2 Councillors reported to the police

Stratford Herald - 3rd March 2011

HENLEY councillors requested a police investigation this week into the conduct of two of their colleagues who used the council's official letterhead without consent.

At the meeting of Beaudesert and Henley Joint Parish Council on Monday night the council's clerk, Jenny Walsh, told councillors that the action of Cllrs Sue Osborne and Bill Leech was potentially fraudulent.

The issue arose from a request by a resident of Prince Harry Road for the two councillors to ask for his complaint about the council's chairman, Cllr Les Goodman, to be included on the council's agenda last month.

The resident had requested an apology from Cllr Goodman after comments he made at a meeting on 6th December last year when the resident was prevented from talking about the cattle market. Mrs Walsh told the Herald that the resident had previously sent an e-mail to all councillors saying if they wanted to be re-elected in 2012 they should be mindful of the resident's views on the cattle market.

Cllr Goodman, and several other councillors, told the resident they found this comment offensive. The resident then made a formal complaint to the Stratford District Council's monitoring officer but it was rejected in February.

Mrs Walsh said after the meeting: "Complaints about individual councillors is not a matter for a parish council to discuss on its agenda, therefore the two councillors were wrong to ask me to include it. More significantly, the letter they signed included an attached draft 'apology' that had been created on the council's own letter headed paper. Although watermarked with 'draft' it purported to be sent as an apology to the resident from the chairman."

Mrs Walsh contacted the association of local councils for advice and said the county secretary confirmed the councillors were wrong to request the item and had most likely breached the code of conduct for councillors in   using   the council’s letter headed paper without permission to re-create a document which, purported to have been created by the council.

She said forging an organisation's official letterhead without its consent was outside the law.

At Monday's meeting Cllr George Matheou urged fellow   councillors   to inform the police and request a full investigation. Councillors voted for both the police investigation and to register a complaint to Stratford District Council's standards and ethics committee.

After the meeting, Cllr Leech said: "The JPC (joint parish council) ruling group do not want anyone on the council who will challenge them. To date. there have been six complaints against me to the Standards and Ethics committee. None of these complaints has so far been successful but these complaints have cost Stratford District Council taxpayers about £10,000 to investigate."