Frivolous complaints against councillors costing Staffordshire council 'tens of thousands'

Tens of thousands of pounds are being spent on dealing with ‘frivolous’ complaints about councillors, according to the leader of Staffordshire County Council. Up until the 10 February, 149 complaints have been made, however, only eight have been upheld.

At a recent Staffordshire County Council meeting, Councillor Alex Farrell asked whether the council leader was concerned about the number of complaints and what was going to be done to tackle the cause behind them. In total 134 complaints were made against Reform UK councillors, 11 against Conservative councillors and four made against independent members.

In November, two complaints over conduct and social media activity about Barry Martin were upheld in a standards panel meeting. Martin, who described the role of a councillor as “so dull and boring”, has since resigned.

Councillor Farrell said that an external organisation had been brought in to help deal with the number of complaints. He said: “Those numbers may have changed slightly in the past couple of months, I appreciate that but these are the numbers I have to hand. Given the increased volume of complaints this council receives about councillors, could you please give me a breakdown of how much that this costs us extra as a council.

Council Leader Martin Murray said he was subject to a complaint over sharing a news article from The Telegraph and that the situation had to stop.

He said: “The problem is why they’ve gone up so much is these frivolous complaints that have been put through, it’s politicisation so they can grab this headline right now. It’s not just complaints that have exponentially increased within councillor on councillor, it’s complaints from all councillors from parish, district and borough councils that have been coming through.

“The repeat copy and paste of the exact same one from activists and I’ve seen them, you have 10 copy and paste with the exact same wording.

“It’s costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds doing it this way. Hundreds of hours of officers’ time is removed by dealing with these frivolous cases.”