Can a parish council sue a councillor

Question

Can a parish council take a chair to the small claims court over an invoice that the council has received for legal work initiated by the council but the law firm asked for information from the chair which was supplied but some councillors are claiming that the information should not have been supplied without getting the councils approval and now expect the chair to pay the difference out of their own money

Answer 1

So the Council approved the expenditure..? but seemingly now some members object to information pertinent to it been shared.. ? Forgive me but is that not the point of obtaining legal advice (you put you cards on table and get told what the prospects of success or possible options. Heck I'd have been absolutely livid if someone hadnt shared stuff and sat on it.. (spending public money to get advice that was based on partial/incomplete picture leading to potentially different advice given)

Comments

Having sent the requested information to the solicitor their advice changed from what was originally said so what I sent was instrumental to their advice

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Some councillors are saying that I should have checked with them before sending what the lawyer asked for which was mostly copies of emails, as the council had instructed this lawyer and they asked for items so they could make a positive decision, I sent them what they asked for, I will add that a few councillors and one new one has asked me to resign about five times, all those that support him have only been on the council since May this year or even since July

Answer 2

Thinking about this slightly different...

• The Council has approved the need for seeking legal advice on a particular issue, not an issue.

• Additional information was 'asked for' but was that information to aid the advice to the benefit of a balance response or (I know I am going to be wallyed over this) provided by the chairman with a view to sabotage that advice.  Thinking of planning advice, where the chair has a different view to the rest of the PC and I have seen that happen, then potentially a major issue.

• Either way, the council cannot sue the chairman, they can only invoke their own disciplinary policy, IF the chair has been found to have provided biased or information with intent to damage or sabotage any legal advice.

• The fact you don't like the additional Information being provided is immaterial if it was factually correct, then.....

Comments

I'm on the same line of thinking as the two previous contributors.  I think an attempt to sue your chairman would be an expensive failure.

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I being the chair was told to instruct a firm of solicitors as agreed with the councillors, a cost was agreed but then the clerk requested more information which prompted the solicitor to email me to ask for emails and a copy of a code of conduct complaint which I supplied, this increased the cost and now I’m being blackmailed to either stand down or the rest will initiate a money claim from me over the additional charge from the solicitor, not al, councillors agreed but we have a rather corrupt bunch now

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It was not to sabotage the lawyers advice but just providing the information they asked for to make a judgement, they required that to advise in the correct way, I wanted to assist the lawyer in their request

Answer 3

I agree with the other responses. A couple of procedural points from your question and the responses given:

Did you explore the possibility of obtaining this advice at no cost from your insurer?

The Clerk should have provided the information, not the Chair.

There's no disciplinary policy for councillors, it would be a Code of Conduct complaint to the Monitoring Officer.