Response 4077491

Response to request for information

Reference

4077491 

Response date

17 August 2026

Request

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act. I would like to request the following information:

1. Please state how many complaints the council received about councillors’ conduct for the years 2024, 2025 and 2026.
2. For each year stated above, please state how many complaints were about
   • a Labour councillor’s conduct (ii) a Reform UK councillor’s conduct
   • a Conservative councillor’s conduct
   • a Liberal Democrat councillor’s conduct
   • a Green Party councillor’s conduct
   • an Independent councillor’s conduct.
3. For each complaint, please state the outcome. I imagine that the council would use phrases such as no further action or complaint upheld to describe the outcome.

I would like to receive the information in an Excel spreadsheet. If you feel that a substantive response to this request is not possible within a reasonable time frame, or the request is too broad or too vague, I would be grateful if you could contact me and provide assistance as to how I could refine the request. 

Response

Refusal Notice in accordance with Section 21 FOIA. 

To the extent that your request seeks information regarding the number of complaints made about Borough Councillors and the outcomes of those investigations for complete financial years, we confirm that the Council holds this information.

However, this information is already reasonably accessible to you and is therefore exempt from disclosure under section 21 of FOIA. This is an absolute exemption and is not subject to the public interest test.

In accordance with our duty to provide advice and assistance under section 16 of FOIA, we confirm that the information you have requested can be found in the minutes of the Standards Committee, which set out the outcomes of complaints against Councillors for the preceding 12-month period. These minutes are organised by year and can be accessed on our website.

Refusal Notice in accordance with Section 22 FOIA

We confirm that we hold some information relating to complaints about Borough Councillors arising in the period following the most recent Standards Committee meeting. This information is intended for future publication and is therefore exempt from disclosure under section 22 of FOIA. Section 22 provides that information is exempt if:

1. The information is held by a public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or another person, at some future date (whether determined or not); and
2. It is reasonable in all the circumstances to withhold the information from disclosure until the intended date of publication.

We confirm that the Council has a settled intention to publish a summary table of Councillor complaints at the next meeting of the Standards Committee, which is currently scheduled to take place on 24 February 2027.

Section 22 is a qualified exemption and is therefore subject to the public interest test. We have considered the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

There is a public interest in promoting transparency through the disclosure of information relating to complaints against Councillors. However, transparency is also served through the Council's established process of publishing this information through reports to the Standards Committee and subsequently on its website.

Disclosure at this stage would require officers to divert resources towards the premature publication of information, to the detriment of other public functions. It may also result in the disclosure of information that has not yet completed the Council's usual verification and quality assurance processes, creating a risk that inaccurate or incomplete information could enter the public domain and mislead the public. Given the preparation, verification and administrative processes involved in publishing this information, we consider the Council's publication timetable to be reasonable. We have therefore concluded that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Refusal Notice under section 40(2) FOIA

To the extent that your request seeks information regarding the breakdown of complaints made about Councillors by reference to six named political parties or groups, we confirm that the Council holds relevant information, although it is not maintained in a collated format.

Statistical information of this nature will only constitute personal data where an individual can be identified from the information disclosed, either directly or indirectly. As a relatively small authority, some political groups comprise between only one and three members. Disclosure of complaint data attributed to those groups would be likely to lead to the identification of individual Councillors, either directly or by deduction.

Unless the outcome of an investigation is published in full through a report to the Standards Committee or is otherwise made public, individual Councillors have a reasonable expectation that investigations into complaints made about them will remain confidential. Disclosure of such information would be unfair and would amount to a breach of the data protection principles.

The Council therefore considers that this information is exempt from disclosure by virtue of section 40(2) FOIA because the condition set out in section 40(3A)(a) is satisfied, namely that disclosure would contravene one or more of the data protection principles set out in UK GDPR.

We are satisfied that disclosure would contravene the principle set out in Article 5(1)(a) UK GDPR, which requires that personal data be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. Disclosure of information under FOIA constitutes processing for the purposes of data protection legislation, and fairness requires that personal data is only handled in ways that individuals would reasonably expect.
The exemption provided by section 40(2) is an absolute exemption and is therefore not subject to the public interest test.