I am a Parish Councillor and am concerned about how the Council is dealing with another Councillor who has behaved in an unacceptable manner. He applied to be co-opted around the time that he resubmitted an outline planning application to build a new house in the garden of a property he owns in our village, but no longer lives in. This property has been rented out for about 9 months and we have heard that he is suing the tenant for leaving the house in a mess. Apparently she had to enlist the help of a friend to help her clean it up to make it habitable when she moved in, and also had to have electrical problems repaired to make them safe. She was also told not to speak to the neighbours and has been harassed by him many times, as I understand. As far as the Council is concerned, he approached most of us with an offer of a coffee or a curry to look at his revised plans (I declined by the way, as did everyone else, I believe).
My main concern now is that at our last meeting, a fellow Councillor who could not attend, wrote a letter to the Council, which was read out by the Clerk and formally requested that the Council reported his behaviour to the County Council. The Chairman and Clerk stated at the meeting that to do so would involve the media and the police and appeared keen to brush it aside, however one of the parishioners who attended the meeting reminded me afterwards that yet another Councillor had brought the subject up when we discussed matters for the next meeting. The Clerk has issued the draft minutes and the agenda for our next meeting and there is no mention of the letter, even to the point that it is stated in the minutes that there was no correspondence! I emailed the Clerk and questioned this and was told that...
'At the previous meeting was decided not to follow up the letter, as the only choice we have is to involve the police, as the councillor in question was accused of behaving illegally. Which in turn would involve the press. So it was left that all councillors would talk to the monitoring officer and learn how to behave.
If T***** had of been there I would not have minuted 'vebatim', as per the course I attended. The item in question i.e. planning ***** decision was not changed.
If you have a problem with this please bring it up at the next meeting.'
I just don't know what to do, as I don't want to be complicit in a 'cover up' but equally don't want to have to resign from the Council if I feel that this would effectively be the case. Shouldn't we report bad behaviour if it has occurred? Hopefully someone can advise me what I and the Council should do.
Many thanks in advance.
