Removing part of a recording a council meeting

Question

Our council has a policy of recording meetings and uploading them to YouTube.  At a recent meeting two confidential items were discussed at the start of the meeting.  The recording hears the public being asked to leave, and instead of it the recommencing when they returned to the room, a councillor discusses the clerks appraisal in glowing terms.  Another councillor makes a comment as to why they refused to contribute to the appraisal.  The clerk uses the recording to assist with minutes.  However, the clerk failed to remove the confidential glowing comments, but deleted the part which shone a negative light.  On listening to that recording what the clerk should have done was delete the whole item. Since being challenged the clerk has wrongly laid the blame on someone else.  My question is what sanctions should apply, because it leaves open the question of whether previous recordings may have been tampered with, and so destroys trust.  Is this gross misconduct?

Answer 1

That does not get anywhere near the high threshold for gross-misconduct... It is however somewhat alarming that you appear to have already found the officer "guilty" in your own mind and moved onto "sanctions" already. No wonder so many good people leaving the sector in droves...

Comments

It could - it depends upon the context....

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it has not been a question of finding the person guilty or not, but to understand whether in fact there is or not  a case to answer. We have been advised it is a possible serious breach though, since the recording is part of the official record alongside the minutes. if the recording were just an aide memoir to assist in the creation of the minutes that would not be an issue.   Trust is imperative,  also an innocent staff member has been blamed, which has not helped the situation.

Answer 2

It would be for a disciplinary panel to decide - after considering the broader context, the implications, the potential for premeditation and intent and any reasonable excuse / explanation of the employee - whether, or not, a disciplinary process should be adopted.

There will be a sliding scale which can only realistically be applied AFTER proper consideration of the circumstances.  

If it were a repeat, frequent, intentional misdirection and misrepresentation of the circumstances in order to achieve an unreasonable advantage for the perpetrator then yes - gross misconduct might  be an appropriate finding.

If it were a clumsy, accidental, single incident of IT fat fingeredness, then perhaps a quiet word would be more appropriate possibly some additional targeted training or mentoring.

At the very least - the person responsible for closing the meeting and terminating the video record has failed in their duty to do so.  

The person that has uploaded the video record has then compounded the error which will need to be corrected anyway.

There is a case for damaging PC reputation and credibility - if I had been 'asked to leave the public session' (and I presume you meant there was a motion on the agenda which specified the reason for the closed session and that there was a vote of the PC before the public were asked to leave?) and then I watched any part of the session I had been asked to leave on a public broadcast YouTube video - I would be properly miffed....

Yes, you might have a circumstance which warrants disciplinary investigation - if the broader context supports it.  

Have you put your case to the chair / HR committee for consideration??  

Comments

In this case the Chair is attempting to bury it, and avoiding discussing at council. The councillor involved is angry and not satisfied with what appears to be lame excuses.  The chair has also suggested to the only other staff member that they must have been responsible, so now we have the clerk and chair both coming up with two bizarre reasons why the blame lies with her. She is extremely upset and now wary of what else she may be blamed for. There are many other issues as well, so now 5 councillors have referred all matters to the Monitoring Officer.

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Doubtful your MO will engage in an internal staff issue which is, rightly, an internal employment issue for the council.
If however, the chair - who is just a Cllr ke all the others - is potentially or perceived to be misusing the office of chair to infer an unfair advantage / disadvantage on them self or another - then that could be reffed to the MO as a CoC issue for the chair.
If you have 5 Cllrs seeking a more fulsome response then they should combine to table a motion for the next agenda and get it all on the table