30th March 2022
And so this blog returns to the unhappy local council at Handforth.
(It is now a town council and no longer a parish council, which is a bit of a shame.)
You will recall the viral (but edited) video of that Zoom council meeting.
And you will recall the now-immortal exchange:
‘You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver, no authority at all!’
[Silence]
‘She’s just kicked him out.’
[…]
‘Read the standing orders, read them and understand them!’
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A published analysis of the meeting concluded the following:
“on the face of the Standing Orders, Jackie Weaver did not seem to have the authority”
“Weaver did not have authority as ‘Proper Officer’”
“Weaver did not appear to have the formal power to exclude the disruptive councillors”
Those were, however, not the conclusions that were published and widely reported yesterday – but the conclusions of this blog at the time of the viral video.
That is what you can find when you – ahem – read the standing orders.
When you read them and understand them.
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What has returned Handforth council to the news is that Cheshire East Council has now published (with redactions) six reports in respect of allegations of bullying.
These reports were requested in a freedom of information request – and although that request was refused – the refusal was on the basis that the reports would be published as part of a publication scheme.
And so yesterday was the day they were published – and they can be found here.
The reports are not pleasant reading – and they reveal an ugly culture of confrontation and bullying in local government that is perhaps not as widely known about as it should be.
In the reports there is – almost as an aside – a view taken as to whether Weaver did have the authority.
But that view is not the primary purpose of the reports – the reports are instead about the conduct of the councillors, and so it is interesting to see how this view on Weaver’s authority is taken in context:
That is quite a list of words for what Weaver faced: “aggressive… threatening… menacing… unnecessarily confrontational and disrespectful”.
The report avers: “Faced with what were unusual and difficult circumstances, and the deep-seated issues underpinning those circumstances, we can understand why [Weaver] acted as she did […]”
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My blogpost last year took a relaxed view of what Weaver did in the circumstances.
She did not have the (formal) authority – but in the remarkable and unfortunate practical situation she was placed in, where a meeting should be going ahead but some councillors wanted to make sure it did not, the conduct of some of those councillors seemed to mean there was little choice for Weaver at the time of the meeting.
This blog also averred last year that the action by Weaver to place councillors in the Zoom waiting room seemed to have been subsequently ratified and affirmed by other councillors, though the published reports don’t take a view on that.
Weaver maintains that the “jury was still out” on whether she was able to move the councillors to the waiting-room, and she is reported as saying the following:
“We were still very vague about how virtual council meetings worked and I did not actually remove them from the meeting, in my opinion, I moved them to the waiting room.
“A little later in the meeting the remaining councillors voted to remove them.
“So I welcome the findings of the report but am deeply saddened that it took so long and cost so much to get there.”
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The six published reports are not investigations into Weaver.
They are instead investigations into serious complaints in respect of others – in which a view is taken on whether she had the authority.
And, as this blog concluded at the time, Weaver did not have the authority.
But the reports show the wider problem.
The wider problem is that others were not acting within the rules.
It was an almost-impossible position for Weaver or anyone else in her position, and it is not obvious whether, in the circumstances, a less-bad route was practically available at that meeting so as to ensure that the meeting continued.
One of the reports even concluded that bullying took place at the meeting:
While another councillor was not found to have bullied at the meeting was also found to have breached the code by their conduct:
Not bullying – but “unnecessarily confrontational and disrespectful […] There was no need […] to make comments that sought to discredit and question [Weaver]’s experience and professional integrity.”
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Of course – it is understandable why the media are focusing on whether or not Weaver had the authority.
You cannot argue with a meme.
But that should be a starting-point, not a finishing-point.
The now-published reports indicate a troubling situation in local government: the confrontational, threatening and (in one case) bullying behaviour of councillors.
The lack of “authority” in all this is therefore a lot wider than any one person.
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It depends how seriously we take rules of conduct. One way to look at it would be to say that there are certain things that one (or, in this case, an elected member) must do or not do (e.g. attending properly convened meetings), and there are also certain ways that one should do those things. I’ve always held the view that someone other than the Chair excluding people from participating in a meeting falls squarely in the category of things one must not do, and I’m glad the report backs me up (never mind any equivocations about the ‘waiting room’).
On the other hand, arguably this way of looking at things reduces rules of conduct to extras, ‘nice to have’s. Are there types of bad conduct that rise to the level of ‘must’/’must not’? I’m not sure – one person’s aggressive shouting is another’s raised voice in a lively discussion. Perhaps, if you pile up enough ‘should not’s, you eventually get to a ‘must not’ (should not shout, should not interrupt, should not make threats… must not bully), but if every one of those individual breaches is disputed…?
I think you’re right about the broader story – local government (at least in and around Handforth) clearly isn’t a very happy or well-functioning place. But for me the burden of this story was always the gleeful reception of Ashley’s actions in social and broadcast media – which to my Cassandra-ish eye had a definite quality of celebrating a decisive individual cutting through boring old procedural democracy – so it’ll be nice if there’s some pushback against that.
If it were the other way around, and a council employee had a “lively discussion” with a Councillor they may well be disciplined, including fired. In a situation of a power imbalance much greater care should be taken by the ones in power not to even be seen to abuse it.
This discrepancy of who gets to behave in this way and who doesn’t, continues to mystify me. Either we all do it or none of us do it and I vote none of us do it , please.
“(It is now a town council and no longer a parish council, which is a bit of a shame.)”
As an aside, I was not aware that there was a significant difference between a parish council and a town council.
Birmingham City Council once proposed dividing the whole of the city up into parish councils.
More recently, to spike the guns of Conservatives who had for many years demanded a town council for the Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield, which is wholly within the boundaries of the City of Birmingham, the Labour run City Council gave Sutton Coldfield, a town council.
I had assumed calling it a town and not a parish council was to gain maximum political benefit for my party. I know the wily fox who came up with the idea to dish the Tories.
Whoever drafted the text for Birmingham City Council’s website decided to split the difference:
“A new Town Council has been set up in Sutton Coldfield following local consultation. This covers the four wards of Sutton Coldfield Constituency, and the first election of Parish Councillors took place on Thursday 5 May 2016.”
There is a parish council for New Frankley, also wholly within the boundaries of the City of Birmingham.
There is no practical difference between a parish council and a town council. They are still ‘officially’ known as parishes (under LGA 1972) but can choose to have the style of “Town”, and by consequence the Chair is entitled to be called Mayor.
The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 also gave parishes the right to style themselves as “Community”, “Neighbourhood”, or “Village” Councils, should they so wish.
Most urban areas are similar to what you cite in Birmingham – largely unparished, with the odd exception. The City of Manchester for example is wholly unparished, aside from one small area (Ringway) which was only brought into the city in the 1974 reorganisation (as it encompasses Manchester Airport). Four of the other Greater Manchester boroughs are wholly unparished, with the other five largely unparished other than small (mostly rural) areas.
Slightly more specifically, any parish council that covers just one civil parish can resolve to be a Town Council (and, if it wishes, resolve to style its chairman as “Mayor”). But there are a lot of rural parish councils which are responsible for more than one civil parish, and these are not permitted to call themselves town councils.
Also, any parish council created as part of the 1972 Act which covered a parish that already had a Mayor by Royal Charter was automatically deemed to be a Town Council without the council needing to pass a resolution to adopt that title. There can be a certain amount of civic snobbishness whereby these historic town councils with centuries-old mayoralties granted by the monarch look down their noses a little bit at parvenue town councils which have availed themselves of the provisions of the 1972 Act in order to adopt the more prestigious stylings.
Birmingham with its resident population of 1,140,500 is a unique city and hellish place to administer.
Neighbouring Solihull’s population is a mere 217,500.
The thought of Birmingham Balkanised into parishes with some of the parishes then styling themselves as town, community, village or neighbourhood councils or even perhaps coming together with others to form larger groups of the same is quite a disturbing one.
What was my party thinking …
Then again, parishes vying with each other for the attention of the City Council might be easier to manage politically with all the potential to divide and administer (or am I just being a cynical civil servant who thrice worked directly to the Birmingham (and Solihull) Jobcentre equivalent of the Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council).
Helpful additions Mark – I had actually included a note regarding only ungrouped parishes being entitled to style themselves as a Town Council but took it out!
It’s interesting to read a dispassionate analysis of this sorry event.
Handforth has had a long history of argumentative Council meetings as I understand it, although I haven’t been directly involved myself.
I was born there but moved a few miles up the road aged 10, so my grasp on politics was….minimal….at the time.
I still have exasperated friends and relations there though.
If people are exasperated by the Town Council, the clear thing to do is to elect somebody else.
Parishes are the fundamental building blocks of our democratic system and the fact they are so neglected is one of the main reasons why our democracy is such a mess.
Where else in our democratic system can ordinary people ask a simple question and have that question put to a formal ballot?
To elect other people, you have to have other people willing to stand. When so many are deterrred because of the abuse they know they will inevitably receive, that’s harder than it ought to be.
Also, you only get the chance to elect a replacement once ever four years (barring a resignation or death leading to a by-election). If you discover that a councillor six months after they’re elected, that’s a long time to have to wait to get rid of them.
Unfortunately, bullying and harassment can be rife in town and parish councils. I’ve seen plenty of it in the council on which I serve.
Part of the problem is that it’s easy to become a parish councillor, as in many cases there are fewer candidates than seats so it’s either an uncontested election or the members have to be co-opted, and even when they are elected there are few barriers to unsuitable candidates being on the ballot paper and, often, in the council chamber. And another major problem is that the standards regime has no teeth, at least in England. All the the Monitoring Officer and Member Conduct Committee can do is name and shame, which often isn’t good enough if the member concerned has no shame.
The government’s position is that it’s up to the electorate to choose their councillors, and any findings of wrongdoing by them are simply something that voters have to take into account when casting their vote. But that doesn’t work when there aren’t enough candidates to force an election in the first place. And many abusers have their own shills, particularly in social media, who loudly dispute the findings of the MO and MCC and complain that it’s all a stitch up.
We desperately need a standards regime with enforcement powers, including suspension or, in extremis, disqualification, of an offending councillor. Yes, this does need to be exercised carefully, and only after a report by a genuinely independent external investigator, in order to prevent it being abused in order to silence people who are merely being a thorn in the side of the ruling group. But one of the things that I know has deterred otherwise perfectly suitable candidates from standing for election is that they don’t feel that the system will protect them from the abuse they know they will inevitably receive. If we value our local democracy, then we need to start taking these issues seriously.
If people cannot be bothered to stand for their parish council, then they will get the parish council they deserve.
Twelve years of service in a Borough Council (1986-1998) has left me with indelible memories. Of the selfless devotion and dedication of hundreds of hard-working professionals, who work for largely inadequate – never mind in-competitive – salaries and in tough conditions. Of colleagues who qualified for benefits assistance because salaries paid to them were so low. But, sadly, also of the disconnect between councillors and staff.
My role was such that in the second half of my tenure I worked quite actively with numerous councillors. A good third of them were hard-working, dedicated and committed to their roles. Another third of them were passengers – they turned up for council, mostly, slept in meetings, but somehow always remembered to claim their expenses. The last third were… unpleasant. Driven, manipulative and largely un-caring.
Among the oddities I personally witnessed… A councillor who stood up in a planning committee and argued that permission should be given to build homes on a strip of “green belt” land that bordered a neighbouring borough, on the argument that “if we build on our half of the shared green belt, we can get tax revenue from the homes… and it will stop {neighbouring} council from beating us to it, because they will have to maintain the green belt in their borough.” The fact that the speaker ran a construction company that was bidding to develop the land was apparently irrelevant.
Or the councillor who ran a local department store, who, when the council built an entirely new office block on the main campus (to house Community Charge staff), “won” the contract for providing carpet to a new councillor’s suite on the top floor – and specified the most insanely expensive carpet (for which the joins were hand-stitched together), yet who also refused to let the campus administrator replace antique hot drink vending machines that had been condemned as unsafe by our own Environmental Health department…
Or the councillors who dreamt up a “rebranding” that resulted in all the Chief Officers being given new job titles, then had literally tens of thousands of pounds worth of pre-printed computer stationery scrapped on the grounds that it was printed with old job titles, including pretty expensive stuff like benefit cheques that had individual serial numbers on them… And of course, who owned the local printers that supplied the stationery…
It’s all well and good for the councillors to complain about Mrs. Weaver acting without authority… but the fault is not hers, but with the institution that failed to more explicitly define acceptable conduct in meetings and then to enforce those rules.
Whether it be Donald Trump’s attempt to over-turn the 2020 election, or UK ministers attending prohibited lock-down gatherings, or MPs claiming for expenses they should not, the common thread here is a lack of good governance when it comes to government. It isn’t that “the rules aren’t followed” it is that the rules are not established in the first place, leaving a scenario where one with malicious intent could, if they so chose, “drive a coach and horses” through the gaps.
If these issues were closed when found, that would be something, but as my previous example – of the government refusing to put to the vote the suggestion of a law to make it a criminal offence to lie on the floor of the House of Commons – the sad fact is that government in the UK is entirely self-serving – and to hell with everything – and everyone – else.
It seems to be accepted that Weaver had no authority, because the Standing Orders denied her any, but given the “Troubling situation”, I can’t help wondering if there is not some authority hidden perhaps in Common Law, where nobody has thought to look…