Council leader forced to quit standards committee

THE leader of Wokingham Borough Council has admitted breaching its constitution.

John Halsall, who represents Remenham, Wargrave and Ruscombe, was put in charge of the council’s standards committee by mistake.

He and fellow Conservative councillor Wayne Smith have since stood down from the committee, which is intended to ensure councillors follow the code of conduct.

Councillor Halsall says this was a genuine mistake and has resisted calls from the opposition for him to resign as leader.

The error was raised at a meeting of the committee last week which had to be cut short after Philip Meadowcroft, from Wargrave, said it was contravening the constitution by having too many members of the executive team. Andrew Moulton, the council’s monitoring officer, confirmed a mistake had been made and the meeting was halted.

Liberal Democrat councillor Imogen Shepherd-DuBey called on Cllr Halsall to stand down.

She said: “He should never have been chairman of this committee and we did question it at the time he was given that position.

“He was responsible for deciding what complaints went forward to be investigated.

“It’s not transparent at all — to have the leader of the council being judge and jury is not acceptable. I don’t think he is fit to be leader. His behaviour is disgraceful. The democratic services team would normally check to see that we have the right balance on committees and they missed it as well. It is the monitoring officer’s job to make sure we are compliant.

“We don’t trust them anymore, particularly on standards decisions and the procedures of this council.

“There are too many aspects that are not transparent and it needs to be fixed. If we had been allowed to have elections this year, I’m certain we would have taken more seats.”

Cllr Halsall said it was not uncommon for a council leader to be on a standards committee and that the membership was up to individual councils.

He said: “When I was elected in May 2019, full council voted myself and six other people on to the standards committee, which was in full public view and very transparent. Mr Meadowcroft found that the council’s constitution was anomalous to the constitution of the committee and the meeting was immediately adjourned.

“I could have said it was fully constitutional because it had been approved by full council, or brought the committee into line with what the constitution says, which is what I’ve done. It was genuinely not an attempt to re-write the constitution, it was a mistake.

“The consequences are actually very small because the committee doesn’t make decisions. It makes recommendations, which then have to go through other processes.”

A council spokesman said: “The constitution specifies that the standards committee will be subject to the rules of political balance and only one of those elected can be a member of the executive.”