Councillor refuses to apologise to chief executive and threatens JR over sanctions

A Wigan Metropolitan Borough councillor has refused to make a public apology to the council’s chief executive despite being ordered to so by an earlier standards hearing.

Gareth Fairhurst, who leads the Standish Independent Group, was found in August to have breached the council’s code of conduct for making false allegations about chief executive Donna Hall. 

A council statement said he failed to attend a meeting called to decide which further sanctions to impose.

This decided to remove Cllr Fairhurst’s council IT equipment and to impose, “the management of his emails to ensure staff are protected from false allegations”, a council statement said.

Deputy leader David Molyneux, said: "His refusal to apologise to Donna Hall exemplifies his attitude towards staff at Wigan council and is simply unacceptable.

“Each time Cllr Fairhurst gets told off he claims that the standards panel are politically biased or that this is all part of a witch hunt against him. He uses this to excuse his poor behaviour.”

The August hearing had found that Cllr Fairhurst accused Ms Hall of political bias and of lying.

Among examples cited by Wigan was a blog post that stated: “It is about time that officers stayed as officers and didn’t get involved in politics and stayed as public servants rather than trying to meddle in politics…To me she is out of her depths Labour should have hired a chief executive with much experience at big councils, like the two previous chief executives.”

Earlier this year, Cllr Fairhurst was found to have breached the code by making false accusations against another councillor, which led to the removal of his Brighter Borough funding, £5.471 a year allocated to each councillor to spend on amenities in their area.

A local newspaper report said Cllr Fairhurst intended to take the latest sanctions to judicial review.

Wigan is also enmeshed in a series of standards hearing concerning Independent councillor Robert Brearley.

Weekly hearings are scheduled throughout October dealing with different cases of the councillor’s alleged misbehaviour.

He has already been found to have intimated volunteers at a community centre and to have shouted abuse at a member of council staff.

But sanctions will be decided only once the series of hearings is complete.

Meanwhile, Independent councillor Robert Bleakley has been the subject of three hearings this year, two relating to the inappropriate use of his IT equipment and another relating to a doctored email.

He was found in March to have changed an email in a discussion with deputy chief executive, Paul McKevitt in a way that damaged an employee. 

His internet access was removed the next month after he was found to have viewed pornographic and offensive material.

Cllr Bleakley’s council mobile phone was removed last month after a standards panel found he had used it to call premium rate sex chat lines and to send inappropriate text messages.

An investigation found he had amassed a bill of £2, 418.95 on the phone.

Ms Hall said: “I am appalled and sickened with the language used in these messages. It is quite clear, judging by the content of Cllr Bleakley’s text messages, that he has a problem with women. I will not tolerate this prejudice, nor will I allow him to come into contact with female officers until he has undertaken equal opportunities training."

Cllr Bleakley accused the council of going "over board and over the top in their character assassination of me". He was not a sexist or misogynist and never had been, he added.