Councils, a law unto themselves

Councils, a law unto themselves.

Written for the Blog by a Preston Resident.

Hi Terry

Parish Council’s are pretty well a law unto themselves, they don’t come under the remit of the Local Government Ombudsman, and although East Riding are suppose to deal with wayward councillors via the Standards Committee it all seems to be lip service.

If you look on the East Riding website and find the Standards Committee section you will find the great majority of complaints against Parish Councillors by members of the public are dismissed, few councillors are made accountable.

After going to the Standards Committee twice the experience has left me feeling that East Riding actively search for a reason to find they haven’t ‘breached the Code of Conduct’ all councillors sign up to when taking office. This gives Council’s and Councillors free reign to do pretty much as they like, they aren’t really accountable to anyone.

If you consider the 'Standards Committee' as pretty much our one and only port of call when we have misgivings about councillors, there isn't much support for residents, which means councillors will be emboldened and apathy as a result will spread, which will result in less confidence in our Local Government, which means they can be even bolder....and so we go on. The only people who can stop that cycle are members of the public as residents.

Though in my recent case against a councillor, a number of them got together and came up with very false statements that obviously contradicted the circumstances of my complaint, which assisted East Riding (in my opinion) in reaching a very easy verdict of ‘no breach of the Code of Conduct has occurred’. I shall be posting on this subject in much more detail in a future Blog, look out for it.

This is very much the reason for the current apathy and lack of confidence in our Local Government and Councils, I don’t have any statistical data to support that view, it’s just my opinion which has come about through my experience of most things being glossed over behind closed doors.

Until you and I and others join together to make our views clear there is not likely to be any change….if you’re interested in joining, contact us by email.

Hope that helps Terry and thanks for reading.