Councillor standards - Freedom of information requests

Title or Description: Councillor standards
FOI Number: 202451
Date Received: 11/01/2024
Type of Request: FOI
Request or Question: 1. In the last 5 years how many complaints has your council received against members of the council?
2. Can you give the above figure broken down by year?

3. How many complaints were progressed to an investigation?

4. How many complaints led to some form of standards hearing?

5. In those cases that progressed to a standards hearing, what were the charges/allegations/complaints and how many of those were upheld/found to be proved against the councillor?

6. Where allegation were upheld/found to be proved, what sanctions, penalties or punishments were imposed?

7. Please can you break the answers to 3-6 down by year or give dates for the investigations and hearings?
Response: 1. In the last 5 years how many complaints has your council received against members of the council?
Scottish Borders Council advise that the figures we hold are below.
6 - 2020
4 – 2021
4 - 2022
7 - 2023
2 - 2024

2. Can you give the above figure broken down by year?
See figures above.

3. How many complaints were progressed to an investigation?
2022 – 3
2023 – 2

4. How many complaints led to some form of standards hearing?
As Q3

5. In those cases that progressed to a standards hearing, what were the charges/allegations/complaints and how many of those were upheld/found to be proved against the councillor?
1 found not to be a breach, all other cases ongoing.
Complaints were : 2 conflict of interest, 2 relating to section 7 of the code.

6. Where allegation were upheld/found to be proved, what sanctions, penalties or punishments were imposed?
N/A

7. Please can you break the answers to 3-6 down by year or give dates for the investigations and hearings?
N/A