Four complaints not upheld against parish councillors in South Northamptonshire

The four complaints all focused on parish councils within the South Northants area between April 1, 2019, and March 31 this year. The councils have not been named in the annual report.

The first complaint came from a member of the public who was in attendance at a meeting of a parish council. The complainant said that a sitting councillor should have vacated the room whilst a planning application was discussed and should not have been allowed to present changes to the planning application – and that the subject councillor then went on to make rude and personal comments.

Having reviewed the complaint and consulted the standards committee’s three ‘independent persons’ it was deemed that there was ‘insufficient information’ for SNC’s monitoring officer to carry out a robust investigation.

A second complaint focused on a village hall project for one of the area’s parish councils, and complained of ‘bias’ amongst councillors, that the parish chairman had ‘undue influence’ due to being chairman of the council as well as the project trust, and that through the relationship with his wife, the clerk, one of the councillors may also have been ‘open to influence’.

Having reviewed this complaint, the monitoring officer found that the points made were more ‘expressions of concern’ rather than actual instances of bias, influence and conflicts of personal interest. After consulting with the independent persons, they agreed there was no evidence to suggest the code of conduct had been breached.

A third complaint against a parish councillor for ‘speaking rudely’ to a member of the public was later withdrawn, while the fourth and final complaint focused on a councillor’s ‘conflict of interests’, behaving in a bullying manner and passing on information that had been handed to them on a confidential basis.

But the report from the monitoring officer said: “The quality of certain relationships at the parish council is being played out in the context of code of conduct complaints, which is not the arena for settling disputes. The issues raised were capable of being resolved by the parish council and its members. This will be taken up with the parish council when relaxation of the lockdown allows.”

Presenting the report to the full council on July 22, the standards committee chairman Councillor John Townsend said: “I’m pleased that the standards committee has had a mercifully quiet life and indeed we have not been overworked, which is really good news because if we are overworked then there’s trouble!

“Nonetheless, the committee feels as we go into the future it’s important that we take with us into the new council a system which is robust, and we didn’t feel that we as a committee were involved enough with some of these complaints and charges that came up.”

This was echoed by fellow committee member Councillor Steven Hollowell, who added: “Standards is an essential function of the council but not necessarily a very pleasant or easy one.

“In recent years the monitoring officer has shouldered almost the entire burden along with the independent persons. We just feel now as a committee that we want to keep more of a regular eye and keep in touch with events and that’s what this report is about – trying to set ourselves up for the next nine months so that we can present a system which is fit for purpose for the new council.”

The report calls on the monitoring officer to review the standards complaints arrangements so that the committee is ‘more involved in reviewing the nature and content of complaints’. It also calls for two town or parish council councillors to be co-opted onto the committee for the last few months of the council’s existence.