,” she says.
For example, in this clip of a February 2024 PRCA Fuse interview of both Waddingtons together (which I consider with hindsight to have been propaganda to pre-position Mrs. Waddington to usurp James Hewes’ job as CEO later that year), Mrs. Waddington claimed to be “very boring”:
In February 2025 — in yet another puff piece and after Mrs. Waddington had dethroned the prior PRCA CEO — she and Mr. Waddington postured in PRWeek as “comms bores” (Mrs. Waddington’s words), alongside even more PR “power couple” positioning, which seemed to contradict the “bore” claim:
Mrs. Waddington did it yet again on another Propellernet podcast, this one in 2026:
I find this rhetorical technique by Mrs. Waddington more than a little disturbing.
In my opinion, these types of staged self-deprecation / “Aw, shucks” remarks intend to deflect, distract, and mislead, as well as cover up / obfuscate past activities and issues… as in, “Nothing to see here!!!…”, or, “SQUIRREL!”… or, à la Stephen Waddington, “HENS!“…
There are many qualities about CEO Waddington that are assets to her and could be great assets to the PRCA — without question.
It’s clear that CEO Waddington is a hard worker. She is fast-paced and hard-charging, with lots of energy. She has limitless ambition.
I think she is clearly intelligent, and she is very attractive / obviously photographs exceptionally well, as evidenced by the fact that she / the PRCA publish new, lovely photos of CEO Waddington constantly.
But one thing she and her husband are NOT in this industry is “boring.” To claim otherwise is … untruthful.
It also raises other questions as to the real intentions behind this type of repeated talking point, in light of past years’ history and chronically unanswered questions:
I’m still trying to unpack who’s who and what’s what. Clearly, some people don’t like that.
They hate my questions, with a passion. They hate being questioned, above all. And the personal hatred I’ve perceived as a result of my tenacity is also more than palpable.
But here’s the thing:
I am deeply concerned that serious hurts and harms have occurred and may still be occurring in the PRCA. I’ve been candid with PRCA management as to the basis of my written inquiries.
And now, I’m being punished.
Because the PRCA has chosen not to respond to a vast many of my private e-mail inquiries that I’ve sent this year to its “We Don’t Mark Our Own Homework!” governance leaders, and even some sent in years past, I’m left with no other option than to presume I’m REALLY on to something here:
It’s a real head-scratcher for me…
…how someone like either Four’s Ray Eglington or Grayling’s Sarah Scholefield can credibly claim they’re not “marking their own homework” when they themselves serve(d) as the employee “whistleblowing officers” for the PRCA trade association that they also jointly controlled (or still help control, indirectly).
Talk about a conflict-of-interest!…
A Board Chair should NEVER be the “whistleblowing” officer of any troubled trade association. Good grief!
Speaking of which…
I just now downloaded (on 12 Nov 2026) the below “PRCA Employee Whistleblowing Policy & Procedure,” which is still date-stamped “November 2023” and was set for next review in “November 2024” (TWO YEARS AGO), yet it clearly has not been updated or properly reviewed.
This years-outdated version is still downloading from CEO Sarah Waddington’s so-called “fit for purpose” PRCA website:
Even the PRCA’s own “Conflict of Interest” policy — as published online — is also outdated (see version as downloaded today, 12 Nov 2026)… begging the question of who on earth is managing this stuff?
Based in the U.S., Mary Beth West has been a long-time target of global PR industry retribution and retaliation, due to her whistleblower status and accurate reporting of major PR industry conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and other secretive alliances / allegiances often working at cross-purposes to societal good.
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