Torbay councillors face code of conduct hearings

TWO prominent Torbay councillors – one of them the wife of Torbay’s Tory MP – have been criticised by an independent investigator after a “chaotic” council meeting.

Cllr David Thomas, the leader of the Tory group on Torbay Council, was found to have breached the council’s code of conduct while fellow Conservative Cllr Hazel Foster, the wife of Torbay MP and Government Minister Kevin Foster, was said to have bullied a council official.

Reports at the time said the meeting had echoes of the “Jackie Weaver” incident at Handforth Parish Council in Cheshire that went viral last year. The investigation report, which has been published on the council’s own website, will be considered by the council’s standards hearing sub-committee next week.

Cllr Foster said she would be making a statement to her hearing next

Tuesday and declined to comment further. Cllr Thomas will go before the sub-committee on Friday May 13.

The investigation followed a meeting of the council’s housing crisis review panel last September, a meeting chaired by Cllr Foster, which it was reported at the time, had “descended into disarray”. Members engaged in a fierce hour-long debate over who could or could not be a member of the panel, with the political make-up of the panel the main issue, and at one point a council clerk became “visibly distressed”.

One councillor said the clerk had been “upset and crying”. Six councillors complained – five Liberal Democrats and one Independent – as well as the council’s director of place Kevin Mowat, sparking the investigation. According to the report Cllr Foster, who was elected to the council in May 2019, was found to have breached Torbay’s own code of conduct five times during the meeting, on matters including not treating others with respect; bullying or harrassing a person and attempting to use her position improperly. The report says she also breached the code’s rulings on bringing her office or the council itself into disrepute.

The investigator said there was insufficient evidence to rule on two other possible breaches of the code.

The meeting on September 27 was streamed online, and a copy of the recording was used in the investigation. The report says: “Throughout the meeting, Cllr Foster appeared focused on and determined to take a vote on membership of the panel. The meeting was at times heated and this is what led to the complaints against Cllr Foster.”

Cllr Thomas faced nine complaints around his conduct at the same meeting, and was found to have breached the code twice, in attempting to use his position improperly to secure an advantage or disadvantage, and bringing his office or the council into disrepute.

The investigator notes: “I am of the opinion Councillor Thomas acted in a blunt, straight-talking manner, as is clearly his way. This approach might be difficult to accept at times (and he might wish to consider how his approach comes across to others) though this of itself would not breach the code. People are familiar with his style and there is nothing in any of his individual remarks during the meeting that I would regard as crossing the line between plain speaking and being disrespectful.”

The sub-committee at its meetings next week must decide if Cllrs Foster and Thomas breached the code.