Standards sub-committee raps council leader over failure to comply with sanction
A borough council's Standards Committee has found that the council's leader failed to comply with a sanction which called on her to apologise to a staff member.
According to the committee at Spelthorne Borough Council, an officer involved in a Code of Conduct complaint has not received an apology from Cllr Joanne Sexton, despite the council leader issuing a statement to the press last month to say she had apologised.
Cllr Sexton said she believed a written apology she made was enough to address the sanction.
In October, the Standards Sub-Committee concluded that Cllr Sexton had breached a provision in the council's Member Code of Conduct concerning treating local authority employees with respect.
In the same meeting, the committee found that she had not breached a paragraph in the Code of Conduct concerning bullying.
The sub-committee issued the following sanctions:
- Councillor Jo Sexton should issue a private apology to the complainant; and
- The monitoring officer is to publish the Sub-committee's findings in respect of Councillor Jo Sexton on the council's website.
Cllr Sexton then made a written apology and told members of the media that she had apologised to the staff member.
Reports of her apology appeared in the local news and a BBC report.
However, a Standards Sub-Committee meeting held this week (2 December) concluded that the officer had not yet received an apology and that the matter had been incorrectly reported in the media.
Councillors agreed that an update of the proceedings was to be published on the website and that the media should be contacted to confirm a private apology had not yet been offered.
Responding to the sub-committee's findings, Cllr Joanne Sexton said: "I accepted the findings of the standards panel in line with their ruling, I duly submitted a written apology.
"To the best of my knowledge a majority of members of the panel accepted my written apology and therefore I believed I had followed the panel's ruling and issued the apology that was required."
Adam Carey
