How Do Councillors Get Away With It? Asks An Independent Councillor

Independent Councillor
Tony Capozzoli

Supporters of Somerset Independents will be aware of our long-running campaign on councillors not paying their council tax, led by Leader of Somerset Independents Andrew Pope.

The campaign is to expose councillors who persistently failed to pay their council tax - not for one or two months but for many months and in some cases over years.

As we have made clear before, councillors are not just private individuals while they hold elected office. 

Private individuals are entitled to their council tax being a private matter. We do not pursue private individuals - in fact, we help residents when they are having difficulties.

But when they are councillors, they are no longer just private individuals. They are public officials that have been elected. This is not just our opinion, this is the legal state of affairs. How do we know? Because we have checked key cases such as the Bolton Council case that we have reported on before.

Somerset Independents is a group of volunteers. But we are professional in our approach. So we check.

We were contacted recently by Independent Councillor Tony Capozzoli. Councillor Capozzoli represents the Northstone, Ivelchester and St Michael's ward on South Somerset District Council (SSDC).

The discussion ranged over a number of topics, as we have been in touch with Tony since the beginning of Somerset Independents in 2020.

Those topics included the ongoing controversy, as broken by "The Leveller" which is continuing its investigation, regarding the departed senior council officer Clare Pestell from SSDC, and the threats of legal action by former Conservative Councillor Linda Vijeh.

During a vote of no confidence in the Leader of SSDC, Lib Dem Val Keitch, Ms Vijeh received public spoken attacks from councillors during the recent Full Council meeting, with Ms Vijeh not being given the opportunity to respond in public. So we offered Ms Vijeh the right of reply.

We understand that Ms Vijeh has requested that those councillors apologise in public during a future council meeting.

We await those apologies.

Another topic discussed with Cllr Capozzoli was our council tax campaign. When Andrew Pope explained the detail, Councillor Capozzoli was astonished. Tony said:

"How can a councillor get around not paying council tax? If there is a loophole, the public would like to know about it."

Quite.

But it seems that councillors get special treatment by council officers. Despite being elected officials, their names were protected from being exposed to the public by SSDC. And this was for months, until we took the issue to the Information Commissioner's Office.

As we've reported already, Somerset County Council did not bother to check. They just passed the buck to the district councils and relied on councillors being honest to declare any arrears.

This can allow councillors to get away with wrongdoing. Not just wrongdoing, but criminal offences.

And locally only The Leveller reported on these councillors' wrongdoing and Private Eye nationally reported on our investigation. 

Every other local news outlet did not report on it, although we contacted them with the evidence, more than once. This includes:

• West Country Bylines (a.k.a. Voices)
• SomersetLive and Local Democracy Reporter attached to SomersetLive Daniel Mumby
• Somerset County Gazette
• BBC Radio Somerset
• BBC West
• ITV West Country
  

We cannot tell them what to report. We do not try to tell them what to report. 

But this issue is definitely in the public interest, about public officials paid by public funds to account for public funds. 

These "news outlets" do report on plenty of trivial matters and many that are not in the public interest. But it seems they do not report on councillors who persistently fail to pay their council tax in their own councils.

So this is how councillors get away with it... The local media do not report on councillors' persistent and serious wrongdoing, and council officers are in the wrong too.

In the cases of Neil Bloomfield and Green Mendip Councillor Francis Hayden, we believe that criminal offences were committed, and we have given the evidence to the councils. This was evidence that we had to extract from those councils in the first place! 

We asked Somerset County Council and Mendip District Council to report these councillors to the Police. As far as we are aware, they have not reported Cllr Bloomfield or Cllr Hayden to the Police.

None of the councillors caught by our campaign have been elected to the New Somerset Council, apart from Conservative Sue Osborne. She got elected despite her council tax arrears - perhaps the media blackout allowed her to get away with it? 

We have taken this back to her Group Leader at SSDC, Martin Wale, who in January 2022 told us he was satisfied the matter was closed.

But what is more important than his opinion? Are the public satisfied?

No, they are not. Residents from several parts of Somerset have told us that this is a resigning matter.

We have asked Cllr Capozzoli to take the matter to the SSDC Standards Committee.

So in answer to Cllr Capozzoli's question "How Do Councillors Get Away With It?"... 

This is how councillors get away with it:

• council officers don't respond to questions from the public for months, despite law requiring a response in 20 days
  
• council officers cover up the names of councillors for months until forced by contact with the Regulator, 
• council officers fail to report to Police and 
• local media do not report wrongdoing that is in the public interest over public matters, despite being given the evidence.

Somerset needs better local media, better local councillors and better council officers.

Instead, we have a New Somerset Council with some of the bad officers, bad councillors and bad debts created by the same bad people in a corrupt network of cronyism and incompetence.