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 code 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 body has a remit within current legislation to go further than issue recommendations and council personnel act with impunity knowing this.
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 wrong doings.
While a town and 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 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 a bully.
Councils are generally supported by a regional advisory body which is paid a subscription to provide legal and training support. Individual councillors and members of the public are 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 a body. Legislation is insufficient to provide monitoring officers and external auditors with anything more than the ability to make recommendations to councils and 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.
Tag: politics
in UK Disability History Month, Alexandra Boyd speaks on Radio Wiltshire about her experiences of requesting reasonable adjustments at Wilton Town Council to enable her to continue in her role as a Town Councillor
**Interviewer:** And on the program, we were talking about the fact that this month is UK Disability History Month. Now, for many of us, getting about and going to work is something we take for granted. But what if you have to give up a job that you love simply because the place you work is unable or unwilling to meet your health needs? Alexandra Boyd was a Wilton town councillor for four years, but resigned last month due to the lack of accessibility at the council chambers. Alexandra joins us on the line now. Alexandra, good afternoon to you. Can you give us a bit more detail about what actually led to your resignation?
**Alexandra Boyd:** Yes, so our town council chambers, they are beautiful. They are all old-worldly. They’ve got the antique chairs, and it looks just the part. The problem is they are upstairs in a Grade II listed building. We have a stair lift, but I’m not quite sure whether it is accessible for a wheelchair. I’ve got a power chair with a seat specially made for me to support my hips and my back. So I have been campaigning over the last nearly four years. I would have come up for election in May, I joined the council to advocate for inclusiveness and disability rights.
When my condition worsened, and I needed to use my wheelchair more regularly, there wasn’t really any positive movement towards either changing the venue or making any adjustments in the council to enable me to partake in the meetings.
**Interviewer:** So you use an electric wheelchair at the moment. Did the town council make any adjustments to make things easier for you? What was the communication like with them?
**Alexandra Boyd:** Well, one of my fellow councillors, who also resigned, and I am the 14th councillor in the four-year period to have resigned from the council, did an accessibility audit with me of Wilton streets. We also asked if the council would be happy to do a disability awareness course, which they did, and it was absolutely brilliant. I think a few councillors then understood that there are many different disabilities. I thought that would give them better knowledge about how disabled people live and how they struggle at times.
When my condition worsened, I asked for a change of venue because we used to use the Wilton Community Centre just after COVID due to the COVID regulations. It’s a fully accessible building with fully accessible toilets, which our council chambers do not have. This is one of the big problems if someone in a wheelchair needs the toilet.
Basically, I was told no, because there is a lot going on at the council. The clerk is very busy, and it would cost a lot of money to investigate. Then there would be hiring fees for the hall.
**Interviewer:** You loved your job and your time being a councillor. How did it make you feel at the end of the day to actually try to go to a meeting?
**Alexandra Boyd:** I was very upset. I was sitting at home crying my eyes out. My husband just said, “Look, this is enough now. You’ve given so much, you’re mentally making yourself ill, and I want you to leave.” And that’s what I did. I had even inquired about the community centre, whether they had evenings free. I had spoken to residents in Wilton who entrusted me in confidence about their problems with getting to council meetings because they are either elderly or also disabled in scooters or wheelchairs, but the council wanted to know their names. I said I couldn’t do that because these people spoke to me in confidence.
**Interviewer:** Thank you, Alexandra, for sharing your story with us here on BBC Radio.
CIVIC 