Question

What do you do when you know and can prove councillors are not being truthful? Especially if their own emails are evidence that this is the case.

Answer 1

GFC

That is a sad state of affairs.

The Seven Principles

• Selflessness. Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest.
• Integrity. ... 
• Objectivity. ... 
• Accountability. ... 
• Openness. ... 
• Honesty. ... 
• Leadership.

If a councillor(s) as you say is openly not being truthful and their own correspondence is identifying this is the case then the councillor(s) must seriously consider whether their position on the council is any longer tenable.

Integrity and honesty is very hard attributes to regain once they are lost and living with a community who know that they have not told the truth whilst in a public office is very difficult.

The emails become your evidence for a code of conduct complaint to the monitoring officer. Any member of the public can also submit a code of conduct and believe me the public are very quick to pick up these sort of issues. Depending on the circumstances which have not been detailed (and which I don’t think is for this forum) it could end up being referred across to the police under “conduct in a public office”.

Answer 2

In a true democracy, everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty.  One of the pitfalls of emails and the written word is that they can be open to misinterpretation.   

If there is a breach of the Standing Orders, refer it to the Clerk.  If there is concrete evidence of a breach of the code of conduct, refer it to the MO.  If there is indisputable evidence that a crime has been committed, refer it to the police.

Comments

Thank you Robin, we’ve taken your advice and have done exactly that.