Spike in complaints against Luton councillors in aftermath of political upheaval
A routine procedural change to Luton Borough Council’s complaint process has already been put into practice after a spike in grievances following political upheaval at the local authority.
Only one complaint had been received this year when the alteration to the procedures was discussed by its standards committee in June, but the total increased to six by its latest meeting this week.
A new ruling administration formed by a coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Independent Alliance Group of breakaway Labour councillors has ended nearly 20 years of Labour rule in the town.
A proposed procedural amendment would provide for a mechanism to review decisions made by the council’s monitoring officer in rejecting complaints at the initial assessment stage, according to a report to councillors.
This change to the complaints process for dealing with allegations of misconduct was agreed by the committee in June, said the report. It returned to the committee to be ratified last on Monday (September 21).
LBC’s monitoring officer Mark Turner explained: “I was rather hoping we wouldn’t have an opportunity to test the amendment.
“We’d only received one complaint at that time, where the member (in question) was acting in a private capacity. Since then, I’ve received a further five complaints.
“Four of these have been within the space of the last month. I need hardly say some of these have been associated with the matters with which we’ve been dealing.
“However, it was a good opportunity to test that process out. On the whole it worked well. But I would ask members to please respond in the time given, when I contact you, because that enables me to get back to the complainant with the result as quickly as possible.
“Two of the five have been closed down. Three remain pending, although two were only received last week.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at them with all the work which has had to be done in the last week. I’ll be turning my attention to them shortly,” he added.
“The process is working, so I’d recommend you ratify that amendment to the procedure as it was drafted in June. Six complaints overall is better than we were this time last year, although more than the year before.”
Councillors agreed to ratify the changes made to the complaint process for dealing with allegations of misconduct, and their adoption with effect from June this year.
Another report to the committee recommended adopting guidance on the use of social media by councillors.
Mr Turner said: “Most of the complaints I’ve received lately involve social media use, mainly Facebook, with people claiming it’s being done inappropriately.
“We know how easy it can be for posts or tweets to come over incorrectly. I thought it would be helpful to provide some guidance, which is based around the Local Government Association model, as a supplement to our Code of Conduct.
“It gives members information to help them avoid being in a situation where there’s a complaint that needs to be dealt with under the standards regime.
“This is designed to be helpful, rather than coming down on the hard side and being prohibitive, in saying ‘if you do this, you’ll get in trouble’. It’s just giving some warning signs and alerts, where that might be necessary.”