Letter: Reflecting on the Juneja Case Shows the Importance of the Monitoring Officer Role

Published on: 19 Jun, 2025
Updated on: 18 Jun, 2025

From Bernard Quoroll

In response to: Flashback – There Are Lessons To Learn from the Juneja Case – The Council Must Admit It

Martin Giles’ opinion piece from ten years ago misses perhaps one of the most damning issues of all. Every council must by law appoint a Monitoring Officer (usually the most senior lawyer), to act as a Council’s conscience and call out criminal behaviour.

The criminality in this case was easy to check and should not have needed a formal complaint before action was taken. The matter should simply have been referred directly to the police by the Monitoring Officer (who, as a solicitor, has a separate duty as an “officer of the court”) irrespective of anything politicians might want to say.

I was appointed as one of Guildford Borough Council’s Independent Persons under the statutory process which requires some lay involvement in the council’s complaints process but only after the Juneja affair had been concluded internally.

Unusually for someone in that role, I was both legally qualified and someone who had introduced a monitoring officer process in a council elsewhere, some ten years before it became a statutory requirement.

For the next five or so years I repeatedly pointed out many flaws in the monitoring officer system both generally and in Guildford. During that period the council burned through half a dozen monitoring officers for reasons I can only speculate.

After failing repeatedly to make my voice heard, I stood down from my role as a volunteer. No one showed the slightest interest in why I stood down or responded to the detailed points I had made (including to two chief executives). Nor did anyone want to talk to me after I wrote articles for The Dragon.

GBC now has a fresh top management structure, different political leadership and a new monitoring officer. I hope she has more success than some of her predecessors but on past experience, I fear the odds may still be stacked against her.