Call for Dudley councillors to publicly apologise if they misbehave as complaints rise

Dudley councillors should be made to publicly apologise if they misbehave according to a member of the authority’s Standards Committee.

A meeting of the committee on October 15 was told complaints under the council’s code of conduct were up on last year and councillors had received a ticking off.

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In September, all 72 elected members received a letter from Standards Committee chairperson, Cllr Hilary Bills, and vice-chair Jeff Hill highlighting concerns around standards of conduct.

Cllr Bills said: “It was brought up last time there was a bit of niggle going on, we just thought we ought to say to people standards are really important.

“It is how we are judged, what we don’t want is to be having argy-bargy and arguments.

“In social media we know there are some provocateurs out there causing trouble but we as councillors should not be provoked by them.”

There were ten complaints about councillors registered with the council’s monitoring officer, who enforces standards of behaviour, in the first six months of 2026, more than the whole of 2025.

Out of the complaints in 2026, seven were made by a councillor against another elected member which attracted the attention of committee member Cllr Dr Rob Clinton.

Cllr Clinton said: “Standards are about public accountability, if you get this sort of thing happening, how about thinking about, or discussing, the idea that if councillors go through scrutiny and admit to behaving in an unreasonable manner, they have to apologise in council when we have a full council meeting.

“I know it would be controversial and people would say we are putting people on the spot but I think it would be a deterrent.”

Kehinde Awajobi, Dudley’s interim associate director of law and governance, said: “It is not legally required to ask members to do that, there is a procedure to follow when the monitoring officer receives a code of conduct complaint.

“There is an informal process he can initiate by talking to both sides to deal with it by way of an apology, sometimes verbal, sometimes written.”

Committee members were told a recent issue between council leader, Cllr Patrick Harley and Dudley Reform UK leader, Cllr Marco Longhi, was dealt with in this way, although the committee was not publicly told who apologised to who.