We have received the following email from Sandra Semple. This is a personal view only and does not necessarily represent the view of this blog:
“May I point out that the district council spokesperson, who has said in a recent newspaper report that “As far as Mark Williams, chief executive of East Devon District Council is aware, there is no new and relevant evidence that would give cause to reopen either the Councillor Twiss or Councillor Wragg cases” is incorrect.
I submitted new and relevant information on one of these cases in December 2014 in two specific areas relating to the Council’s Code of Conduct and the Council’s Media Policy. In early January 2015 I urged that the Monitoring Officer to give me his decision on this new and relevant information in good time so that, if this information did indeed matter, it could go to the late January 2015 Standards Board Meeting which was then about 3 weeks away.
To date, I have heard nothing from the Monitoring Officer and my 2 complaints are not included in those dismissed, unless he has dismissed them without letting me know.
It seems unlikely that they were amongst those dismissed as I wrote to him recently saying that if he did not make a decision on my new and relevant information before the next Standards Board scheduled for March 2015 it would be likely that we would not know the outcome of these complaints before district council elections.
As the Monitoring Officer has cleared so many complaints he obviously has time to deal with these outstanding complaints now, although as he still appears to work full-time for Mark Williams sister council in South Somerset, perhaps he is not finding it easy to deal with his workload in East Devon.”
East Devon Watch 