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Complaint no. LA/Fa/329 concerning an alleged contravention of the Councillors' Code of Conduct by Councillor David Speirs of Falkirk Council

1. Complaint number LA/Fa/329 alleged a contravention of the Councillors' Code of Conduct ("the Code") by Councillor David Speirs ("the respondent").

2. It was alleged that the respondent had contravened the Code, in particular, paragraphs 3.2 and 3.4 (Relationship with Council Employees) and paragraph 3.14 (Conduct in the Chamber or in Committee).

3. The person complaining ("the complainant"), Councillor John Constable, alleged that during the discussion of an item at a meeting of the Regulatory Committee on 22 June 2005 the respondent engaged in repeated and persistent breaches of protocol which led to the complainant (who was chairing the meeting) having to invoke Standing Orders and ask the respondent to leave the meeting. (The Regulatory Committee determines planning applications). He further alleged that the respondent accused officers of the Council of attempting, deliberately, to mislead the Council over the number of local objections received to a planning application and that he accused the complainant of being a party to this attempt to mislead.

4. The respondent acknowledged that his behaviour had fallen below the standards expected of someone elected to represent the public but explained that his comments were made in the context of an emotive and highly charged debate. He claimed that his statement that the Convener was misleading the Council was an attempt to demonstrate that, in addition to the one formal objection to the proposal, there were 360 persons who had objected by way of a petition to the Council. He denied describing the situation as a sham but, as the notes taken by the Head of Legal Services record him as having used this term, the probability is that he did use such language.

5. The respondent did not comment on whether he accused officers of misleading the meeting but the Monitoring Officer confirmed that no officers had complained to her about any comments made about them at the meeting and that, similarly, the Director of Development Services had not received any complaints from officers who were present at the meeting.

6. The Standards Commission has recently issued Guidance to local authorities on Conduct in the Chamber, published in November 2005. In summary, the Guidance recommends that every local authority should have a set of Standing Orders in place to regulate proceedings at meetings and that these should allow for members who engage in disruptive behaviour to be excluded from the meeting. The Guidance recommends that such behaviour should, where possible, be dealt with by the local authority and paragraph 7 of the Guidance, in particular, recommends that the authority should endeavour to make appropriate arrangements for a meeting in an endeavour to discuss and resolve such issues.

7. Falkirk Council has a set of Standing Orders to regulate conduct at meetings and these were invoked by the Chair of the meeting to require the respondent to leave the meeting. The respondent claimed that, having left the meeting voluntarily, he was not in the Committee room to hear the Convener ask him to leave but other evidence suggests that he left on being requested by the Convener to do so. The precise details of the situation are not critical; the important point is that the respondent left the meeting and did not challenge the authority of the Chair. The matter was, therefore, properly and adequately dealt with under the Council's Standing Orders.

8. In relation to complaint number LA/Fa/329, while Councillor David Speirs engaged in conduct which, by his own admission, was unacceptable for an elected member, having regard to all of the information available and, in particular, to the nature of his conduct and to the fact that he did not challenge the authority of the Chair when Standing Orders were invoked against him but left the meeting, and having regard also to the Standards Commission Guidance on Conduct in the Chamber - which I commended to the Council - I found that it was neither appropriate nor necessary for the incident to be investigated further by the Chief Investigating Officer's Office and I concluded, therefore, that no further action was required in relation to this complaint.

D Stuart Allan,
Chief Investigating Officer.
Forsyth House
Innova Campus
Rosyth Europarc
Rosyth
Fife
KY11 2UU
20 January 2006