There is a report in today’s Sidmouth Herald about complaints made against councillors – page 11. It says that most (7) have resulted in a “no case to answer” result which would appear to cast complainers in the “silly nuisance” category.
However, the article neglects to say there are at least four potentially serious complaints yet to be adjudicated by this officer according to the agenda of the Standards Committee.
Should the Monitoring Officer not make a decision on these four (or now maybe more)cases before the NEXT and last meeting meeting of this current council scheduled in March 2015, no-one will know how serious they are before the next election or which councillor or councillors were involved.
Just to give an example of how toothless a tiger a local Monitoring Officer now is can be is seen in this astonishing story of a councillor in Wigan who cannot be barred because there is no mechanism to do this under current monitoring arrangements:
“A councillor has been branded the ‘most expensive’ in Britain after running up a £2,500 phone bill calling sex chatlines [on his council mobile] and using his mobile to send ‘inappropriate’ and sexist messages. …
“… Robert Bleakley, who has an £11,000 allowance as a representative of Tyldesley in Wigan, Greater Manchester, also used a work computer to watch pornography and did not bother attending a meeting in five months and was found to have sent a message saying: ‘Aren’t they [women] f*****g idiots. No wonder women are just cooking and washing material.”
In 2004 Mr Bleakley was disqualified for three years after he verbally abused a female cleaner at Wigan town hall and threatening to get the sack after a minor traffic accident.
The Standards Board of England, which oversees councillors conduct [should read: oversaw at that time, the national Standards Board was abolished by this government in favour of local Monitoring Officers] investigated him and ruled that he was ‘aggressive, domineering and intimidating’.
He stood as the Lib Dem’s parliamentary candidate for Worsley, Greater Manchester, in the 1997 and 2001 general elections. At the time of the 2004 investigation he was leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Wigan Council.
He was suspended again for six months in 2010 after being accused of bullying an ex-policewoman who got a job as a community safety officer and branding her ‘that woman’ during meetings.
He had also been investigated by police over accusations of misconduct in a public office but was told he would face no criminal charges.”
Why are we (ALL councils that is) employing a senior officer who can basically do nothing?
To see Wigan Monitoring Officer’s futile attempts to discipline this councillor, see
Click to access Z385967688485-and-99-(Sanctions)-Councillor-R-Brierley.pdf
East Devon Watch 
1. It is not completely clear whether it is impossible for a Monitoring Officer to bar a councillor – we would really need a legal opinion from an appropriate barrister to be sure about this. Surely this government would not have abolished the Standards Board for England without giving Monitoring Officers equivalent powers??
However, Eric Pickles has told me in a letter that Localism is really about voters holding councillors to account at the next election, so perhaps they did leave Monitoring Officers toothless.
2. To some extent, the culpability of the councillor in Wigan is dependent on what rules were set about e.g. use of mobiles to call sex chat lines. So, IF Wigan Council had clearly stated in their Code of Conduct for Councillors that such calls were not allowed, and barred such calls with the mobile provider and stated that any such calls would be considered fraud and that the councillor would need to reimburse the costs of such calls THEN they might have had more ability to do something about it.
3. The answer to the final question is “… because it is a legal requirement to have a Monitoring Officer”. Obviously the role is a part time one, combined with other roles, so the costs are realistically proportionate to the time they spend on the role.
The real question is why the government does not provide appropriate legal grounds for both disbarment and prosecution when a councillor is so blatantly misusing public funds.
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Sorry, but Monitoring Officers can now admonish, request (but not force) an apology and publish the results of an inquiry in the press and on the council’s website. And that’s it unless there has been a criminal act which goes to the police. Oh, and the Leader can remove them from Committees at their discretion but not from the council.
Hard to believe, but true!
The old Standards Board could disbar a councillor for any length of time up to the end of that council’s life.
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