Complaints about Councillor behaviour are costing money

Badly behaved councillors at some parish and town councils in Telford take up a “huge amount of time” for investigators at sort out, a meeting was told.

Now an idea has been floated which could see cash-strapped Telford & Wrekin Council sending the bills of investigating cases to the lower level authorities so that errant elected representatives might get the message.

The idea of Telford & Wrekin Council being able to recover costs from town and parish councils was floated by Telford MP and Labour councillor Shaun Davies and supported by a senior official at a meeting last week.

Former council leader Mr Davies (Labour, Malinslee & Dawley Bank) said: “I am constantly struck to what extent parish and town councils take a huge amount of time of this unitary council on standards complaints.”

Councillor Davies said this may be because there are far more councillors in parish and town councils than there are borough councillors.

But he added that he wondered “whether or not there is something to do around seeking from the Government assurance that some of that be on a cost recovery basis so that parish and town councils pay the real cost of that officer time in investigating”.

Telford & Wrekin Council sits as the overseer, investigator and enforcer of a Code of Conduct which all local councillors must abide by. The national code has been criticised for a lack of teeth even when wrongdoing is proved. Badly behaved councillors cannot currently be suspended.

Anthea Lowe, the council’s director of policy and governance and statutory monitoring officer said: “Town and parish councils do take up a large proportion of time on standards matters.”

This, she added, could be “down to numbers” of councillors. But she added that town and parish councillors are offered training sessions on how to abide by the code of conduct.

“There are peaks and troughs but some councils do take up rather more time than others,” she said.

She added that a system of cost recovery may create a “perception amongst those councillors that their actions may or may not directly contribute to the financial cost on their council”.

“It may just prompt some thoughts.”

The meeting of the governance committee was told that the Government has made proposals to strengthen the rules on standards and conduct of councillors.

The committee heard that a criticism is that there are limited sanctions against those who break the rules. One of the Government’s plans is to suspend the worst offenders for the first time.

There were no costs or numbers of complaints, or proposals, put to last week’s committee meeting.

Earlier this year the same committee was told that there were 20 complaints about borough and parish councillors in the 2024-25 municipal year and 13 of them never got beyond the first stage.

Complaints received were split, with 10 about parish councillors and 10 about borough councillors, including some who also sit as parish or town councillors.

No details of the councils or councillors were revealed.

Nine of the complaints were made by councillors about other councillors for alleged breach of their own code of conduct in relation to respect and conduct.

Two of the complaints were from parish council clerks about ‘bullying and harassment’ by councillors.

Seven of the complaints were from members of the public but only one got past the initial stages. One complaint into which an investigation is under way was about a parish councillor’s social media activity.

Telford & Wrekin Council adopted the Local Government Association’s Model Code of Conduct in July 2021.

The report to the meeting in March revealed that the reasons for not investigating the complaints included when a parish councillor ceased to be an elected official.

In other cases the people who complained failed to provide further details, failed to provide a rationale, withdrew their complaint, or that the person complained about was not acting in their capacity as a councillor.

If a councillor is eventually found to have breached the code of conduct they cannot currently be suspended, disqualified or have their allowances withdrawn.

But the council can publish the outcomes on websites, issue press releases, ask councillors to be trained, and make a public apology.