I have been invited to an informal meeting with a representative from the local authority's HR to try to resolve concerns the clerk has about me. The invitation has come from an "independent" councillor on the Personnel committee. He doesn't know what the clerk's concerns are and said he was asked to contact me because he's an "independent".
The clerk's actual concerns are that I've already corrected them on points of law and policy several times in my short time on the council and haven't been bullied into submission by vexatious complaints and the incredibly hostile atmosphere that has been created for my benefit. What concerns they have officially put forward I don't know and it appears that I am expected to go into a meeting unprepared to hear them first.
Although I have no respect for the clerk either personally or professionally based on their conduct I have been professional in all my dealings with them as a councillor. I have been very careful not to do anything that could be seen as undermining them and been polite in my all communications with them. The clerk is an employee and the council is their employer and I understand perfectly the need to set aside me personal feelings and treat them appropriately.
I am inclined to decline the meeting because there is no prospect of it being productive. I am 99% sure the next step, regardless of whether I attend or not, is to be told that I must not contact the clerk directly and will have to funnel everything through the chairman. They have recently voted to reduce council meetings to bi-monthly despite struggling to get through the agenda of monthly meetings to keep me out of the loop as much as possible and forcing me to go to the chairman with every request for information or action would further restrict my ability to do the job I was elected to do. Of course, refusing the request to resolve the clerk's concerns informally (however insincere) would play into their hands but I feel it would be incredibly foolish to walk into what is obviously an ambush.