Town and parish councils demand government talks over councillor disciplinary judgment
The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) and the Society of Local Councils Clerks (SLCC) have called for urgent government talks over a recent High Court ruling on how councillors can be disciplined.
Last month Mrs Justice Cockerill upheld a legal challenge brought by a councillor on Ledbury Town Council in Herefordshire over sanctions the authority imposed following a complaint by the clerk and deputy clerk.
The effect of the High Court ruling – amongst other things – was that Ledbury were not able to sanction the councillor concerned other than going through the procedural safeguards of a code of conduct process under the Localism Act 2011.
The judge found that the council’s restrictions, which continued even after the councillor was found not to have been in breach of the code, were an unlawful sanction.
NALC and SLCC revealed that they have written to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Local Government Association to highlight their concerns about the judgment.
They said: “The judgment will make it more difficult for local (parish and town) councils to resolve disputes between councillors and their employees. This decision confines most complaints about councillors to the code of conduct process. Employees will now (generally) not be able to use their councils' grievance procedures if the subject of their grievance is a complaint about a councillor.
“Inevitably, this will lead to more principal authority involvement in local council matters and place additional burdens on already hard-pressed monitoring officers. It is also likely that matters which previously would have been dealt with within a council will take substantively longer when dealt with by a principal authority.”
NALC and SLCC claimed that the Ledbury ruling would impact on the corporate well-being of councils, and said talks should be held “to try and find a sensible way forward to ensure quick and fair resolution of disputes”.
