APE Shit?

As the Local Government watchdog annual jamboree is about to get underway in Birmingham figures have been released that indicate that far from its stated aim of 'Building confidence in Local Democracy' the Standards Board and its unfortunately named sidekick the 'Adjudication Panel for England' (APE), is actually having the opposite effect.

Despite so called 'open government initiatives', the Freedom of Information Act, and the formation of quangos such as the Standards Board, public confidence in local democracy is now at an all time low.

Last year almost 4000 complaints about the conduct of councils were received by the Standards board. Of  these complaints almost 3000 being arbitrarily dismissed  without investigation as they were 'outside of the scope of the legislation' or as 'politically motivated' or 'unsubstantiated' complaints.

Of the 1000 or so remaining complaints that actually made it to the desk of an 'ethical standards officer' around 750 were summarily dismissed as trivial and/or 'found to require no further action' even in cases where there were clear breaches of the codes of conduct.

Of the 250 remaining cases the Standards Board referred around 100 back to the local council and their appointed, salaried, and therefore of course totally impartial, monitoring officer for local 'sentencing' while about the same number were passed on to the Adjudication Panel for England (APE) which has the power to suspend or disqualify a councillor.
 

Of course anyone who is aggrieved by the decision of the Standards Board and/or APE has the right of appeal through the courts via a judicial review. As such action costs anything from £10,000 upwards it is not surprising that this is a very rare event. While the Standards Board has been seemingly reluctant to take action against councillors who breach the codes of conduct, it seems equally shameful in allowing itself to be used by unelected council officers to stifle debate and keep dubious decisions out of the public eye. One councillor from the north of England was arbitrarily suspended after criticising her own council housing department, while another was suspended for revealing the fact that a council had allowed a large industrial complex to illegally defer business rates.

Isn't it nice to see how justice is being done and how democracy is being protected.

Who guards the guardians?

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