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Complaint no. LA/SA/531 concerning an alleged contravention ofthe Councillors' Code of Conduct by Councillors Alistair Kerr, William McIntosh, Peter Convery, Margaret Toner, Hugh Hunter, Pamela Paterson, Gibson T MacDonald, Winifred Sloan, Mary Kilpatrick, Cherry Young, Robin Reid, Arthur Spurling, Hywel Davies, Anthony Lewis and Ian Fitzsimmons of South Ayrshire Council

1. Complaint number LA/SA/531 alleged a contravention of the Councillors' Code of Conduct ("the Code") by Councillors Alistair Kerr, William McIntosh, Peter Convery, Margaret Toner, Hugh Hunter, Pamela Paterson, Gibson T MacDonald, Winifred Sloan, Mary Kilpatrick, Cherry Young, Robin Reid, Arthur Spurling, Hywel Davies, Anthony Lewis and Ian Fitzsimmons ("the respondents"). The respondents were all members of the Conservative Administration of the Council.

2. It was alleged that the respondents had contravened the Code, in particular, section 5 which deals with Declaration of Interests. The complaint alleged that the respondents had not taken account of a range of personal - and conflicting - interests during their consideration and approval of the South Ayrshire Local Plan.

3. The person complaining ("the complainant"), Councillor Gordon McKenzie (a member of the Labour Party in opposition on South Ayrshire Council) alleged that there had been a breach of the Code because, at a meeting of the Council held on 28 September 2006, the respondents, in considering the South Ayrshire Local Plan, voted in favour of a 25% target provision of affordable housing - as opposed to 40% - from new housing developments within the Council area, without taking account of a number of interests which arose from:

a donation made by a firm of house builders to the Ayr Conservative Association;
a donation made by an individual sharing the name of that firm to the Ayr Conservative Association;
the ownership of more than one domestic heritable property by each of two of the respondents; and
the interest of one other respondent in a house letting or management business operating within the Council area.

4. Having reflected on the alleged interests identified at 3a and 3b above it was not clear to me that there was any link between the donations and the individual respondents. In the absence of any specific information, there may have been any number of reasons for the donations, entirely unrelated to the activities of the Council at all, or the general housing policies of the Council, far less to the percentage target adopted by the Council in relation to affordable housing.

It is worth noting in any event that the general principle of transparency is observed by the requirement to register such donations with the Electoral Commission, linked to the public knowledge that the respondents are associated with the Conservative Party. As a matter of fact the respondents indicated that they were unaware that the donations had been made when the vote complained of took place. In the light of the circumstances of the explanations offered and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I was prepared to accept that view.

5. Neither in this case did the ownership of more than one domestic dwelling - even if it is assumed that a rental income was thereby being generated - raise a presumption of a declarable financial or non-financial interest. The circumstances of the letting of any particular property and the level of rental attracted no doubt depends on a wide range of circumstances related, for example, but not exclusively or exhaustively, to location, condition, the characteristics of the property, the personal circumstances of the parties, the market and so on. I did not agree therefore that there was a self evident link as is inferred in that part of the complaint annotated at 3c above, between the ownership of domestic property and the housing elements of the local plan. Again as a matter of fact, the assumptions made by the complainant in relation to the actual use of the properties referred to in the complaint were not confirmed by the respondents.

6. Much of the immediately preceding paragraph relates also to a proper consideration of element 3d of the complaint. While it is no doubt possible that the local plan, although strategic, may indirectly impact on the prospects of businesses in the Council area, again it was difficult to regard the assertions of a declarable interest here as other than tenuous at best. Information publicly available on the activities of the letting business identified in the complaint indicated interests in a wide range of property types and in a wide range of locations, making the extrapolation of a declarable interest from a decision on one aspect of the planning policies of the Council - albeit related to housing issues - speculative.

7. In the final analysis the test as set out in paragraph 5.3 of the Code is whether 'a member of the public acting reasonably would think that a particular interest could influence your role as a councillor'. In my view the complaint in this case did not come near to meeting that standard.

8. Having considered the available information I did not consider that the matters raised amounted to a breach of the Code.

D Stuart Allan,
Chief Investigating Officer.
Forsyth House
Innova Campus
Rosyth Europarc
Rosyth
Fife
KY11 2UU
11 May 2007