The Standards Board has been re-vamped recently. They moved to Manchester and turned the system of complaints handling upside-down. Now complaints about significant misbehaviour by members of councils are intended to be handled by the local (District, Metropolitan or Unitary) Council and only the serious ones are referred ‘up’ to the Board. (in the old days, all complaints were received centrally and some of them were referred ‘down’ to the Councils.) The Board now calls itself Standards for England.
www.standardsforengland.gov.uk
‘Tit for tat’ complaints are the bane of some local councils. Our view is that a complaint by Councillor A about Councillor B never justifies a ‘tit-for-tat’ complaint by Councillor B about Councillor A.
We also feel strongly that the Board’s system of “Other Action” need further work to improve it. “Other Action” is a system under which the investigating Council dismisses a Standards complaint, on condition that the victim of the complaint agrees to attend a training course (or whatever). Either that or that his / her whole Council has to attend a training course). It is, for the victim, like getting 3 hours of community service alongside a finding of ‘Not Guilty’. It just won’t wash.