VICTORY: Exposing Councillors' Council Tax Arrears - Our Campaign To Reveal Recalcitrant Councillors Who Hold Public Office

 

One of our Official emblems

 

Somerset Independents puts residents first. Since early 2021, we have been conducting investigations into councillors that have been in persistent arrears with their council tax.

We have covered the whole of the traditional County of Somerset, and investigated councillors at:

• Bath and North East Somerset Council which claimed that all councillors had paid up
  
• South Somerset District Council
• Mendip District Council
• Somerset West and Taunton District Council
• Sedgemoor District Council which claimed that all councillors had paid up
  
• Somerset County Council
• North Somerset Council
  

That is a lot of councillors - hundreds! 

The results of our investigations are on this website and this page will be updated with links to some of the articles, for your convenience. You can click the council names above.

The campaign has been successful and we are claiming a victory in the Somerset County Council area of the County, because almost all of those district and county councillors that we have exposed have either resigned, lost their seats or not stood in the 2022 elections, meaning that they will no longer be councillors when the district councils and county council are scrapped in 2023. 

All except one - Conservative Councillor Sue Osborne who has been elected to the County Council and will be part of the New Somerset Council. She persistently has failed to respond to our multiple attempts to get her to explain.

We are still battling with South Somerset District Council to get some of the information that we asked for over a year ago. Yes, they are still trying to cover up for their councillors, having kept their names secret until we forced them to expose the councillors.

Somerset Independents is grateful to the journalist who fought against Bolton Council when it tried to withhold the names of councillors in arrears in Bolton. Mr Haslam took it all the way to the Upper Tribunal, where Judge Kate Markus made a very important ruling that we have used to pressure those councils that did not want to follow the Nolan Principles of Public Life. It is a long ruling, but the most important part of it is paragraph 40. Judge Markus wrote in the Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber):

"40. But, in the case of a councillor, it is not only a private matter. A councillor is a public official with public responsibilities to which non-payment of council tax is directly and significantly relevant.  A number of specific features of this were advanced in submissions to the First-tier Tribunal.  In particular, section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 bars a councillor from voting on the Council’s budget if he or she has an outstanding council tax debt of over two months.  If a councillor is present at any meeting at which relevant matters are discussed, he or she must disclose that section 106 applies and may not vote.  Failure to comply is a criminal offence. Thus council tax default strikes at the heart of the performance of a councillor’s functions. It is evident that setting the council’s budget is one of the most important roles undertaken by councillors.  The loss of one vote could make a fundamental difference to the outcome. This adds a significant public dimension to the non-payment of council tax.  The very fact that Parliament has legislated in this way reflects the connection between non-payment and the councillor’s public functions.  Moreover, as the Commissioner observed in his decision notice, recent failure to pay council tax is likely to impact on public perceptions and confidence in a councillor as a public figure."

This ruling is key, but Haslam had to fight a long way to get there and it was done despite the Information Commissioner's Office, yes them, supporting Bolton Council to keep the names of councillors secret. 

We are standing on the shoulders of giants like Mr Haslam and Ms Markus, and those that helped them, and we are very grateful.

But we are not grateful to the so-called "media" that is supposed to cover Somerset. The only Somerset outlet that published our work was The Leveller. And the 60th Anniversary Edition of Private Eye nationally carried our work too, although the journalist that did the story, based on our work, got some facts wrong. We have asked him for an apology and we have asked Private Eye for a correction, as our name - not the journalists name - is on the story. Nevertheless, we are grateful that at least two organs carried this key story.

Every other media outlet in Somerset that we contacted refused to cover the story or did not respond to our media releases or other communications.

This raises serious questions about who decides what is in the public interest, and whether it should be private media organisations or the BBC, their editors and journalists, that decide what is or what is not, "a story".

We know that residents want to know about councillors who don't pay their council tax. It is so obviously a story of public interest. Our website stats prove it.

The investigation was done on a shoestring. We are volunteers that have determination, knowledge and the motivation to expose wrongdoing in the public interest.

So we published the results ourselves. That is the wonderful thing about the World Wide Web and community journalism.

Who Are Somerset Independents?

We are volunteers who work together to improve representation and to obtain the truth for Somerset residents, as we have done over councillors and their failures to pay their own council tax.

Join Somerset's own campaign group and political party to celebrate Somerset's past, protect Somerset's present and prepare Somerset for the future.

We can be contacted at the link here and via Twitter @SomerInds, via Facebook at the Somerset Independents page and via email at somerinds [at] gmail.com.