'Scab-picking' report at 'toxic' council blasted

A report into the behaviour of councillors at a "toxic" council has been dismissed as a "scab-picking exercise".

Teignbridge District Council is understood to have spent about £45,000 on the review which it was told to carry out by auditors concerned at the impact poor relationships were having on the running of the authority.

In a meeting to discuss the report, a series of independent councillors described it as biased and "a spectacular exercise in petulance".

Members of the leading Liberal Democrat group said the report was completely independent and the council as a whole needed to move on.

The council commissioned the report after auditors Grant Thornton told members there had been persistent problems and the behaviour had been "totally unacceptable".

The council said it had allocated £45,000 for the review, but had not yet received a final invoice.

The report stated: "There was a consistent feeling among the majority of the councillors interviewed that, since 2019, the council had been a toxic environment for a number of years, and the "other side" was the one being obstructive and causing the problems."

In a discussion of the review at the council's annual meeting, independent councillor Liam Mullone said the report was a "£45,000 exercise in nonsense".

"It's a massive scab-picking exercise that is just going to bring everything back again," Mullone added.

The report's authors said they were told the election of councillors in 2019 from a newly-formed group - Newton Says No - brought a confrontational nature which "caused tension and brought a climate of defensiveness and mistrust".

But independent councillor Andrew MacGregor said the claim was "verifiably wrong" and problems had existed at the council before that point.

The report said people they interviewed also "felt that the approach of the Liberal Democrat leadership had contributed to the poor relationships among councillors" and had "refused to engage meaningfully with opposition groups".

Richard Keeling, the Lib Dem leader of the council, said: "We are taking on board the report and are listening and we accept the report - we're not going to throw it in a drawer and forget it."

Jackie Hook, a Lib Dem member, said the council "needs to move forward" and "concentrate on the last couple of years of Teignbridge" before the council is abolished under local government reorganisation.

The report, which was carried out by legal firm Wilkin Chapman Rollits, Hoey Ainscough Associates - which supports local government authorities, and Fortis Therapy and Training Ltd, made a series of recommendations about councillor behaviour and governance.

It said: "Overall, member conduct and member-officer relationships at the council continue to present challenges, although there are clear signs of improvement from a previous low point."

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