Standards and Lydford Parish Council
A strange letter
On 18th December 2009 a strange letter was received from the Lydford Parish Clerk. It was in response to questions that had previously been raised but perhaps unsurprisingly (for LPC) it did not answer these questions. Instead, and quite out of the blue, the letter stated:-
"We understand that there is an ongoing investigation with West Devon Standards Committee concerning ..." [a former councillor]
Prior to this there had been no mention in LPC minutes of an investigation and it is still not clear why the Clerk released this information at this time.
Breach of Code of Conduct
Councillors behaviour is supposed to conform to a Code of Conduct. This applies to all councillors including Town and Parish. If the Code is breached and a complaint is made then the matter may be considered by a local Standards Committee. This appears to be what has happened in this case.
It should be noted that Town and Parish Councils are not regulated by the Local Government Ombudsman so complaint against an individual councillor is one of the few ways of progressing an issue if the council involved will not deal with it effectively.
Return to top of pageThe Decision Notice
The law dealing with local Standards Committees requires a written summary of the allegation or review of the decision to be kept and made available for inspection by the public. Quite how an ordinary member of the public is supposed to know this is not clear. Even if they do know of the right to see a decision notice how do they know (unless someone writes to them out of the blue) that a complaint has been made in the first place?
In the case of the Lydford councillor the decision notice was interesting for a number of reasons. It was dated 30th April 2009 so presumably the complaint was made before then. It would seem this matter had been under consideration for getting on a year! Details of the alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct were listed in nine bullet points. The actual decision was to refer the matter for investigation to the Monitoring Officer who, of course, is also the Borough Solicitor.
The Standards Committee
The Standards Committee consists of two independent members, three Borough Councillors and two Parish Councillors. The Chair is one of the independent members. The present Chair has had previous contact with Lydford Parish Council as he collated the results of the 'consultation' into the proposed new sewage works at Lydford (proposal now withdrawn), see Lydford sewage works but of course there is no suggestion that he is anything but impartial when it comes to matters to be dealt with by the Standards Committee.
One might wonder if councillors sitting in judgement on other councillors is the best way to deal with complaints but that is the system we have and of course there is no suggestion that the councillor members of the Standards Committee are anything other than objective in their decisions. It is important, however, that the Committee should be seen to be fair and unbiased if they are to inspire public confidence.
The investigation was, according to the Monitoring Officer, carried out by a "fully independent Investigating Officer". One must, of course, accept this statement at face value but one wonders who appoints the Investigating Officer and who pays for the work involved in the investigation. If it is WDBC is that as independent as it would be if the investigating officer was appointed and paid for by a third party such as "Standards for England"? Whatever the case one assumes that the Investigating Officer would carry out his work in a professional and unbiased manner.
Return to top of pageThe outcome
An announcement appeared in the April 2010 edition of the Lydford Parish Magazine in the section written by the Parish Council Chair. It said the following:-
"Firstly I hope you will all wish to join with us in celebrating a welcome piece of news. The Standards Board hearing into allegations against ***** has finally been held and found ***** innocent on all charges except one of name calling that has been admitted and apologised for. The Council has asked West Devon to inform us how much in time and cost this process has taken and the impact on our council tax."
The councillor's full name is given in the parish magazine but has been replaced by ***** above because this is a matter of principal affecting the whole parish council rather than personality or the conduct of one individual.
Anyone reading the above statement might think that public money has been wasted on investigating a spurious complaint and that the councillor concerned has done nothing wrong. The summary of the Standards Committee Hearing includes the following description of the councillor's behaviour:-
“...it was therefore unacceptably rude and offensive behaviour that lowers the public’s expectations and confidence in its elected representatives.”
The above statement puts a rather different light on matters than the LPC Chair's gleeful announcement. The Hearing found that the councillor had in fact breached Section 3(1) of the Members' Code of Conduct. The parish council may wish to try to play down the matter by referring to "name calling" but councillors are supposed to set an example to the community and what a poor example it is to use verbal abuse. One might have thought that "unacceptably rude and offensive behaviour" by a parish council member would give rise to quiet reflection on the need for improvement rather than a call for people to join them in celebration.
Return to top of pageLPC minutes
The draft minutes of the March 2010 meeting of LPC contain a paragraph which has information that is just plain misleading. It is claimed that the Standards Committee (wrongly referred to as the Standards Board) had exonerated the Parish Council on all counts.
This shows just how little this parish council understands about the Standards Committee. One wonders if anyone at LPC had actually read the Decision Notice as there is nothing in there to support this claim. In fact the parish council cannot possibly have been exonerated for the simple reason that the Standards Committee deal only with complaints against individual councillors and not councils. It is sad to see official minutes containing such a distorted view.
One might have hoped that the parish council would have wanted to draw a line under this matter and just accept that councillors should comply with the Code of Conduct that they all sign up to. Unfortunately not. It seems that a member of the public attended the April 2010 meeting and used parishioners' time to express his "great disgust" over the public notice published in the local paper and recording the outcome of the Standards Committee case.
Prompted by this the existing councillors discussed the matter (even though it was not on the agenda) and decided that a letter should be sent to the WDBC Monitoring Officer asking for the public notice to be retracted and the publication of one more favourable to the LPC councillor found to have breached the Code of Conduct. This really is extraordinary. Rather than criticise the Monitoring Officer over the wording of a public notice LPC would be better examining their own behaviour to see if they can better meet the standards expected of them.
Oddly the discussion on this matter seems to have been concluded by expressing the view that the parish council had lost a good chairperson and good councillor. This is particularly odd because although the councillor in question resigned in April 2009 this clearly could have had nothing to do with the outcome of the Standards Committee case as the resignation pre-dated this by about a year. In fact at the time the Parish Magazine recorded that the resignation was due to "persistent personal insults" (See LPC Councillor resignation ) and there was no mention at all of the Standards Committee case.
There are lessons from this episode that could be applied to try to ensure that the parish council better meets the needs of the community as a whole, to help heal rifts and to work towards a more cohesive, inclusive community. However, from recent pronouncements in minutes and the Parish Magazine one wonders if LPC has actually learnt anything at all. At the time of writing it is not known if the WDBC Monitoring Officer replied to the parish council's letter but in any event it really is quite wrong to direct criticism in that direction as they were simply acting on behalf of the Standards Committee.
What we have not seen is any acknowledgement from the parish council that standards do matter and that councillors should comply with them. There has been no criticism of the councillor involved in the breach of the Code of Conduct. There have been queries over the cost of the Standards Committee proceedings but councillors should realise that if they would only maintain accepted standards there would be no need for an investigation. To argue that because such proceedings cost money they should not take place is to argue that standards do not matter. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If people are to have trust in those who represent them, both local and national, then it is important that those representatives comply with accepted codes of behaviour and that there is effective means of dealing with those who do not
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