Is it possible to be too fair? Or too procedurally correct?

A week before the postponed judicial review, a ‘review panel’ was held to decide if Andrew Harrison’s banning from town council duties should continue.  

While the affirmative outcome was foregone, Andrew and accompanying fellow councillor Nina Shields were much surprised by their treatment.

Previous reviews have consisted of mainly hostile, fellow town councillors (the crux of the judicial review).  To make things look better in court, the council was advised by its eminent legal counsel, Ms Lisa Busch QC, that in reviewing Andrew’s behaviour, the panel should include two ‘independent’ persons, alongside two town councillors, and an ‘independent’ clerk (ie, not Lynda Wilcox). To make it even ‘fairer’, all the evidence presented to the panel should be provided in advance. This would enable Andrew Harrison to consider his response.

The town council’s very own Queen’s Counsel will be frustrated to learn that it didn’t go to plan. The aggrieved clerk, Karen Mitchell, said she would not submit her written evidence against Andrew Harrison in advance, in case he published it online. Andrew went into the review without knowing what he had done wrong, or what he should do in future to escape a ban.

The review panel was perfunctory. On entering, Andrew was told by chairman, Cllr Fred Clarke, Mayor of Bromyard, that he had ten minutes. While Andrew spoke, former police officer and freemason, Fred spent a lot of time looking at his watch impatiently and sighing heavily, a psychological trick he had learned softening up villains in the interview room. At the appointed moment, Right Said Fred: time’s up, snapping his file shut and sweeping imperiously out of the room.

What happened next is less clear. The review panel went into conference and at some point gave a report to the town council’s Standing Committee.

At the next full council meeting, the Standing Committee’s recommendation was for Cllr Harrison’s ban to continue. They claimed that they were acting ‘within the principles’ of the report from the review panel.

This is classic ‘easterly beast’ phraseology, full of portent, and meaning the clear opposite of what it says. Translated into plain English, the Standing Committee had completely ignored the Review Panel’s recommendations. When Andrew asked to see the report into his conduct, he was told it was ‘confidential’.

Panel members, including local curate, the Reverend Tony Hodder, have signed legal confidentiality statements and claim that they are sworn to secrecy on all aspects of the review panel and its outcomes.

Could the priest offer theological guidance on whether the eighth commandment allows you to turn a blind eye to injustice, the one that says 'thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour'? Exactly how serious are sins of omission? When you have put yourself into a situation where injustice is likely to occur and damage to an innocent party is clear, do you have a duty speak up for the victim? These are interesting moral philosophical questions.

Let’s recap. The judicial review is in part, challenging Ledbury Town Council’s procedural unfairness in the way that it banned two councillors. The Council are arguing strongly that the bannings, which were clearly called ‘sanctions’ in the May 2017 minutes, were scrupulously fair.  Now, after counsel advice, the word ‘sanctions’ has been substituted for ‘protective measures’, far more defensible they believe. Meanwhile, the claimed ‘even fairer’ process was not only botched, but was ultimately ignored by the Standing Committee presidium of Crowe, Fieldhouse, Barnes, Francis and Bradford.

You have to smile at the London lawyer’s innocence that Ledbury Town Council would ever conduct itself in a judicious fashion. Their frustration will soon dissipate when the next dollop of cash from Ledbury pings into the coffers of Winkworth Sherwood Ltd.

​Who cares if the town council is doing its damnedest to lose the judicial review? Not the lawyers, nor the town councillors, it’s not their money they’re squirting up the wall. All told, the ‘fight Harvey’ legal bill now tops £100 thousand.   

Charades anyone? Or perhaps a game of consequences?

​

​Celebratory champagne and a precautionary police presence had been laid on for the council party, sorry Council Meeting on 1 March.
This was the evening following on from Liz Harvey’s judicial review at Bristol High Court.  Councillors and town council staff were all happy expectation leading up to the ‘Big Day’ as they called it. How auspicious that the ‘JR’ coincided with a Council meeting: wouldn’t it be marvellous to announce victory? Police were needed in case protesting members of the public disrupted the party, sorry meeting.

Late to court, the quartet of Ledbury Defenders created a fascinating sight in the smart surroundings of the Bristol Civil Justice Centre. In his trainers, Bob Barnes padded across the polished floor noiselessly, followed by lumbering 'Mucky' Martin Eager looking fresh from some gardening; Town clerk, Karen Mitchell, shone of course, all in brown. Some moments later, the Lynda ‘Your Council’ Wilcox arrived, delayed in the loo by a quick protective coat of fresh lacquer. Was it me or could you hear that perfectly coiffed bob creaking as she hastened to a far corner, trying hard not to disturb the judge who evidently hadn’t noticed her.

It was unfortunate that a late blizzard caused an adjournment of the hearing, especially after they had come all this way.  It also meant the party, sorry council meeting, would also be postponed. Double drat.

Aside from the lurking Beast from the East, optimism for a Ledbury Spring among the merry band of town councillors led by Crowe and Fieldhouse, was always likely to be misplaced: judgements in judicial review are rarely determined on the day of the hearing. Unlike some Ledbury town councillors, judges tend to be cautious, preferring to weigh all the evidence before making a decision. Crowe’s bottle of cheap bubbly will have to stay on ice for a while longer.

The new date for the hearing is April 17 in Cardiff. Pob lwc Ledbury!

​

Continuing our occasional series examining wonders of the natural world, we ask: who is this 'beast from the east'? 

Each winter, weather watchers spend hours poring over the charts and models looking for signs of an intense cold spell. Tabloid newspapers also enjoy ramping the excitement, forecasting “snowmaggedon” and months of “arctic hell”.  Their prognostications mostly come to nothing, and the dank weather paddles along in its customarily dreary rut.

Despite our northerly latitude, an oceanic climate at the end of a warm sea current mean that the British Isles usually enjoy damp, mild, windy winters, and summers, and springs. It’s what we are happy bemoaning, and it keeps our fields green.

Just occasionally, something remarkable happens, and all the usual certainties and banalities are upended. At the other side of the planet, a butterfly might beat its wing and cause an eddy. One thing leads to another, and before long a mighty Pacific current, greater far than a thousand Amazons, reverses its direction; particularly warm or cold water floods east, and everything in the jungle basin is upset: droughts, floods, wild-fires, uncustomary cold and heat, and the effects ripple outwards into Africa, Euroasia, Australia: the earth’s climate reels.

In our own hemisphere, these huge forces perturb the delicate interplay of Atlantic warmth and Arctic cold. In winter, an intense high pressure over Scandinavia might form, greeted with joy and excitement by the weather nerds. This rare Scandi-High presages punishing conditions locally with snow and icy winds whipping up blizzards, spectacular snow drifts and lethal freezing rain.  It is called the Beast from the East. The effect is phenomenal, but the impacts are always personal: cancelled appointments, frustrated meetings, a shortage of supplies, and everywhere travel plans sent into chaos.

The Beast is a sly minx, quietly lurking most of the year somewhere in the tundral wastes of outer Siberia. All it takes is for the conditions to be favourable, and out she screams, turning everything in her path to shattering ice. Nor does she respect the usual rules of the weather, but reminds everyone in defiance of their eyes, that this is all perfectly normal. Remember 1947, or 1963, or 1982?  Britain at its finest.
​
‘Your climate’, she says portentously, ‘has decided to deflect all its usual stormy activity far south over Spain so that you can enjoy a period of glacial paralysis. There will be persistent snow and deep frost, even during this spring period. The misery is all perfectly within the bounds of statistical normalcy.’

The infuriating thing about the Beast from the East is that while she is well forecast to arrive, it is uncertain when she will depart. In a good winter, the iciness can last for weeks or months; or, just when you think you’ve done with her, she might send repeated frigid glances interspersed with spells of unsettling mildness. She can stay through summer, visiting drought and polluted air over our benighted shores, but always accompanied by that nagging, unpleasant nip when she shows her face.

She is a force of nature. Unpredictable, untamed, and unloved, except by the enthusiasts who thrill to her ruthless demands. ‘Your weather will do exactly what it pleases’, she says bending them over and giving them another smarting thwack across their fleshy behinds. ‘Oh you lovely beast,’ they shudder, ‘life would be so dull without you’.

There was much agitation, though I didn’t know it at the time, after I published a salacious list of errors and misdeeds committed by Ledbury Town Councillors and their spouses.

I didn’t name and shame them; I just painted a picture of sleaze and decay. I had been challenged to say why I thought some Ledbury town councillors were ethically compromised, why they might be unfit for office. I did. The knife cut deeper apparently than their public silence imported.  

At several Council meetings since, there have been mutterings and derisive dismissals of what I wrote. ‘Pah. I’m supposed to be a witch’ said Jayne Roberts angrily. ‘And I’m a Tory,’ tittered Elaine Fieldhouse. ‘Yes, that was really nasty’, said Jayne Roberts to moans of general agreement from her friends.

As usual when it comes to the majority of Ledbury’s elected decision-makers, they misunderstood what they were reading. So I thought I should put the record straight.

Whether Jayne Roberts is a practising witch, I have no idea. She might be a dabbler in the old religion, and that would be fine. What piques my interest is that she presumed it was herself to whom I was referring when I said that there were at least two Wiccan Town Councillors in Ledbury. Perhaps there are three, or even more; which could, depending on your views, be great for the town, were it not a secret.

This may be why our ardent new vicar, Keith Hilton-Turvey is lately so exercised by the presence of the devil in Ledbury’s body civic. At the last Halloween Festival in New Street, Reverend Keith and some of his church acolytes swept through the cheerful crowds like Salem witch-finders, denouncing customers and stall-holders.  Purveyors of face-painting, palm reading and crystal objects were particular targets.

Now young Cllr Matthew Eakin has thrillingly got it into his mind that a town councillor might be running a sex slave racket. I do not know if Eakin’s imaginings are true or not, although I am prepared to say that there is at least one councillor who does enjoy submissive sexual role-play. They have been active around the counties as a ‘pleasure slave’. I mention this because it is another secret.

Many people, like me, may be surprised to learn about a fetish sub-culture with which this councillor has been associated. The fantasy novels of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth by John Norman completely passed me by in the 1970s and 80s. Since then these ‘sword and planet’-genre books have attracted a cult following, not just of the ‘Trekkie’ kind, but in a practical sense.  Followers have embraced the philosophy and ways of their fantasy world with varying degrees of application up to and including being shackled in chains for periods and being physically abused. Who knew? Networks, communes and menages of this kind exist throughout the Western world it appears: even in Herefordshire.

The Order of Nature

In this fantasy world of planet Gor, high social status is achieved by men who are real men. Muscles, martial arts and machismo are the ideal. Women fulfill themselves by being helpless and obedient, not questioning their dominating he-men. This is the Gorean ‘order of nature’.

The ritualistic and authoritarian aspects of this behaviour must be appealing to our friend in Ledbury Town Council, for this person is also mixed up in witchcraft, freemasonry, and most alarmingly, has connections to far-right, white supremacist Knights Templar activity, all secret.

There is another councillor who is also into witchcraft and weird sex stuff, also a chum of our Gorean colleague. It was an outraged Annette Crowe who told me a few years back that this person had left a sex tape of himself in congress, primed in his video player. When the kids switched it on to watch cartoons, there was predictable shock and disgust. Annette said that it was ‘appalling’ that children might stumble across such images. Not to be unduly cynical, this incident took place almost two decades ago. There was no #metoo in those days. In her new-found special club of knaves, Annette has let bygone be bygones, even voting for this person, her former sworn enemy, for a council-committee position.

This exhibitionistic councillor has been a longstanding friend of ‘mucky’ Martin Eager, well known around town for his awful conduct towards his family including a conviction for assaulting his wife. As reported in court, his thirteen year old step-daughter told the police that ‘he did disgusting things to me’. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

Moral Compass

We complete this dark circle by recording that a majority of Ledbury Town Councillors, the ones who are currently running things, voted for Eager to be Mayor, and who subsequently defended his reputation, and screamed abuse at Liz Harvey for asking him to explain why he was suitable to be mayor, given his background. Both the sex-slave and the sex-tape councillors were vociferous supporters of Eager, alongside Crowe, Fieldhouse, Simpson and his buddy, Bob Barnes. There didn’t seem to be a jot of conscience among them that this abuser’s past might render him inappropriate to be mayor. It all happened a long time ago, they chorused; can’t people be forgiven?

We arrive at the Freemasons. There are many members of the ‘craft’ who revolve around Ledbury Town Council: councillors, their spouses and the spouses of town council staff, professional advisers. Many are organised into the Eastnor Lodge which has been meeting in Ledbury since the mid 19th century. It has a relatively thriving membership by all accounts, comprising retired professionals, civil servants and police, local landowners, wealthy individuals, local government officials, accountants and solicitors. Like Ledbury’s great and good, many of these men are older than average and strong supporters of the Tory cause. They donate to charity and are dedicated to self improvement through a concentration on the ways of the ‘Great Architect of the Universe’. They also, assiduously, look after their own.

Fraternity. Liberty Not So Much. 

Bound by deadly oaths of fraternity, their brotherhood is paramount. They will choose each other for work above others, help each other (and their families) when they are in need, do whatever it takes to look after their mutual interests, always within the law that is, they are quick to add. It takes a special type of conformist to be a mason: the craft is all about rank, obedience and power. It is a finely honed ideological framework invented, protected by, and dedicated to supporting the established order and those in power, wherever that may be. Masons are all around the world and despite their vaunted ethical codes, are not very choosy. Famous brothers included Mugabe, Pinochet and Gadaffi.

Initiates to freemasonry endure hours of quasi-magical, ritualised meetings where long archaic texts of allegorical meaning are learned by rote and incanted with feeling. Swords, bared nipples, blind-folds and rolled up trousers are featured in their long, highly choreographed ceremonies. Membership takes stamina and commitment. In a recent Guardian article, Dawn Foster observes: ‘no-one joins the masons for the handshakes. It must be for the benefits it can bring.’

It is amusing to reflect how these elderly gents, mostly of some standing about town, are upstairs in the Feathers Hotel playing fantasy games revolving around obedience, submission and occult secrets while normal human beings are busy in the bar below chatting and drinking.

Here is their meeting timetable; you might be able to catch them slipping in and out quietly by the back door if you’re lucky.

This is important, since their membership is of the utmost secrecy. We have no idea who they are, unless their membership has been leaked, which is a masonic crime theoretically punishable by death. The Freemasons say they are not a secret society, but a society with secrets. How clever. And yet, it is literally upon their lives that they swear to preserve the anonymity of their masonic brothers from outsiders, whom they call the ‘profane’. They have secret gestures, postures and words which signal to brothers their masonic membership and rank, and if they are ‘in distress, for example when under arrest or in the dock.

What people get up to in their private lives is their business. The problem arises when members of secret networks, which sometimes overlap, enter public life. They are compromised. To whom do they owe ultimate allegiance? Are they open to influence?

The masons here are well represented in Ledbury Town Council. It falls to one man however, a former mayor to pull the strings and bear aloft the grand ceremonial sword of patriotic observance, and vengeance. He is a clandestine protagonist in the council’s bitter quarrel with Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison, and also in close relations with that other “great architect” of the council bannings, a leading mason’s wife, Lynda Wilcox. Town council staff themselves (called the “the girls in the office” by the elderly gents) are also yolked into the masonic web.

The fraternity also extends pervasively into Herefordshire Council where councillors and council officers, many of them senior, who should maintain distance from each other according to their code, rub shoulders in Lodge meetings and afterwards at dinner. It is telling that Herefordshire Council top-brass have thwarted attempts to introduce a simple code of disclosure for officers and elected and members. If everything is above board, why the reticence?

Sticky.

It has always seemed curious how cohesive Ledbury Town Council is, particularly when one of them happens to be ‘in distress’. Nobody is surprised that the establishment closes ranks when it is threatened. What is striking in Ledbury’s case is both the degree of organisation that underpins their self-defence, but also the audacity of their behaviour. Could the masons be at work, ever so quietly?

Remarkable is the lack of shame by the Mayor, or the Clerk, that so many important matters are kept secret and that lies are told, even in Council meetings. Their minutes are pruned of content to the point of redundancy. The general public is routinely expelled from meetings on spurious grounds of confidentiality. Important meetings (like those for the Neighbourhood Plan or Traffic Management) are not advertised. Items are refused to be put on agendas. Meetings are truncated. Questions are not answered, emails are ignored. Correspondence is suppressed. Money is spent, lots of it, without the permission of the Council and therefore outside of financial regulations.

A comparatively trivial, if instructive case is the Mayor’s Charities. Despite turning over thousands of pounds each year, it is run like an office tea fund.  The Clerk denies that the charity fund is a functional part of council business, and yet she herself is a cheque signatory. Town council staff spend many hours of their time supporting it. The Clerk says all the work is done voluntarily by staff in their own time, but this is hard to sustain particularly that there are no time sheets to account for their contribution in kind; the project is woven into the fabric of town council routine and has been for decades. We should keep in mind the name: the Mayor of Ledbury Town Council’s Charity/ies.

Uncoupled deliberately from statutory financial audit nor public accountability, nor open to inspection through Freedom of Information legislation, this mayor’s fund is operated in complete secret. Why? What on earth could be so confidential? It is horrible to contemplate, but without any external oversight, the mayor’s charities fund is wide open to abuse. Who is giving? Who is taking? Its laissez-faire mode of operation does very little to create trust or confidence, in it, in the mayor, or in the council.

But the most awful thing is that they don’t seem to give a hoot what anyone thinks. Why are they so cocky? Why do they think they can get away with such outrageous behaviour?

There are two explanations as to why the Council operates in such a bizarrely furtive manner.  Either, it believes arrogantly that the control of knowledge is power, and so the sharing of knowledge and information, is a diminution of its power. Or, people in the Council are up to no good and are concealing decisions and documentation because they are incriminating. Maybe both.

Secrecy is the blood-sugar of the dark beating heart of Ledbury Town Council. Churchill is apposite. To paraphrase: ‘it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma ; but perhaps there is a key. That key is … [self]... interest.’ Elaine Fieldhouse, the current mayor, is perhaps the most sphynx-like of all the councillors; everything she says - or doesn’t say - must be treated with great caution.

The Neighbourhood Plan has become dark matter since the Council took over direct control. Nobody has any idea what is genuinely going to happen next. Mountains of feedback on the draft version of the Plan have seemingly disappeared without trace. Finances are opaque: it has cost a lot, but quite how much is undisclosed.  Meetings are not advertised. It is run by a closed group  of Annette’s and Elaine’s friends and allies, save one newly elected town councillor. Reportbacks to the Council, much less the public, are minimal.

In others times and places, this would be seen as a scandal and a democratic affront. Not in Ledbury. Sadly, the town council is so consumed with its intrigues and schemes, and with the impending judicial review (JR) it has no brainspace for anything - not even to do anything useful about the catastrophically unplanned building bonanza taking place in the town’s surrounding fields. Vital and urgent to halting this assault is Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Plan, but this it has sunk into obscurity. The Mayor and her confederates are too busy on their wild legal goose-chase - another financial black hole - defending in the High Court, the manifestly unlawful and unfair banning of Cllrs Liz Harvey, and Andrew Harrison.

Not long to wait now - the hearing is on 1 March - but as ever the Council discloses nothing in public - or even in private. Fieldhouse claims in a closed session of the council, that its lawyers say that their case is very strong in defending Harvey’s challenge; she says, or at least strongly implies, that they think the Council will win, and that Liz Harvey will be made to pay all the costs it has incurred. If not, the Council will be able to claim on litigation insurance through Lynda Wilcox.

In what is becoming a regular ironic trope in Council meetings, Cllr Nick Morris asked Fieldhouse if councillors might be allowed to see this reassuring advice.  She immediately said, no, it’s legal and confidential. Then after being pressed, said that Cllr Morris should ask the Clerk, Karen Mitchell for it. There were intakes of breath… you mean, Mrs Mitchell has access to all the confidential papers concerning the judicial review? Even though it is her complaints against Harvey and Harrison which are at the centre of the bans?

The disclosure was inadvertent but devastating.  The realisation that she had revealed that the Clerk had access to all the advice from the London solicitors, but elected town councillors had seen none of it, caused Fieldhouse to flush momentarily. She normally doesn’t do shame or embarrassment.

In her fleeting disarray, Fieldhouse continued to dig down into the bottom of her unstable pit. Notwithstanding their ‘very strong case’, and ‘firm grounds’, she said the Council would be making a final offer to Harvey to settle out of court. Nearing the end of what had been a dull and lengthy meeting, the council suddenly awoke from its torpor.  This time Andrew Harrison came to his feet. ‘And who decides on what that offer will be?’, he asked.  She waved her hand airily in a distracting arc. ‘That is for our counsel to decide. We don’t get involved in that’, she said imperiously, as if it were a trivial detail best left to the servants to sort out. There were further collective gulps, even from loyalists.

Of course she knew what the offer was: how else would it have any serious intent, or legal jurisdiction? More secrets, more lies.  

Don't Mention It. 

In all of these disparate tales, what I have been discussing is secrecy, and its corrosive effects.  I am not interested in people’s sexual proclivities, nor their religious or occult leanings all of which I respect. I don’t care that they like dressing up and pretending to be knights, or seers. This said, sexual and physical abuse disturbs me and should be named which is why I continue to bang the drum for Martin Eager’s resignation from public office.

Councillors and public servants who belong to secret networks, or who have shameful secrets, and who would not wish to have aspects of their private lives or the record of their public service exposed, are subject to a Faustian curse. They are compromised. They must cover their tracks continually, distract and dissemble, preempt intrusive questioning by hostility and aggression. They must also conform and do as they are told, on pain of exposure.

Not knowledge: secrets are power. They are corrupted and ensnared by them, and to survive must keep creating more, telling more lies. And sticking together. The web is almost invisible but it is as adhesive as glue

The tragedy of Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Plan is its epic, mind-boggling vacuity.

Five long, painful years have passed since Ledbury began its Neighbourhood Plan. Tens of thousands of pounds have been spent on consultants. Four chairmen, dozens of volunteers and scores of meetings have come and gone. There have been leaflets and consultations, exhibitions and questionnaires. Has Ledbury ever witnessed such a calamitous flop?
 
Despite rampant building works disfiguring its outskirts, with more planning applications in prospect, the town still seems no nearer having a neighbourhood plan than it did two and half years ago. This was when the Town Council sacked the community-led group and took over its management, supposedly to get the job done quickly. 
 
Building developers are having a free-for-all in the rolling countryside to the south of Ledbury. If they get their way, about two thousand new houses are expected in the next couple of years. Many local people think this will be a catastrophic shock to the town, especially as few extra resources like doctors, schools and car-parks are being built to cope with the influx of the six thousand extra people.
 
There are worries too about the ugly impact of all that building on the landscape of Ledbury, not to mention all the extra cars, the demand on water and sewerage facilities, and the short supply of leisure amenities which a town of fifteen thousand people might expect. 

Dissolution

Back in October 2015, ex-councillor Rob Yeoman said that the old Neighbourhood Planning working group wasn’t delivering, that the plan was taking too long, that Ledbury was being failed. He claimed that by dissolving the community-led group and moving the project under the direct control of the Council, progress would be hastened so that a Plan could be completed within a matter of months; if only.
 
Yeoman bemoaned the bitter personality conflicts and what he alleged was political chicanery (got up cynically by Liz Harvey and her party, It’s Our County). He complained that she stared at him menacingly. He said that the new ‘Neighbourhood Development Plan Group’ (note the subtle name-change) would achieve in a few months what the community volunteers had failed to deliver in two years. To roars of ironic laughter from the public, he said the group was dysfunctional, ineffective and amateurish, incapable of making progress due to ‘infighting and bad behaviour’. Yeoman’s scornful claims were wrong and flew in the face of all the evidence, but a gullible majority of the town council supported his proposal and down came the shutters. Thus began Ledbury Town Council’s time of ruination.
 
At that fateful Town Council meeting, it was pointed out that the Council would be ‘dissolving’ a vast pool of knowledge, experience and skills, not to mention commitment and energy, the very thing which should be harnessed, not cast aside, to bring the project to rapid fruition. Councillors and members of the public argued passionately that having to start again with a new group, and losing so much valuable expertise, would cause immeasurably more delay. 
 
The Neighbourhood Plan group’s dissolution was not so much the act of cutting off Ledbury’s nose, as kicking its face to pulp in a fit of vengeful spite. The consequences were clear to everyone, except the Town Council’s Jacobin tendency.  And so all our worst fears have come to pass: two and half years later, Ledbury is still an eternity away from a plan that is adequate. Now the grimly optimistic talk is that ‘a bad plan is better than no plan’. At this point, the smart money is on no plan.
 
After Yeoman’s coup d’etat, it fell to the Mayor Annette Crowe, to cobble things back together and form a new project group. This she did by bringing in several of her very good friends and some of their family members, none of whom had any background knowledge of planning or community engagement, much less awareness of the intensive work that had been completed already.
 
Under Crowe’s dubious leadership, meetings of the new group were rarely, if ever advertised, even though it was claimed they were ‘open and inclusive’ to the community. After a decent interval, the mendacious Bob Barnes (who had presided shambolically over the group’s previous incarnation and was responsible for so much of the conflict) came in from the cold. Meanwhile, Cllr Rob Yeoman, having wielded the axe, promptly resigned from the Council and henceforth absented himself from NDP meetings. Thanks Rob! Fresh from the acquisition of his prized new cricket pitch, all that ostentatious enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning and doing the best for Ledbury suddenly evaporated; make of this what you will. 
 
Throughout the pantomime, the fragrant Sally Tagg continues to do what she likes to do, and collect her handsome consultancy pay cheques.  How much are we up to so far? £60 thousand?
 
Don’t Question Us.
 
Over a year later (January 2017), there was another bitter town council meeting to discuss the clearly faltering progress on the Neighbourhood Plan.  Crowe, Barnes and Fieldhouse, aided by their loyal dupes, huffed and bluffed. Everything was on track they claimed. According to their tired narrative, the only problem was the trouble-makers.
 
Seemingly any feedback or criticism, however legitimate, was branded ‘political’ or vexatious.
 
What about the disappointingly poor response rates to public consultations? ‘Community apathy’ is normal and expected, they explained. How could the spiralling costs be justified, with so little to see for the money? Rubbish they said: the £70 thousand budget is in line with other comparable towns. To charges of lack of accountability, they claimed that all the NDP meetings are open and ‘above board’, everyone was welcome (despite never being advertised). In other words, shut up and leave us alone.
 
We were reassured that the Group was ‘almost ready’ to go to the next important phase, which was the official major consultation stage called Regulation 14. At this point, the draft final plan would be released for public scrutiny. All being well, it would sail through to independent examination (by a planning inspector) and a referendum, job done by the autumn.
 
The ‘Reg 14’ consultation did happen, but not for another nine months in September 2017. Since then, having been deluged with critical feedback from organisations and individuals in Ledbury, four months have passed and there has been silence. There is surprise and consternation that none of the submissions from this consultation have been made public as is normal practice. There continues to be minimal contact between Ledbury Town Council and Herefordshire Council. The Plan as published, is potentially in conflict with aspects of the County’s ‘core strategy’, a fatal legal impediment. It certainly does not meet the policy threshold set out in the latest ministerial guidance to Parliament. This does not bode well for a successful resolution.
 
When the draft plan was finally released for consultation at ‘Reg 14’, former members of the dissolved Neighbourhood Plan group were dismayed that so little had been contributed since they had left it in October 2015, two years before. More than this, vital elements which were being worked on at that stage, had simply been left out.
 
Where was the land for business and employment? Sports pitches and playing fields? Town centre economic development? Community venues? Medical and educational facilities? Nowhere to be seen. Traffic management and parking had not been considered. Habitat creation, green spaces and other natural environmental resources were left fallow. Just about all the most pressing questions for Ledbury’s future as a thriving, prosperous, happy place to live, were ignored.
 
Perhaps most damningly, the Plan delineated a ‘settlement boundary’ for Ledbury which flew in the face of all logic.  This is not surprising since it was apparently crayoned in by Bob Barnes (who else?) one random evening. The settlement boundary is important since it defines the outer extent of building and other development in the town. By creating a larger settlement boundary, with space allocated for business parks, playing fields and open green space as well as housing, Ledbury would be able to prevent the kind of unplanned, predatory development which is currently taking place beyond the Leadon Way by-pass between the town and Parkway.
 
The whole point of a Neighbourhood Plan is that it sets out a framework for planned development based on the views of local residents. The tragedy of Ledbury’s is its epic, mind-boggling vacuity. It has cost a fortune and taken years, and yet it still manages to contribute almost nothing of value to our townscape. It is a dullard’s vision of Ledbury’s future: not so much wrong, as simply lacking any horizon beyond the obvious, the banal and the mundane. Like its authors, the plan is horribly platitudinous and patronising. This is a typical sentence: “There can be much confusion, concern and worry when people hear about a pending housing development. Well, with the right objectives and policies in the NP, there needn’t be.”
 
Those people who look with dismay and sorrow at the churned up meadows and monstrous earthworks on Leadon Way, will no doubt be grateful for Mrs Tagg’s emollient words. They will sleep easier at night as three more predatory planning applications for many hundreds more houses land in Herefordshire Council’s planners’ in-tray. They will wave aside as scaremongering or mischief-making, claims that the town’s infrastructure won’t be able to cope.
 
Blame

What is even more galling, is that Ledbury is now being softened up for failure at official inspection of its Neighbourhood Plan - and they are already finding scapegoats.  There are reports that crispy new councillor Jean Simpson, new best friend of Crowe and Fieldhouse, declared at a Ledbury Civic Society meeting that ‘if the Neighbourhood Plan fails, you know whose fault it will be: Liz Harvey’s’.
 
This outrageous statement isn’t entirely surprising, since Ms Simpson is well known for her waspish tongue and brittle personality. The shocking thing is how readily she and her malevolent gang of confederates are prepared to offload blame for all their mistakes and shortcomings onto the very people who forewarned them. Even now, after two and half years when Liz Harvey et al (including me) have had no input to the Neighbourhood Plan, they are being fingered. Do we have mystical powers?
 
There is a school of thought which believes that certain town councillors have deliberately hobbled the progress of the Neighbourhood Plan.  By holding it back to the last possible moment, landowning friends (and brothers) around the town have been helped in the meantime to get ahead with building development plans, to pitch their pre-emptive housing proposals before Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Planning window bangs shut, and decimates the potential value of their fields. As building plots those acres are worth millions and millions; as grazing or arable land they aren’t worth tuppence. Some people would hate to see their friends (and brothers) lose out so unfairly, so the conspiracy theory runs.
 
I take a more charitable view. Stupidity. Apart from Bob Barnes’ serpentine foray around the local landowners during 2016 to explore their building intentions, the possibility of an organised conspiracy of corruption is fairly low, and even harder to prove.

Power Trip.
 
The more likely explanation is that Ledbury has been mostly in the grip of a bunch of foolish bullshitters who couldn’t plan their way out of a sick bag.  Like characters out of a Grimms’ fairy tale, the twain sisters Crowe and Fieldhouse might radiate bonhomie, but on the inside theirs is an ugly power trip. More than any other people presiding over the failed Neighbourhood Planning process and the chaotic Town Council, it is they who have brought civic life to its knees. By their errors of judgement and vainglorious ambition, they have allowed Ledbury’s future to be stolen by a few self-interested miscreants variously motivated by personal advantage, employment security and social status. They know who they are, and so do we.
 
And herein lies the kernel of the matter: Ledbury’s Town Council’s judicial woes, the tens of thousands it has spent on legal fees, the paralysis and isolation, the opportunities lost and hopes unfulfilled, the councillor bans, the abuse, harassment and intimidation, the suppression of information, and the dismal perversion of the public record: all these failures spring from the impulses of a closed group intent on covering up its misdeeds and hanging on to its power. In that sense, many town councillors are guilty, not just the nasty junta at the centre, but the credulous fools who go along with it all.
 
Corruption and personal enrichment is always a possibility in any closed organisation that shuns external scrutiny and refuses to be accountable.
 

There was nothing extraordinary about Ledbury Town Council's extraordinary town council meeting on 4 December, 2017.
 
As we pushed open the heavy meeting room door, what met us was a row of dour, insolent faces ranged around the two far sides of the meeting table, and a heavy fug of stale human breath. This is Ledbury Town Council's camarilla, a characterful Hogarthian assemblage, some craggy, some bloated but all with pinched expressions and more or less up to no good.
 
Here is the liar Bob Barnes who likes to think of himself as the Father of the Town Council, its intellectual and moral dynamo, bulwark of traditional Ledbury values. He sits next to Ledbury's shortest-lived mayor, the ill-fated Martin Eager, perennially red-faced and embittered by the public reaction to his crimes. There is the Mother Crowe, centre stage, tossing her blond tresses triumphantly like an Aryan goddess. Her nemesis, Jayne Roberts is uncomfortably at her side with a curled lip: perhaps she is remembering Annette's nasty line of comments about her resembling a slug? Citizen Tony Bradford looks to his friend Debbie Baker who is stony-faced and unblinking. With something of the Toby jug about them, the slightly disheveled pair have common cause in a range of occult pursuits. Finally, the inscrutable Andy Manns stares straight ahead, creating the strong impression of someone who knows a very great deal, or else knows nothing at all.
 
It was 7.25pm. They had each one arrived early to gain the psychological advantage of established formation, and being serried together, were thus enabled to make sotto voce remarks and cast meaningful sideways glances if required. Even though so many of them hate each other with a passion, it is important that they cleave together in this time of disquiet.
 
Councillors from the 'other side' (ie Harvey et al) arrived along with a half a dozen or so members of the public, cheerily greeting each other while those opposite continued to glare menacingly, irritated by the pleasantries. In the manner of a theatre late-comer, the ambitious Ms Jean Simpson was the last councillor to arrive and had to squeeze herself awkwardly past chairs and scramble over already seated councillors to get to her confederates on the far side. The only difference on her part was the marked absence of civility; there was no 'excuse me' or 'sorry to trouble you' or 'thank you'. The slightly unseemly commotion passed, and once seated, Jean carefully set her sharp face perfectly to the same wintry expression as her confederates.
 
Almost on the stroke of seven thirty, the stand-in clerk Lynda Wilcox, who had been waiting timorously in a back office, scuttled to her place at the head of the table, head down and avoiding eye contact. She was followed noisily by the Mayor fresh from a fortifying ciggie and thus fortified, redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Good evening, she rasped loudly, plonking her big bag on the table in front of an increasingly woebegone Deputy Mayor Keith Francis, causing him to start.
 
There was nothing whatsoever in Elaine's bold performance to suggest that just ten minutes before, she had had a blazing argument with another councillor sitting just across the table, an ex-mayor. Like so many before it, the altercation took place under the shadowy vaults of The Market House. It was brought to an abrupt stop by the appearance of several members of the public also making for the Town Council offices. Debbie Baker raised the palm of her hand contemptuously and walked away even while Elaine was still remonstrating with her. 'Not interested', said Debbie. The Mayor's face was contorted with rage and frustration at the slight, and yet just a few moments later, it was returned to its customary public serenity.
 
After a little whispered conferring with Lynda, the old library clock chimed the half hour in its wan, melancholy way. The mayor got out her customary bag of boiled sweets and plucked a vivid red one which she popped between her freshly lipsticked red lips, equally vivid.
 
Let the meeting commence. 'Welcome to this erm extraordinary full council meeting,' she gurgled while theatrically shuffling papers . 'Members of the public are permitted to film or record meetings to which they are permitted access... deemed to have consented... those exercising... rights of... Data Protection Act 1998... is there anyone filming? Oh you, yes... well then, first item Apologies... no? Good. Interests...'
 
And so for several minutes the mayor droningly read out the meeting rubric in the manner of a bored priest saying mass for the ten thousandth time, or an old Latin master starting his double period with an improving, complex piece by Horace. This conventional preamble is usefully designed to allow an air of tedium to settle on the meeting, becalming any restive creative spirits who might have ideas to create a diversion.
 
In the silent pauses, you could just hear the clanking of a boiled sweet against one of the Mayor's remaining molars. That tangy fruitiness had her mouth awash with saliva so that when she spoke, she seemed to struggle to contain it all inside; her tongue swirled against the meaningless tide of words and scarcely controllable dribble that fought against each other. Was it possible without embarrassment?
 
'Public participation. Members of the public... which is at the chairman's discretion shall not exceed... shall not exceed five minutes... shall be directed to the Chairman... Now, Item 4 Minutes of the Last Meeting...'
 
Suddenly the mesmerizing spell of the Mayor's fructuous oration was disturbed. A hand was raised. 'I'd like to speak' said a member of the public pertly. 'Oh sorry', the mayor spluttered. She had apparently mesmerised even herself and forgotten about 'public participation'. 'Yes,' said the lady. 'I want to ask with respect and politeness, that the matters for discussion are conducted in the open, without the public being asked to leave. I would like to say...' She didn't get any further because the Mayor interjected. 'No, I'm sorry. That won't be possible because the business being discussed is confidential, it's legal you see'.
 
There was a little artificial argument between the mayor and the importunate lady: you see we would very much argue that since it is process, and not personal details, that are being discussed... (Interjection) No, it is legal and it is privileged so you can't be present... But don't you think the public should be allowed to know...? (Interjection) No, I'm so sorry, you must leave... But, but... (Interjection).
 
Thus 'the public' were expelled. As they filed out of the meeting room, the Mayor continued fulsomely to thank everyone for coming along while continuing to gulp back the product of her tart salivary eructations. Thank you and good night she growled warmly. Close the door after you.
 
Out in the impossibly picturesque cobbled street of timbered houses and jutting gables, a few snowflakes drifted by on the cold breeze. The Hogarthian scene was perfected. 'What's the bloody point?' said the defeated petitioner disconsolately. 'None at all,' came the reply. 'It's hopeless', said another, 'one more evening wasted'.
 
To the sound of the thin, tired strike of the quarter hour, the group parted in the gathering darkness. 

In Italy they say that it’s good to trust. But it’s even better not to trust.

Ernest Hemingway put it another way: the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. 

Both these pieces of advice should be taken to heart by anyone contemplating involvement with Ledbury Town Council.

At their July meeting discussing the threatened judicial review, Ledbury's town councillors were being asked to agree to have a solicitor look over some legal papers and then write a letter back. What could be more innocuous? Only six thousand pounds...

Town councillor friends tell me that they were repeatedly reassured by Mayor Elaine Fieldhouse that this didn’t mean the Council was actually voting to fight the judicial review. It was simply answering a nasty letter (here it is: the 'Letter Before Claim') from Liz Harvey’s lawyers which warned them to rescind the councillor bans or face legal action.
 
It was another of those closed sessions, discussing 'confidential business', but you can imagine the scene. In her honeyed tones, Elaine would be smoothing over all the scratchy bits. Everything will be fine she would say nodding vigourously. It will probably all go away amicably after the solicitors have done what they do, a bit of legal ‘toing and froing’. Trust me.  
 
Worried councillors - including Matthew Eakin - wanted to know whether the Council was insured to pay for costs in case it lost. Stand-in clerk, Lynda Wilcox allegedly told them the matter wasn't to do with insurance, or even going to court. It was just a small formality: they'd had a solicitor’s letter and they had to write one back. Interestingly, she didn't commit herself on the insurance question apparently: that'll be a no then?
 
I won't be divulging my sources but they were multiple. Fieldhouse and Wilcox repeatedly said that by appointing the (unnamed) London law firm, (which Elaine had found from a google search), this did not mean that the Council was actually deciding to fight the judicial review. It was just an exchange of letters, the sort of thing lawyers do all the time. Nothing at all to worry about. It would probably all go away once they’d corresponded. Silly Billys they are, lawyers. Trust us.
 
In any case, even if it turns out the Council should fight the judicial review, everything would come back to council, ‘stage by stage’, for them to decide upon with all the facts before them.
 
Credit to young Cllr Matthew Eakin who pressed the Mayor on whether the Council would be consulted on each decision. Oh, yes, said Elaine, at every stage. And so assuaged, a majority of councillors voted for Bob Barnes’ pre-prepared resolution that “Ledbury Town Council engage legal counsel to contest this judicial challenge, with funds from the budget and from reserves, as necessary”.
 
Excuse me? What was that? Contest this judicial challenge? It seems that some town councillors got more than they bargained for. What they’d just voted for was to spend an unlimited sum (“as necessary”) to fight Liz Harvey right up to the High Court. They were fighting the JR after all.
 
Thank you and good-night, said Elaine Fieldhouse breezily. Meeting closed. Predictably, there was uproar. 
 
Fast forward a month to the August meeting. Bob Barnes was immediately on his feet again proposing that: “The Town Council take all necessary steps, subject to legal advice, to oppose the judicial review proceedings and to delegate decision-making authority to the standing committee, which will report back to Council.” The ‘Standing Committee’ consists of the mayor and her  deputy and the three committee chairs of planning, finance and environment; for the record: Fieldhouse, Francis, Crowe, Barnes and Bradford. Except the last, these are the people who have been running the anti-Harvey/Harrison campaign from the start.
 
Once again I am told, Eakin was at pains to make sure that that nothing would be agreed by the Standing Committee unless the whole council had been consulted first. Oh yes, said Fieldhouse again, councillors would get to vote on everything. Trust me.
 
She said the very words: 'vote on everything'. People wrote it down.
 
The resolution was carried, nine for, five against.  
 
As we have seen, young Matthew is not the sort of person to hide his feelings. So when at the November meeting it was revealed that Standing Committee had no intention of referring key decisions to the town council for agreement, he was extremely vexed.
 
‘I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back' he said. 'I was assured by the mayor that we would have the chance to vote on everything before any action was taken by the standing committee’ he said angrily.
 
Town Clerk Karen Mitchell reminded him that this wasn’t in the minutes and they had already been approved as a true record. And Elaine remained silent.
 
Ah well. Just another mendacious day at the council. 

That Matthew Eakin and I haven't hit it off, is a matter of regret.

He is one of Ledbury Town Council's newest and youngest councillors, a bright young man of evident integrity and honesty, courageous too in putting himself forward for election in 2015 at the age of eighteen. Many people applauded his achievement, even if some didn't much care for his Lib-Dem affiliation.
 
More honoured in the breach than the observance, Ledbury's 'convention' was that the town council should be a party-politics free zone. What this led to was the absurd situation that people would stand for the Conservatives for County Council elections, but at the same time, be badged as an 'Independent' on the Town Council ballot paper. How does that work? Debbie Baker and Phill Bettington successfully pulled off this chameleon trick.
 
The reality is that a large fraction of Ledbury town councillors are either card-carrying Conservatives, or close fellow travellers. It was always joyfully ironic to listen to them berating Liz Harvey for bringing 'politics' into the town council. (It will be remembered that in successive county and town elections, it was solely Liz who had the candour to declare openly that she was standing on a party ticket, IOC.)
 
In the same vein, young Cllr Eakin decried my criticism of the way in which Ledbury's ill-starred Neighbourhood Plan was being managed. 'You are being nakedly political,' he announced bitterly to the uproarious gathering. 'Your comments are biased and unfair and are aimed at political advantage'. His manipulative town council buddies applauded delightedly... 'well said', 'hear hear', 'absolutely', they cried out.
 
It didn't go down quite so well when I pointed out sarcastically that he was the first town councillor to have stood on a national party political ticket for donkey's years. (Martin Eager for the Conservatives was the last I think). 'Ooh shame' roared the baying ladies and gents. 'Leave him alone... stop bullying him... how awful'.
 
Matthew approached me at the end of the meeting and told me angrily that my political vendetta on behalf of It's Our County against the town council was unacceptable and disgraceful. I politely disagreed, and we have not spoken since.
 
From this incident, I draw two conclusions: Matthew has the best of intentions but he has also been misled by his would-be political operators. Among the political top brass of the town council and the Herefordshire Lib-Dems, there are people who hate Liz Harvey, and by extension, all her friends even if, like me, they are not IOC members. They do so because she, and her IOC party, refuse to toe the line and increasingly pose a mortal threat to the county's political status quo. She, like Cllr Eakin, is also well-intentioned, intelligent and honest: rare qualities around these parts.  
 
Matthew clearly wants the town council to function transparently and democratically, and that all the people involved with it, including me, openly declare their affiliations and motivations. Anything less is a deception.
 
On this, Matthew and I are in accord. I say this to him: please continue to be your own man, and to do what you think is right. Do not always believe what you are told by people holding an already sharp axe next to a revolving grindstone. We might not agree, but at least let's believe we are speaking the truth as we see it.
 
My door is always ajar. 

It has something of the Cultural Revolution about it.

A troublesome councillor or two are accused of bullying staff. The evidence doesn't stand up. But the ensuing kangaroo court organised by their hostile political adversaries convicts them anyway. Then they are banned from councillor duties and paraded in public as pariahs, the better to be eliminated at the next election.
 
It's not meant to happen this way in law, but for an increasing number of first-tier councillors caught in such witch-hunts, parish and town councils are being run like minor post-Soviet dictatorships. The Herefordshire town of Ledbury is just the latest where common decency and political conciliation have dissolved into an acrid micro-civil war.
 
In the latest phase, an anticipated high court hearing in February 2018 may affect the constitutional position of every town and parish councillor in England. Local council tax payers are also bracing for a six figure legal bill, if as seems probable the Town Council loses. At stake is the right of councillors to scrutinise incompetence and maladministration. The judicial review will consider how far parish and town councils are allowed to sanction or punish their elected members without first involving the Monitoring Officer of the local county or district authority.  
 
Around England, a growing number of ‘first-tier’ councillors are being unfairly banned, sanctioned or otherwise penalised by their councillor peers for bullying or harassing staff. The problem is that these locally organised tribunals run counter to local government legislation which says that Monitoring Officers must adjudicate on such matters.
 
It might seem obvious that groups of politically or personally hostile councillor ‘rivals’, should not sit in judgement on their immediate peers. And yet this is becoming the norm, seemingly under the cover of legal advice from the controversial industry body, NALC (National Association of Local Councils) and many of the county associations for parish councils, including Herefordshire’s.
 
In quaint Ledbury, two blameless councillors, Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison, have been wrongly 'banned' by their fellow councillors for bullying and harassing staff. There was an independent investigation into their conduct carried out by Herefordshire Council (initiated by the two accused councillors) which found them innocent of all accusations.
 
Even so, a highly prejudiced ‘grievance process’ was rolled out - in defiance of the County Council Monitoring Officer and in contravention of the Localism Act 2011 – which predictably found them guilty, and then unlawfully applied draconian sanctions against them.
 
What town councillors didn’t like were concerns Harvey and Harrison had raised about governance failures, financial irregularities and potential corruption. Yes, it was strong stuff – but in the public interest, the questions needed to be investigated. As committee chairmen, they had also been working hard to make the Council more transparent and forward-looking, but their efforts were detested by the ‘old guard’ who ruthlessly guard their imagined community influence and prestige.
 
Ledbury Town Council – or rather a small authoritarian subset of councillors - claim they are allowed to circumvent local government law by invoking employment legislation to 'protect' their staff - yet have not provided a jot of legal evidence to justify their position.
 
Eighteen months later, the two are still debarred from sitting on committees or working groups, and forbidden from having any contact with Council staff, entering the Council office, or being involved with ‘outside bodies’. The Council also wrote to every local organisation and the press to denounce them. As a result, they have been subject to hate behaviour in the street and on social media, and their reputations have been trashed.
 
In their latest legal swerve, the Council cynically now claim they haven’t imposed ‘sanctions’ after all, but ‘protective measures’ to look after staff welfare. Neither they, nor their swanky London lawyers, Winckworth Sherwood, have yet explained how the public denunciations and ban on community involvement might be construed as ‘protective’.
 
Who, except the hard-hearted, the stupid, or the wilfully idealistic, would want to become a town or parish councillor and risk such strictures? The sight of disgraced councillors being traduced in their communities sends out a powerful signal to would-be candidates that only conformists need apply.
 
And yet, without new blood and ideas, younger and plural voices, the parish council sector will continue to atrophy, an enfeebled vehicle for narcissists, reactionaries and pompous time-wasters. Let’s face it, all that expensive flummery and brown-nosing with the county squire-archy has got to be done by somebody.
 
This judicial review matters to local democracy, to the ability of councillors to scrutinise and call to account, to act with conscience and integrity, in short to fulfill their duties as elected representatives of their communities. Devoid of external oversight since the Audit Commission and Standards Boards were abolished in 2011, parish councils are acting as laws unto themselves and are running out of control. Beyond the police or the courts, there is no higher authority that can look into institutional wrongdoing.
 
As in Ledbury, the dissident purges are recurring with unsettling frequency in town and parish councils around Britain. Innocent councillors are being denounced and banned on the pretext of staff bullying because they have variously blown the whistle on wrongdoing, asked awkward questions or simply found themselves on the wrong side of the political tracks, left, right or centre. The only recourse for an aggrieved councillor is to seek judicial review in which the upfront costs are huge - about £60 thousand.
 
In the longer term, there has to be a change in the law. Parish councils must be brought under the supervision of an ombudsman-type regulator, like all other tiers of local government and public service. The laissez-faire Tory policy of ‘localism’ is just a licence for bad political behaviour. It cannot be right that the parishes spend more than half a billion pounds annually of public money, and yet are accountable to nobody.
 
More pressingly, the judicial review will test Ledbury Town Council’s and NALC’s de facto rewriting of the Localism Act, specifically their contention that alleged misdeeds by elected councillors need not be determined under the Code of Conduct framework by an independent legal practitioner (ie the monitoring officer).
 
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If the Council wins, there will be a chilling effect on local democracy everywhere. It will be open season on dissident councillors: unwelcome scrutiny will be labelled bullying; whistle-blowers will be subject to personal ruin; decent candidates for election will run for the hills.
 
Liz Harvey’s supporters expect her to win as the legal case seems compelling. They also hope that those hard-line authoritarians around England’s 9 thousand parishes may be more reluctant about chancing £150 thousand on a pointless legal battle. Case law and precedent should matter – even though down in the parish political undergrowth it often doesn’t feel like that.
 
‘When we win,’ says a battle-weary Liz Harvey, ‘the power-plays and purges won’t magically stop, nor the politically motivated accusations, but at least the industry body NALC will be forced to stop peddling inaccurate and dangerous advice to its members. And we can begin the long campaign to get the law changed in favour of democratic accountability’.
 
The timing could be perfect. A review into local government standards has just been announced by Dr Jane Martin of the Parliamentary Committee into Standards in Public Life. In her keynote address to parish council delegates at the recent NALC conference, it was good that she pointedly reminded the audience that ‘an absence of ethical standards erodes [public] trust.’
 
There is an undeniable crisis of confidence in the so-called ‘elites’ that have been running our lives. But it’s not just in the Westminster and the media bubble that there is sleeze, unfairness and rule-bending. Parish politics are not sexy or high profile, but they matter to the 16 million people who pay into their coffers and enjoy their modest benefits.