It’s becoming a running joke in Rochford District Council – if there’s a story about a councillor being investigated for a possible breach of the Code of Conduct, nine times out of ten, the trail leads straight back to the Conservative benches.
This week’s latest instalment comes courtesy of Cllr Danielle Belton, Conservative Leader and Leader of the Council, who confirmed in an email, which has been posted on Facebook, that Cllr Ward has “formally stood down” as Vice Chair of the Standards Sub Committee after a complaint was lodged against him.
Let’s pause for a moment on that – the Vice Chair of the Standards Sub Committee. The very person who should be upholding high standards in public life has had to step aside because of… a standards complaint. You couldn’t make it up.
Cllr Belton says that once Ian became aware of the complaint, he decided it would be “inappropriate” to stay in the post. No kidding. It’s the political equivalent of a bank robber saying it would be “inappropriate” to chair the neighbourhood watch.
Of course, we’re told the “complaints process” is the same for everyone and that policies are all online for us to read. That’s all well and good – but it doesn’t hide the fact that under Conservative leadership, our council seems to be stacking up more Code of Conduct cases than pothole repairs.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. The Conservative record on standards in Rochford is patchy at best, and downright embarrassing at worst. From conflicts of interest to undeclared connections, the list of questionable behaviour is getting longer by the month.
Public trust in local politics is fragile enough without those at the top treating the Nolan Principles of public life – honesty, integrity, accountability – as optional extras. Yet here we are again, watching the Conservative leadership firefight another scandal of their own making.
The sad truth is, the more time the Conservative group spends defending their members against standards complaints, the less time they spend actually fixing the problems facing residents.
Maybe it’s time for a different kind of leadership – one that doesn’t treat the Standards Sub Committee as a revolving door for its own members.
