Cheshire East Council’s deputy leader is being stalked and some councillors don’t feel safe in their own homes because of abuse and harassment from the public, writes Belinda Ryan.
The problem has increased to such an extent, the council set up a task and finish group to look into the issue.
And next month it plans to meet with police bosses, the commissioner and the Crown Prosecution Service to discuss the situation.
It comes after a survey of Cheshire East councillors revealed shocking levels of abuse and intimidation.
Cllr Fiona Wilson (Macclesfield, Lab), who is chairing the group, told the corporate policy committee 62% of councillors who responded had experienced in-person harassment and 26% had had members of the public turn up at their homes.
“35% of all councillors who responded had considered leaving their role as a councillor because of intimidation and abuse.
“And 43% of respondents felt that the volume of abuse, intimidation, harassment has increased.
“Now this isn’t just about debate on social media, although some commentators seem to have no bar to their behaviour so it does form part of the overall procedure.
“But from the statistics I’ve given you, this is a shocking situation of councillors, some of whom feel unsafe in their own homes.”
Cllr Wilson said action needed to be taken to protect the health and wellbeing of councillors.
“his level of abuse, harassment and intimidation is not acceptable, and I think it’s very important that it isn’t portrayed or seen elsewhere, as simply being councillors who can’t hack it or feel that they don’t like being challenged on their decisions.
“That is not what this is about.”
Deputy leader Michael Gorman (Wilmslow, Ind) said such behaviour was threatening democracy itself.
“I’m quite prepared to say that I’ve had quite a lot of harassment, I’ve got two stalkers,” he told the meeting.
“This is a real problem for councillors across council, regardless of political affiliation.
“And how do we expect people to come forward and stand for election when they hear the kind of narrative and this kind of discourse? It’s very, very worrying…
“We have to listen to this committee’s working group.
“There are implications here for our security, and we need to think about that.”
The deputy leader added: “It’s really important that we reassure the public that we will protect local democracy and we will protect local government.
“And this is a real challenge to those people who just peddle misinformation, they peddle disinformation, and they try, at all points, in the press and in social media, to undermine trust in local democracy and local government.”
Take one look at the comments and you see the problem.
Nobody is arguing they have done a great job, but at the same time, no real solutions from the armchair pundits.
It’s absolutely dreadful that members of society think this behaviour is acceptable. You have a democratic right. If you don’t like it, vote for a different councillor. If enough people agree with you, you will get the change you want.
Reading this article and commenting ‘you can’t blame people’ or ‘not too much sympathy’. You really need to get a sense of perspective and grip of reality. These sorts of comments make it seem okay to those that do take it too far.
They are a bunch of incompetent people spending our money without any thought of balancing the books, or what might be useful to the people of Cheshire East. Oh, and by the way your garbage won’t be collected next year for 3 weeks. It is totally wrong they al need sacking, replace them with chimps at Chester Zoo, they would do a better job.
Whilst nobody would condone harassment or intimidating behaviour of any sort, CEC Councillors have nobody else to blame but themselves for the feelings of frustration and anger towards them from residents. Years of budget mismanagement and misallocation of public funds, combined with six figure salaries have resulted in a huge deficit with zero accountability.
As opposed to taking responsibility and looking at themselves, perhaps even streamlining the organisation by getting rid of the endless layers of bureaucracy, the easiest way to resolve the issues is charge everyone
an additional 5%. What does my £2300.27 get me? The occasional pot hole filled and my green bin emptied fortnightly…oh wait! At least you can get through to someone when you call…not that either!
Not sure there will be too much sympathy. Maybe they could’ve spent £22,000 of taxpayers money on security instead of dishwashers!
The decision to spend millions on a multi story car park in the centre of Crewe is staggering.