Issue - meetings

To consider the report.

The Chairman opened this item by inviting Cllr Pipe to outline his position as the subject member of the complaint before the sub-committee.

Cllr Pipe explained that:

·         He had historically greeted Interviewee A using by mimicking their accent, and had done so for many years.

·         Interviewee A had never raised this as an issue with him, nor, to his knowledge, with the leader of the council, Interviewee A’s line manager or a superior officer about this.

·         He would not have carried on with this way of greeting them had he have known that it offended or belittled them and would have stopped immediately and apologised.

·         He was not a ‘nasty’ person, but as he had not been made aware of the situation believed that Interviewee A had taken the greetings in the spirit in which it was intended, which was to be jovial.

·         He had drafted an apology subsequent to the issue finally being raised with him, which was never sent to Interviewee, due to a miscommunication, which he subsequently read to the sub-committee.

He further added that there were other accusations in the report that he did not recognise, which he listed and stated that he would therefore not provide comment on them.

The Investigating Officer introduced her report which set out the nature of the complaint received, the process she followed when undertaking the investigation and set out her findings. She referred sub-committee members to the interviews that had been included in Appendix A to the report and the supporting information that had been included as Appendix B. 

In setting out her findings, she raised the following points:

·        Cllr Pipe mimicked the accent of Interviewee A at an internal officer team meeting in May 2023

·        At the meeting of the People and Health Scrutiny Committee held on 11 September 2023, he mocked Interviewee A, making a point of he was speaking in an English accent.

·        Cllr Pipe discussed where Interviewee A had parked their car and then jokingly gave the impression that he would steal their parking space.

·        Cllr Pipe didn’t dispute the findings of the above points and had drafted an apology, which was sent to the leader and deputy leader of the council, but this was not sent to Interviewee A or their line manager and therefore it was considered that an apology was not made.

·        Although not formally stated in the reason for Cllr Pipe’s resignation from the role of Lead Member for Education, the behaviour of Cllr Pipe at the internal officer Meeting was a significant factor in his resignation from this position.

·        Cllr Pipe’s comments and behaviour amounted to bullying and harassment as the actions were directed to one individual.

·        Although Cllr Pipe did not view his actions in this way, there was a perceived racist element to his actions.

·        There was one concern raised in the complaint where the Investigating Officer did not consider the evidence was conclusive, which related to the full council meeting in July 2023 and whether a briefcase  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7