The Council’s Standard Panel in Hove Town Hall on Thursday Dec 19th at 10am will be hearing of an allegation that a Councillor has failed to comply with the Code of Conduct for Members. All details have been restricted. The report of the Monitoring Officer has been circulated to Panel Members only.

The first main matter will then be to consider whether the item listed in Part Two of the agenda and decisions thereon should remain exempt from disclosure to the press and public. The reason stated for the restriction is that it involves information relating to individual(s).

It is possible, therefore, that the restricted could be lifted by the Panel immediately, all documents then be made available and the hearing could be started. A similar situation happened two years ago when Cllr Barnett was subjected to a hearing about handing directions travellers in her ward to go open spaces in wards with Green councillors.

This hearing is the postponed hearing of Nov. 28th. All those documents have already been published. It is assumed that the current hearing documents are the same as the previous documents. It is possible that the named complainant individuals have objected to their names being published and not being redacted from the documents.

The issue is whether or not Cllr Dawn Barnett had breached the council’s code of conduct by bringing her office into disrepute when she said that a drinks coaster in a press report about a golliwog was not racist.