Winchelsea Ward Councillors Report

We’ve been rather quiet in 2011. The reason has been the vast amount of time that we have had to devote to fighting false allegations made, in February 2010, by councillors from the other wards of Icklesham Parish Council to Rother District Council’s Standard Committee. This story has already featured in the pages of the Observer, so there is no need to repeat it here. But one aspect merits elaboration: the subject of the parish council meeting in August 2009, which was the origin of the complaint against Cllr Comotto. This was a proposal by the chairman and some other councillors that the parish council should sue the Wincheslea website www.winchelsea.net (with which Cllr Comotto is involved) for defaming Icklesham Parish Council by referring to “a history of incompetent chairmen” and “a dysfunctional council”.
By The Newsroom
Published 26th Jan 2012, 12:40 BST

It subsequently emerged that local councils (and indeed central government) do not have the right to sue for defamation! Indeed, this is a basic principle of law, designed to protect freedom of speech. How did Icklesham Parish Council ever come to consider such a proposal?

We have tried to find out, but it has not been easy, not least because Icklesham Parish Council no longer has any of the relevant papers in its files! This is not the first time that official papers relating to a contentious issue have gone missing at Icklesham. However, from another source, we learned that the initial legal advice was obtained by an Icklesham ward councillor from an anonymous acquaintance (for all we know, this could have been a man in the pub, perhaps even the same man whose advice some years ago almost got the parish council prosecuted for VAT evasion).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A group of Icklesham councillors then consulted the Sussex Association of Local Councils (SALC). SALC say that their policy is not to give advice to individual councillors, only to councils (or clerks). They seem to have made an exception on this occasion. SALC have refused to answer further questions on their role but we know that they consulted their solicitors, Hedleys, a firm specialising in local authority law. Hedleys deny advising the council to sue for defamation but they did draft a letter for the council to send out which makes this threat. SALC did not spot Hedley’s error.

The proposal to sue the Winchelsea website was then placed, as a “confidential” item, on the agenda of the August 2009 council meeting. August council meetings are supposed to be only for the signing of cheques. Why could the council not wait until September? Was it because Winchelsea councillors had indicated that they might not be able to attend the August meeting? And then there was the agenda item. This was vague and made no mention of the proposal to sue. The resolution was tabled at the meeting. There can be no doubt that the intention was to keep Winchelsea councillors in the dark. So, when other councillors discovered that we had learned of the secret proposal, they openly protested that we should have been allowed to prepare ourselves for the discussion!

After an acrimonious debate, during which it became apparent that whatever legal advice had been received by certain councillors had been incomplete and not well understood, the council decided to delegate decisions to sue for defamation to two councillors and the clerk. The proposed delegation of powers (not to mention the vagueness of the agenda) was probably illegal. Given that a decision to sue could cost the council many thousands of pounds, it was certainly highly imprudent.

So, here we are, two years on. The text which so upset some members of Icklesham Parish Council, and which snowballed into the Standards Committee fiasco which has just ended, is still on the Winchelsea website. This includes the reference to the often “dysfunctional behaviour” of Icklesham Parish Council. Who can argue with that now?

Related topics:Observer