Monitoring officers should be able to proactively withhold councillor home addresses from public register, LGA says

The Local Government Association has called for the Localism Act 2011 and associated regulations to be amended to explicitly allow monitoring officers to withhold councillors’ home addresses from the public register, without a specific incident or threat having been made.

The call, which has been made in a briefing ahead of a House of Lords debate on parliamentary democracy and standards in public life on Thursday (11 January), comes amid reports of increasing levels of toxicity in public and political discourse deterring people from standing for election.

As part of its appeal for reform, the LGA highlighted data it collated in 2023, which revealed that eight in 10 councillors had experienced abuse or intimidation and felt personally at risk in the last year.

Councillors surveyed by the LGA said they had faced death threats, abusive and discriminatory language, character assassination and intimidatory behaviour.

In the same survey, some councillors reported that having their personal information be very accessible and public left them feeling vulnerable in their local communities.

On home addresses, the LGA pointed out that MPs do not publish their home address on the public register of interests. Instead, there is a presumption that this address is kept confidential.

With councillors, the opposite is true, it said. “Councillors must declare their pecuniary and other interests within 28 days of taking office or from when the interest arose. This often includes councillors' home addresses, which are recorded on the public register of interests. If a councillor does not want their address published on the public register, they must request that the Monitoring Officer treat it as a sensitive interest.”

The monitoring officer must then agree that disclosing the details of the interest could lead to the member or a person connected with them being subject to violence or intimidation.

"The sensitive interest is very broad and undefined, and this lack of clarity has led to a divergence between monitoring officers who believe that a specific incident or threat needs to have been made before a home address can be redacted and others who agree to withhold councillors' addresses proactively," the LGA said.

“We would argue that the lack of clarity in the legislation is unhelpful to monitoring officers and councillors and creates inconsistency across the sector.”

It noted that the situation had created a 'postcode lottery' where some councils will redact home addresses for any councillor who requests it, while others will only do so in cases where a risk can be demonstrated.

The relevant legislation should be amended to move towards the presumption that councillors do not share their home addresses publicly as with members of parliament, the Association suggested.

The LGA also said that councillors should be able to contact the police over security concerns through 'Single Points of Contact' (SPoCs).

MPs and candidates in elections already have access to SPoCs, and areas like West Yorkshire Police in Leeds have already extended their SPoC arrangements to councillors "and have not been overwhelmed", the LGA said.

Funding for security mitigations should also be implemented, according to the briefing, in order to give councillors access to support similar to MPs, who benefit from home safety mitigations, such as security lights, ring doorbells, and better locks.

The LGA meanwhile called on the Government to work with social media companies to ensure that they understand and acknowledge the democratic significant of local politicians and provide better and faster routes for councillors reporting abuse and misinformation online.

Adam Carey