Inquiry into how local authority dealt with paedophile councillor
AN INDEPENDENT panel has been appointed to see whether a local authority has lessons to learn from a case that resulted in a long-serving councillor being imprisoned for sexual offences against children.
Anthony Hampton, who was a councillor in the Vale of Glamorgan for more than 30 years, was jailed for seven years last month after being found guilty of indecently assaulting two boys who were under 16 at the time of the crimes in the 1990s.
Hampton, a former teacher, was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault of a male under 16, following a trial at Cardiff Crown Court.
The 75-year-old had denied sexual abuse and described the acts he was accused of as “abhorrent”.
He was most recently elected as a Conservative councillor in 2017, but was suspended by the party after being charged, and became an Independent. He did not stand for reelection last year.
At one point he was the council’s executive member with responsibility for education.
He also sat on a joint committee with other councillors from Cardiff, Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan to oversee shared regulatory services involving the three local authorities.
Plaid Cymru councillor Mark Hooper called for the council to carry out an inquiry, saying he had been told of long-standing concerns about Hampton, but which had never stopped him achieving offices of significant influence.
The authority’s standards committee has now agreed to set up an independent panel to look at the issue, comprising three members of the committee who are not councillors.
Council monitoring officer Debbie Marles told the committee: “Inquiries are established by government ministers or otherwise by an Act of Parliament, so it’s not in our gift to establish an inquiry.
“Any concerns of a potentially criminal nature must be referred to the police.
“We have arrangements in place with regards to the members’ code of conduct.
“When the offences arose, the code of conduct wasn’t in place – certainly the model code of conduct we work to now, with provisions whereby if a member is of a belief that another member has potentially breached the code of conduct, it’s an obligation for that to be reported. So we now have that safeguard. In the wider context we have a whistleblowing policy, which is important particularly for officers.
Ms Marles said concerns about Mr Hampton’s conduct had not been raised within the council prior to his conviction.
Independent committee member Lorna Tinsley said: “I wouldn’t want this panel to be almost a pretend inquiry.
“I want it to very much focus on the wider issues of the trust we have that our current processes would enable any allegations or rumours that were circulating to be dealt with, and that people could trust that if they were brought to the surface, they would be dealt with appropriately.”
A panel was set up including Mrs Tinsley, committee chair Richard Hendicott, a deputy district judge, and independent member Ronnie Alexander.
Cllr Hooper welcomed the appointment of the panel, saying: “I will engage with the panel in order to ensure their terms of reference adequately cover the concerns that I, and those who have contacted me, have raised, and look for assurance that they will have appropriate protections in place to assure all testimony is treated confidentially.
“I will also insist that the panel’s findings are made public, as this issue is of significant public interest.”