THE latest storm in the I-know-I-should-care teacup cost more than £1 million and has lead to suggestions that the crockery — sorry, the Standards Board for England — should be smashed.
It started brewing in 2002 when a Labour councillor complained that five Islington Liberal Democrat councillors had inappropriately hired a former party activist to be the authority’s chief executive, reports The MJ (Jan 12). Now, after the Government’s longest “conduct inquiry”, the North London councillors have all been cleared by the Adjudication Panel for England, which has the final say over Standards Board cases, says Local Government Chronicle (Jan 12).
Steve Hitchins, a councillor whose actions were examined, says in The MJ: “The Standards Board, during this period . . . has not contributed to local democracy at all. Not one moment of this investigation has been justified.” Richard Kemp, leader of the Lib Dem group at the Local Government Association, describes the board as a “vehicle for political point scoring”. Helen Bailey, the manager whose appointment sparked the furore, says that she has “no complaint about the initial complaint being made and investigated”, but that the length of time taken “is a problem for the Standards Board”. Sir Anthony Holland, the Board chairman, says: “We had some delays, due to complexity, but the issues had to be examined.”
In LGC, Tony Travers, the director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, says that the board has long been criticised. “From its very beginning . . . critics argued [that it] would intrude on day-to-day politics and be abused by councillors seeking to get at their opponents.” He also argues that this case “brought the Standards Board, rather than local government, into disrepute”.
www.standardsboard.co.uk