To Councillor Clark, Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, from Councillor Wainwright:
“Would Councillor Clark please inform Members of the progress made by his Scrutiny Committee into the investigation of alleged bullying of Officers at Ryedale District Council?”
Minutes:
1. Councillor Wainwright submitted the following question:
To Councillor Clark, Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee:
“Would Councillor Clark please inform Members of the progress made by his Scrutiny Committee into the investigation of alleged bullying of Officers at Ryedale District Council?”
The Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Councillor Clark replied
“This question has caught me a little bit by surprise, I wasn't really expecting it. Well I am Chair very pleased that Councillor Wainwright is showing a continued interest in this subject, considering he had three opportunities to support it when his vote was required and he voted against looking into it on all three occasions. From that background to asking at every Council meeting what the progress is, I think it's commendable. The answer to his question specifically is that we have looked at it and can let him have the wording from the draft minutes this really brings you completely up to date – ‘That Members,’ and this is in relation to the staff survey, ‘continue the Scrutiny review into the staff survey results and that we will be continuing the progress from now on’.”
Councillor Wainwright asked the following supplementary question:
“Almost a year ago now this Council agreed to support this investigation with a sum of £10,000. We still don't know whether there was any bullying at this Council or whether there wasn't any bullying at this Council. Is it not time that we had a report that was available to us and that was available to all Members so that we can either reprimand those that have been proven guilty, if that's what we may do, or we can offer an unreserved apology to those if there wasn't any bullying proved at this Council? It seems very strange that 20 Members of this Council have no idea what's going on with your investigation, whereas your 10 Members of the Scrutiny Committee have had the report. Is the only way left for me now to make a Freedom of Information request to the Council to find out where you've got to so far?”
Councillor Clark replied:
“I wish this whole issue was as simple as you would like it to be. Let us look at the two possibilities. One - we have found bullying at Ryedale Council. I don't think that there's anything in the rule book that says what Members can do in the, what you were saying, reprimand the people so you're suggesting that Members go round reprimanding officers of the Council. Now I think that's a little bit outside the rules of local government, probably outside the Code of Conduct and probably totally inappropriate in every respect that we could have. Could amount to bullying? Yes I suppose that could take the thing round. So on that basis the Committee is at the stage of looking at. How we deal with it is just about as big a problem as finding out if we have and I would ask Councillor Wainwright to use his logic if we're looking into how to deal with the report - his question at last Full Council I said we were looking at the report and what action to take etc - if we were doing that it would seem likely that we've got something to look at. But then Councillor Wainwright's solution of reprimanding somebody, I don't think would work but I'm sure if you give him time Chair, Councillor Wainwright would be able to say how in HR terms, Code of Conduct terms, legal terms etc how we go out and reprimand those who might have done this. This is why Chair, 3 years ago, I raised this subject with the Chief Executive in private - 3 years plus. 2 years ago I started asking questions at Full Council and still got nowhere. If Councillor Wainwright had supported me at those points, we would have been at least a year, if not 2 years further down the track now and I would love to be in the position that he is wanting to be in terms of handling and I wish him luck. I don't like being threatened and I've no problem with him putting the Freedom of Information request as often and as frequently as he likes but it doesn't answer the question of how we deal with it and how we deal with it professionally. I hope that's probably a slightly fuller answer than Councillor Wainwright was expecting and if he has a further question to come I'd prefer for his sake, the Council's sake and for the 13 Members of Scrutiny that've seen it - the 3 that were on Scrutiny and now the 3 that are new onto Scrutiny and the 3 that are new onto Scrutiny have sort of blinked and gone "What?" and on that basis I'm more than happy with any suggestions that he has to make as to how we could speed things up and it has to be done without officers support, we've got an external he's right, it is a serious issue but please rather than saying we shouldn't be doing it, tell us how we should be doing it because I don't think you can go round reprimanding officers if that is what is required as simply and easy as that. I think you've got to decide how to handle it properly. Now that's making an assumption in that, that assumption may or may not be right.”