An independent councillor at Wigan Council has been called back to the council's standards committee after failing to apologise for bad behaviour.
Cllr Robert Brierley, ward member for Hindley Green, was given several sanctions after being found guilty of breaching the council’s code of conduct on six occasions last month, including writing to apologise to those he had offended.
Wigan Council says Cllr Brierley failed to apologise within the deadline earlier this month and the town hall has now imposed further sanctions including a recommendation that he be removed from the confident places scrutiny committee.
However, Cllr Brierley remained defiant, dismissing the hearing process as a ‘kangaroo court’.
The leader of Wigan Council, Lord Peter Smith, along with opposition group leaders Cllr James Grundy, leader of the Conservative group, and Cllr Gary Wilkes, leader of the Wigan Independent Network, wrote to communities secretary Eric Pickles last month urging the Government to introduce a public right of recall enabling voters to call for a by-election when they are unhappy with a councillor’s behaviour.
Lord Smith said said: ‘The electorate are losing faith in democracy. They cannot understand why we do not have the power to ensure councillors, like Cllr Brierley, are accountable for their behaviour and neither do we.’
Cllr Brierley disputes the legality of the original hearings and says he has tried to send letters of apology.
‘I informed (a council officer) that I'd not yet received the information of the address's of those complainants who I need to send my letters to, also I was not asked to face the panel,” he said.
He added: ‘If we ever get justice the committee panel would be equal not the kangaroo court of eight Labour councillors and one opposition.’
The Coalition Government abolished the Standards Board for England as part of the Localism Bill in 2012.
