West Northamptonshire councillor breached code of conduct at planning committee meeting, investigators found

A councillor deliberately used his position to disadvantage a housebuilder who proposed a contentious project in his ward, breached his authority’s code of conduct, investigators found.

West Northamptonshire councillor Phil Bignell was not a member of the Daventry planning committee or a substitute when he was allowed to sit on it and vote against a contentious planning application last November.

The external standards investigators said why he was allowed to sit on the committee remains “unclear”.

The application for up to 45 homes in Flore proposed by East Haddon-based Cora Homes was rejected by the committee by five votes to four. The investigation into Cllr Bignell’s conduct was triggered by Local Government Association (LGA) members who attended the committee as part of a peer review into West Northamptonshire Council’s (WNC) planning service.

The planning experts said Cllr Bignell, who represents Long Buckby, showed a senior officer presenting the application “a complete lack of respect” as he “waved his papers in the air” and argued they had omitted key information for the application. Cllr Bignell told the investigation that while he was “persistent”, he was not aggressive.

But the investigators found he had breached WNC’s code of conduct. They said he “failed to treat [the officer] with respect” but that it was “not so serious as to amount to bullying”.

The LGA representatives noticed during the meeting that Cllr Bignell read from a typed document, leading them to believe that he had already decided he was opposed to the application before the meeting.

Cllr Bignell told the investigators he had prepared a speech ahead of the meeting, ready to speak as a Long Buckby councillor. But the investigators found if that was the case he “should not have involved himself so directly in the decision-making process”.

Since he sat on the committee deciding the application, they found Cllr Bignell breached WNC’s code of conduct a second and third time. They said he used “his position to improperly disadvantage [Cora Homes]” and “brought his office and authority into disrepute by undermining the integrity of the council’s planning service”.

The investigators were told by the chairman of the planning committee, Cllr Kevin Parker, that he allowed Cllr Bignell to sit on it because he had “received the necessary training”. Cllr Bignell is currently the chairman of WNC’s strategic planning committee. Both are Conservative councillors.

It would have been clearly “unacceptable” if the Conservative group had made an attempt to “actively influence the decision…to achieve a predetermined outcome”, the investigators said. But they said they “did not find sufficient evidence” there was a “wider political effort to ensure the planning application was rejected”.

They concluded WNC’s monitoring officer Catherine Whitehead nor the WNC Conservatives’ group business manager Cllr Suresh Patel “were involved in the decision or even notified” that Cllr Bignell would be sitting on the committee.

WNC’s democracy and standards hearing sub-committee will meet on Wednesday to decide if it agrees with the investigators’ findings. It will also agree the sanctions it could impose Cllr Bignell, if it wants to impose any.