Eighteen complaints have been logged against Brighton and Hove councillors so far this year, with 11 of them still under investigation.
The latest Brighton and Hove City Council standards report also said that there was still a complaint open from last year.
The report to the council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee, which is due to meet next Tuesday (23 June), said that a complaint received on Thursday 16 October about an unnamed councillor’s alleged inappropriate conduct has been referred for formal investigation.
Two complaints from 2025 have been closed since the committee last met in April. Again, none of the councillors have been named.
One of them was received on Sunday 5 October, complaining about misinformation from a councillor in a newsletter.
The matter was closed after the councillor apologised for the inaccuracy and agreed to send a correct statement for the next edition.
On Friday 17 October, four days after a heated meeting of the full council, a complaint was made about the conduct of two councillors from the same political party during another councillor’s speech.
No further action was taken after one of the councillors apologised and said that they would not act in the same way in the future.
Since the committee last met, a complaint received on Wednesday 7 January about a councillor’s conduct at full council was closed with no further action being taken. This was because there was “insufficient evidence” of a breach of the code of conduct.
And since the last meeting, a complaint made on Tuesday 2 June about a councillor’s conduct during a public demonstration has been resolved after insufficient evidence was provided that the individual was a current councillor.
More complaints have been logged since the last meeting, with the behaviour of three councillors at a public meeting under scrutiny as well as social media comments made by a member of the council.
Other complaints concern the lack of response from two members when asked about parking permit issues and an allegation that a councillor’s conduct had breached the Nolan principles of public life.
The council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee is due to meet at 4pm next Tuesday (23 June) at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast.
Name names or it’s not a story!
Only 18? A few noughts must be missing. Meaningless too unless you are going to name and shame, which BH News had no hesitation in doing when Robert Nemeth was a Tory Councillor. Not that Councillor complaints have any chance of going anywhere when the Head of the Legal Department is also the Monitoring Officer in a stinking conflict of interests meaning a closed complaint loop, internally strangled before it sees the light of day outside of the council. Does this individual also get paid two salaries at public expense for doing this public dis-service?