Complaints against Northumberland county councillors fall in wake of governance review

The Max Caller review was completed two years ago

Complaints against Northumberland councillors have continued to fall in the wake of a wide-ranging review on governance at the local authority.

Just 16 complaints have been received by the council in 2024, compared to 49 in 2022 and 28 last year. There was a significant fall in the number of complaints from councillors themselves - in 2022, there were 15 of these type of complaints, whereas this year there have been none.

The damning report on governance at the council produced by veteran local government fixer Max Caller in 2022 uncovered a number of issues at the then-troubled council. These included poor relations between councillors, with investigating officers given "dossiers" of information by several councillors as "evidence" to support claims of wrongdoing or other allegations.

Furthermore there were some 30 conduct complaints - almost all from officers and members, despite the fact the process is meant to be for use by members of the public. The report presented to the standards committee on Thursday showed that there had been no complaints from either members or council officers.

Senior legal manager Neil Masson was asked to explain the reduction at the meeting. He said: "The number of complaints seems to be down this year compared to previous years.

"We're not seeing the complaints from previous years where they were more serious and we're not seeing complaints from members against other members.

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"Significantly, the number of complaints made by members against members and involving officers and members has fallen - we haven't had any of those this year which is pleasing.

"You can look at the data and say there has been a change since the governance review. That seems to be the only point in time where things have changed member to member."

Referencing those complaints that had come in, Mr Masson added: "They seem predominately to be complaints against parish councillors. Complaints against county council members are few and far between.

"In terms of the quality of complaints, a number are listed as no further action taken or the threshold not met."