Councillor takes issue with ‘tit-for-tat’ complaints claim

ROYAL BOROUGH: An opposition councillor has said he ‘resents’ the implication that councillors are using the council’s code of conduct to settle personal scores.

At a meeting of a member standards panel on Wednesday, June 8, the Borough’s monitoring officer Emma

Duncan reviewed the year’s complaints levelled against councillors.

“This year we have had three times as many complaints as most other local authorities,” said Ms Duncan.

“The authority doesn’t have the resources to investigate lots of complaints.

“Most of them have been relatively minor – personal issues, motivated by antipathy from both sides.”

However, Cllr John Baldwin (Lib Dem, Belmont) said he resented the implication that councillors used complaints in a tit-for-tat manner.

“I’m probably one of the most complained-about members of the council that’s been sitting since 2019 and I have made one complaint,” he said.

He asked Ms Duncan to draw a distinction between back-and-forth on social media and use of the code of conduct complaints process.

Ms Duncan stressed that officers have definitely seen a connection between these two processes.

“We can see the relationship between two members deteriorating [online] and we know that one will make a complaint – and shortly after we will receive another,” she said.

“In these circumstances, it does feel like I’m less in public service and more like I’m in the playground.”

On the flipside, Ms Duncan that in the past three months there have been no complaints from councillors against other councillors, a sign that they are ‘getting to grips’ with how to use social media to interact with each other appropriately.