“CIVIC” – A Way Forward?

Todays’ Letter to the Editor introduces an organisation dedicated to untangling the web of rogue Town/Parish Clerks and scurrilous self-serving Councillors who have been hi-jacking lowest-tier local government throughout England & Wales – with apparent impunity – for many, many years. The problem extends far beyond Whitby, Potto and Newby & Scalby. But the tide is beginning to turn . . . perhaps to flood . . .

CIVIC is a group of Councillors, ex-Councillors and members of the public who began supporting each other when they met on line. They had been sharing their experiences in social media posts and on websites, obtaining advice and help where there was none available in the real world. Some of them were continuing to hold their Councils to account as lone voices or in a small, minority group; some had resigned or not stood for re-election, unwilling to carry on in what they believed was a rigged system, challenging it instead from outside.

Each of these people was expressing serious concerns about the state of local government at the very lowest tier.

Regular readers will be gratified to learn that North Yorkshire is far being a lone victim of this kind of democratic abuse – and the North Yorks Enquirer is not alone in demanding a long-needed resolution to the petty corruption that infects too many small communities.

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OPEN LETTER

CIVIC came about when a group of Councillors and ex-Councillors met on line. They shared concerns about the activities of their councils. Groups of intelligent, articulate and knowledgeable Councillors and ex-Councillors discussed each others’ concerns, provided answers and support. But the issues didn’t go away, and in fact, when armed with information or advice, those individuals began to experience another recurring issue – they became labelled ‘trouble-makers’ – or worse.

After reading yet another example of what looked like the bullying of a Councillor for questioning what the Council was doing, one of them suggested meeting up, to share experiences and see if they could get to the bottom of why this was happening and change it.

“We met several times and decided to form a group. The more we met, the more examples emerged. Across the country, large and small Councils with different responsibilities and budgets, appeared to be having difficulties following their own Standing Orders, Policies and Procedures, national legislation and the Seven Nolan Principles of Public Life and their respective Councillors’ Codes of Conduct. Some seemed oblivious or resistant to any responsibility to adhere to the findings of Monitoring Officers or External Auditors…and everywhere, Councillors and ex-Councillors trying to scrutinise and hold them to account were suffering a great deal for trying to do so.”

After a period of gathering lots of examples of ‘issues’, the group has summarised what’s going wrong as follows:

• Town and Parish Councils have insufficient external accountability. No public body has a remit within current legislation to go further than issue ‘recommendations’ and, knowing this, some Council personnel are able to act with impunity.
• Some Council personnel (staff and Councillors) are repeatedly failing to adhere to legislation, Policies and Standing Orders, and ignoring the ‘recommendations’ they receive from Monitoring Officers and External Auditors regarding these wrongdoings.
• While a Town and/or Parish Council is a public facing organisation with a responsibility to provide certain services to the electorate, there are no minimum standards for service delivery, or personnel management, nor any minimum qualification or monitoring of capability.
• The Council itself invariably investigates any complaints about its performance and activities with ultimate say on whether complaints are legitimate or upheld, or even ‘valid’.
• Groups of personnel on Councils can, in some cases, bully and isolate colleagues who attempt to hold them to account. These people often have no understanding of the nature of bullying in the workplace and are held to a different standard as Council personnel, both in terms of tolerating bullying behaviour and the assessment of whether someone is or is not a bully.

Councils are generally supported by a regional advisory body [Ed: e.g. the Yorkshire Local Councils Associations – YLCA] which is paid a subscription by the Council to provide legal advice and training support.

But individual Councillors and members of the public are excluded and therefore badly served in this system for advice and support when trying to hold Councils to account.

We consider these issues to be symptoms of the fact that there is no external governance of these Councils.

There is no external accountabilty for individual personnel or Councils as bodies corporate. Legislation is insufficient to provide Monitoring Officers and External Auditors with anything more than the ability to make unenforceable ‘recommendations’ to Councils and the individuals within them.

CIVIC believes that these problems must be addressed as soon as possible to prevent more damage to the credibility of Town and Parish Councils, and more waste and/or misuse of public money. Standards for Council services and their internal activities will only be improved by external governance and accountability and changes to, and tightening up of, existing legislation.

CIVIC has a website which has begun recording its members’ experiences and which is where you can read its submission to the Committee on Standards in Public Life for its consultation on accountability of public bodies.

We thank the North Yorks Enquirer for helping to publicise our work.

https://townandparishcouncillors.co.uk/