Letter: The Complaint Case Against Cllr Reeve Was Political Ineptitude

Published on: 15 Sep, 2017
Updated on: 16 Sep, 2017

Cllr David Reeve (GGG) and complainants Cllrs Paul Spooner (Con) and Caroline Reeves (Lib Dem).

From David Roberts

I also disagree with Ciaran Doran’s view expressed in his letter: Complaint Hearing – It’s About the Responsibility of Confidentiality.

Any breach of confidentiality in this case was vanishingly trivial (one out of 8,000 technical statistics) and, in any case, was covered by Cllr Reeve’s public-interest defence.

Who spotted this so-called leak? Why – Cllr David Reeve himself, since no-one else has tried to contest the arguments in his study. If he is guilty of anything, it is of excess of candour.

No-one has complained about his SHMA study except Cllrs Spooner and Reeves. No councillor, no council officer, no member of the public, no consultant or even the source of the statistic in question. What harm has been done? None.

On the other hand, you’ll note a wave of support for Cllr Reeve’s stance. This is because the case does raise serious issues, but not the one Mr Doran identifies.

These include:

– Breach of natural justice. An accused should face his accuser. Neither complainant saw fit to put their complaint to Cllr Reeve. Neither was able to: they were simply vaguely upset that he was criticising the draft Local Plan. Hence neither was capable of facing him at his hearing where they could have been cross-examined.

– Breach of procedure. The complainants appear to have encouraged the then Monitoring Officer, to frame, promote and escalate the complaint into a formal investigation, turning down all attempts to discuss or de-fuse it.

– Apparent alliance between the council leader and the leader of the opposition. It seems, the Lib Dems have been co-opted into Tory plans for the borough and are unfit to oppose.

– Waste. The cost of this dreary 14-month process, in terms of legal costs and staff time, will be high. A Freedom of Information request may reveal how high.

– A culture of opacity and paranoia. On the substantive issue of housing numbers, why does the council leadership continue to thwart all attempts at transparency? What (apart from alleged links to property developers) could they possibly be trying to hide?

– Political ineptitude. The complaint was an own-goal and has turned Cllr Reeve into something of a martyr. Like the Monika Juneja case, this case will not go away and will be remembered at the next elections. Local Tories and Lib Dems should therefore be asking why they should trust their leaders on important issues such as the Local Plan.

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