North Tyneside guilty of maladministration after barring resident from meetings

The Local Government Ombudsman has found North Tyneside Council guilty of maladministration after it barred a man from council meetings.

The Ombudsman, Anne Seex, recommended that the local authority train staff on the public’s right to attend meetings and established public law principles in relation to administrative decision-making.

Mr H’s relationship with various representatives of the council was described as “fractious”. He had written frequently to officers using aggressive and personally offensive language, and his written communications – both with the council and with the Ombudsman – were “characterised by extravagantly unpleasant allegations of improper motives and conspiracies”.

In June 2007, the council’s former head of legal and democratic services decided that staff should not engage with him in telephone conversations due to his behaviour and that he should write only to two, named officers.

Further incidents between Mr H and council officers followed, including an altercation with a caretaker at a council meeting in March 2008 that saw both sides accuse the other of assault.

The former head of legal at North Tyneside wrote again to Mr H in August 2008 about what was seen as his continuing unacceptable behaviour, asking him to refrain from sending correspondence of an “offensive, abusive, aggressive, threatening or vexatious nature”. His contact was further restricted to writing to one of the council’s strategic directors.

In October 2008, the council’s Strategic Director of Organisational Improvement reviewed the documentation and decided to bar Mr H from attending meetings of the council, its committees, sub-committees and panels. This was recorded as being on the basis that the council “has an overriding duty to protect the health and safety of its staff”.

Mr H was also informed that if he attempted to attend any meetings, council staff would call the police to have him removed and would begin proceedings to get an injunction against him.

An emailed note from an employee in the council’s Legal Services team to the former head of legal – sent 11 days after the decision to bar Mr H from attending meetings – examined the legal position, analysing case law and the European Convention on Human Rights. It concluded that on balance there was a lawful basis for excluding Mr H and that the decision could withstand a potential challenge in terms of natural justice and human rights.

In November 2009, the council rescinded the restrictions on Mr H.

Mr H had, however, complained about the Strategic Director of Organisational Improvements’s decision to the Ombudsman.

The law says that council meetings must be open to the public unless confidential or certain other information is to be discussed. Councils do, though, have the power to exclude someone from a meeting to suppress or prevent disorderly conduct.

The Ombudsman’s investigation found that the Strategic Director for Organisational Improvement did not have the delegated authority to make the decision.

Seex also pointed out that the legal department’s advice was written several days after the decision, strongly indicating that all relevant information was not properly considered at the time, including Mr H’s statutory right to attend meetings, the case law on excluding someone to prevent disorder and whether barring Mr H was a reasonable and proportionate response to the circumstances.

Ruling that North Tyneside was guilty of maladministration, the Ombudsman said the council’s threat to call the police and begin legal proceedings caused Mr H stress and anxiety.

Seex said: “The maladministration would not have occurred if the officers involved had considered and applied the established public law principles for administrative decision making and I recommend that these should be brought to the attention of all appropriate officers.”

She said the council should issue an apology to Mr H, including for any anxiety caused to him, and conduct staff training.

However, the Ombudsman decided against recommending that the council develop a procedure for making decisions when it may be necessary to prevent disruption of its meetings. This was because “the circumstances in this complaint are very unusual and it is impracticable to expect local authorities to have procedures for every possible eventuality”.

A spokeswoman for North Tyneside Council said it accepted that appropriate procedures were not followed.

She said: “The law says the council must be open to the public unless confidential or certain other information is to be discussed. We actively aim to do that and only in exceptional cases would we seek to limit a person’s access to the council.

“All appropriate officers of the council will be reminded of the public’s right to attend open meetings and of the legal requirements that must be considered to prevent this being repeated in the future. However, when the public do attend meetings, it is their responsibility to behave appropriately.”