The behaviour of councillors in Brighton and Hove appears to attract more complaints than those elsewhere, a lawyer said.
But it was hard to be sure because few councils published quite so much detail about “standards complaints” as Brighton and Hove City Council, she added.
The comments about councillors’ conduct came as the council’s Audit and Standards Committee received a report about the subject.
Members were told yesterday (Tuesday 16 April) that 16 complaints about councillors had been received by the council since January.
And since the local elections last May, the council had received 50 complaints about councillors’ conduct, with most of them dismissed.
The mains reasons for dismissing the complaints were a lack of evidence or because taking matters further would be “neither proportionate nor necessary in the public interest”, suggesting a degree of triviality.
Two cases related to complaints about a former councillor – understood to be either Chandni Mistry or Bharti Gajjar. The pair resigned in February and by-elections to replace them have been called for Thursday 2 May. No substantial details of the complaints have been revealed.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows asked about cases that lacked sufficient evidence, given that council and committee meetings were webcast. She also asked how Brighton and Hove compared with other councils.
Councillor Meadows said: “Social media and conduct in committee meetings feature a lot in these (complaints).
“I just wondered how other local authorities fare compared to us? Are we more quick to complain? Or is social media more of a thing for people in Brighton and Hove?
“The implication at the moment is that it’s all quite trivial with insufficient evidence.”
The author of the standards report, council lawyer Victoria Simpson, said that the webcasts were not perfect because the cameras did not cover the whole room nor pick up all the sound.
She said that the council was looking at more nuanced criteria to explain why complaints did not progress.
Ms Simpson said: “The thought is that that might lend us to an approach where we provide a more meaningful amount of insight into why we are not progressing complaints.
“Insufficient evidence could take in a situation which is ‘he said, she said’. It could take in a situation where the webcast is unclear. It could take into account a situation where the complainant has gone silent and hasn’t provided details of the emails they say were not responded to.
“At the moment that could take in a number of different scenarios.”
Compared with other councils, Ms Simpson said that Brighton and Hove was more transparent in its approach.
Having sought evidence from other councils, she said that the most that she had found had been included in annual reports and these suggested that Brighton and Hove was an outlier, with a high number and wide range of complaints.
But other councils, with an annual number of complaints in single figures, did not publish details of cases that had not progressed.
In Brighton and Hove, relatively few complaints warranted further investigation, she said, but the council openly listed an anonymised summary of all the complaints that it had received.
Typically, they included councillors being rude to each other or members of the public in meetings or on social media – or failing to answer emails or deal with residents’ problems.
The law requires councils to have a code of conduct for elected members but there is not much that can be done if councillors then break those rules.
The complaint against the honesty of Gajjar was dropped after they resigned since they are no longer “members” under the 2011 Act, so they have to determine it without action.
So how does any random Tom, Dick and Harry get to be a local Councillor at the drop of a hat?
Parachuted in by the Labour office, usually. Anything with a pulse will do.
You should see the offering from Conservatives at the moment across the country. “Token effort” would be overselling it.
Here you go, as requested. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/councillors-and-committees/be-councillor
Time to see an end to cowardly Councillors whipped and bound from doing or saying anything other than towing their party line. And furthering their own nepotistic interests on the side. The few good Councillors are currently vastly outnumbered by the bad.
So stand in an election then Barry and show us what a good job you’d do!
But I don’t see your name on the ballot paper for either of the 2 by-elections next month.
Some of us have seen the extra mystery ballot box which comes winging its way in after all the others and suddenly overturns everything. No seals on any of them either.
Where exactly have you seen this?
If you are going to come out with stuff like this then you need to provide some evidence.
You really just make yourself look like a prized idiot saying stuff like this Barry.
If you saw this at a count that means you were there in some official capacity – either as an employed teller, election official or an accredited observer for a candidate.
Members of the public can’t just turn up and watch.
And if you were there and saw this then you clearly didn’t say anything there and then did you? Or make a complaint to the Election Court? Or the Police?
Or the ones previous. Barry talks a lot, but says very little substantiated. He’d fit right in one of the parties in particular.
Pots and kettles!
Indeed, my usage of data, studies and logic really show a fundamental lack of substantive reasoning and opinion. Oh wait…that’s the opposite of what you’re trying to insinuate.
In other news: ‘The people of Brighton and Hove are the biggest whingers yet do not actually participate in local politics’ shocker!
I’d honestly love to have more people participate in locally politics, get involved with their residents associations, attend area panels, submit EDB bids, etc.
There’s a lot of ways people can influence the city positivity, but rarely do so.
“Two cases related to complaints about a former councillor – understood to be either Chandni Mistry or Bharti Gajjar. The pair resigned in February and by-elections to replace them have been called for Thursday 2 May. No substantial details of the complaints have been revealed”.
I am more than happy to reveal substantial details about my complaint against my ward councillor Chandni Mistry. I complained about her failure to act on my concerns or respond to emails. In February I was told “the Monitoring Officer did not consider her conduct in this regard to be capable of amounting to a breach of the Code”. I submitted my complaint in early December, it took 8 weeks to finally be told that “a formal investigation would not be appropriate”. I later found out that council leaders told Chandni Mistry that she was not to speak to anyone about the child safeguarding matter I was raising. And then Cllr Mistry resigned.
I’ve lived in this city most of my life and was a council employee for most of that time. I have had never submitted a complaint until last year. The complaint against about Cllr Mistry was a small part of a 41 page standards complaint directed at the Mayor and council leader Sankey about the bullying, intimidation and physical ejection of of a woman who was simply trying to read her question raising concerns about child safeguarding and the infamous ‘toolkit’. The complaint also raised my own attempts to sound an alert via a question at Full Council in October (on the safeguarding scandal, which this newspaper reported some days ago). Once again I was told “the Monitoring Officer took the view that a formal investigation would not be appropriate…” (apparently this was because the Mayor and Cllr Sankey had denied being in breach of the code and therefore “it was decided not to take any action). My complaint is with the Ombudsman. I won’t hold my breath.
Well said Julia.
Is this the incident where the member of the public would not stop talking? They had their first question and then they were asked if they had a second related question and the woman just kept talking and talking and talking about an unrelated matter and she refused to leave the council chamber, so in the end she had to be escorted out. As i understand it members of the public are there to ask a question and then they get their question answered and then they are allowed to come back with another question that is related to their first question. They are supposed to ask a question, not just spend lots of time letting off stream and getting hot under the collar. If this is the same situation, then honestly the woman was out of order. i believe that some people didn’t like the fact that the mayor was strict and ensured that rules were kept and not broken.
Same incident I think but your interpretation is incorrect (and oddly similar to that of the council elite). Your interpretation seems prejudiced (god save us from women who won’t stop talking right!) The woman you refer to was simply reading her question. She had just 18 words left to read. If those 18 words had been heard by our Mayor ‘adjudicator’ it would have become obvious to all that the follow-up question was entirely related (ironically as it turned out!!!!) to her first one. Let me inform you: her first question was on our council’s failure to give enough space for the public to ask questions. Her follow-up begun “more space for public engagement will give vital expression to widely held views and serious concerns which the council seem oblivious to” and then she gave the red hot example that the council elite don’t want to hear. Do you understand me? Nor did she spend “lots of time” speaking (a recent question by former Mayor Mo Marsh – and indeed dozens of questioners – spoke for a lot longer than this woman).
So hi NorthBrightonSunshine, my name is Julia Basnett and, respectfully, your interpretation is entirely wrong. I love that you’re fond of rules and strict Mayors but I think we both know the thing you, the Mayor and our beloved council leaders want to crush – which is women standing up for their sex based rights and, frankly, anyone, be it the Observer or the Sunday Times (on April 14th, on BRIGHTON) – or Jo Wadsworth of B&H News – all raising this scandal. Its a grotesque story that indicts our council and exposes its complicity in one of the most grotesque child safeguarding scandals of recent times.
Aye, the woman was, in fact, out of order, and selfishly continued to fillibuster the proceedings.
Her topic was an impassioned one, and clearly meant a lot to her, however, she must follow the rules to this process to allow everyone a chance to participate, and for all the business to be completed.
Was this where a parent understandably raised concerns about how a school had withheld information from them about a gender change scenario? And the woman’s claim was dismissed out of hand by Sankey as discrimination and was later proved to be true? If so I wish you the very best Julia. Such arrogance in their handling of these matters and a complete disregard for true safeguarding.
Yes – an aunt in fact – someone who knew of a number of cases in Brighton & Hove that mirror the findings of the Cass Report and the shocking story told in the book ‘Time to Think’ by ex-BBC Newsnight reporter Hannah Barnes. Someone deeply concerned who had never asked a question at council before and who the Mayor tried to humiliate and Cllr Sankey demeaned (as her councillors laughed, watch the webcast!).
I had never met this woman but she was so brave and so principled. She was physically manhandled from the chamber before she could finish reading her question and then caricatured by Cllr Sanky (acting like a grinning school bully) as an “aggressive”, bigoted protestor. I will never forgive Cllr Sankey for this.
You are absolutely correct, the question that had been so brutally supressed – just like the one put by Adrian Hart back in July – raised concerns that were neither “baseless” nor “smears” (as Sankey had arrogantly proclaimed) and this was proven in B&H News – see: https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2023/10/28/parents-seek-apology-from-council-leader-for-calling-their-concerns-baseless-smears
… but also see the fearlessness of B&H News (compared to the Argus on this issue) in this piece: https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2024/03/27/brighton-gp-is-using-loophole-to-prescribe-hormones-to-underage-kids-book-claims/
… and then the whole story broke, post Cass Report, in excoriating expose articles in the Observer and the Sunday Times.
I hope Cllr Sankey and the Mayor, the Green administration before them (and lets not forget the senior executives that rubber stamped, if not proposed, a policy amounting to batting away the public with ‘nothing to see here’ and ‘go away bigot’) one day feel utterly ashamed.