YouTube row councillor wins appeal (From The Argus)
Get involved: Send your news, views, pictures and video by texting SUPIC to 80360 or email us.
YouTube row councillor Jason Kitcat wins appeal
2:12pm Wednesday 3rd November 2010 in News By Tim Ridgway
UPDATE: A councillor has claimed “a victory for openness and democracy” after his suspension for uploading videos on to YouTube was overturned.
Brighton and Hove city councillor Jason Kitcat was ticked off by the local authority for uploading five clips of council meetings on to the internet site.
But at an independent hearing yesterday Coun Kitcat was cleared of breaching the members’ code of conduct and showing disrespect to fellow councillor Geoffrey Theobald.
This was despite council bosses spending thousands of pounds on a barrister for the appeal, who advertises his ability to “stick the boot in”.
Clip number five, which the Brighton and Hove City Council panel deemed disrespectful to Councillor Geoffrey Theobald
Speaking after the three-hour hearing, Coun Kitcat described the YouTube saga as a “personal attack” focused on “political point-scoring”.
He said: “This is a victory for openness and democracy for voters and councillors not just in this city but across the country.
“This complaint against me has been a massive waste of council resources and officer time but I am relieved at the result because I can now go on representing the people in my ward.”
The Green party councillor, who represents Regency ward, was threatened with suspension for up to six months in July after a hearing by the authority’s standards committee assessment panel.
It ruled Coun Kitcat had breached the code and suspended him from serving as a councillor until he had written to Coun Theobald to apologise.
Following an appeal, the Tribunals Service for Local Government Standards in England held a hearing yesterday at the Brighton Hilton Metropole.
Simon Bird QC, chairman of the panel, agreed with the local authority that Coun Kitcat was acting in an official capacity when uploading the clips.
However, he stated while the clips made a mockery of Coun Theobald, they did not treat him with disrespect.
The panel said Coun Kitcat was not “underhand in using council resources” and overruled his suspension.
Dr Michael Wilkinson, chairman of the council’s standards hearing panel, said: “I’m not disappointed as this was a new area, a largely untried area which could prove to be harmful to the democratic process.
“All we asked was for Councillor Kitcat was to apologise. We did not want to suspend him.”
While Coun Kitcat represented himself, the council hired Local Government expert Wayne Beglan to put its case forward.
The council rejected accusations Mr Beglan’s services would cost a “five-figure sum” as “wildly inaccurate”.
Last week Tory Local Government minister Eric Pickles branded the council’s decision to discipline Coun Kitcat as “petty, silly and pointless”.
Comments(12)
danielles
says...
2:36pm Wed 3 Nov 10
Perhaps some of this wasted money could have been used to keep Bright Start Nursery open, instead of hounding Cllr Kitcat with their 'Big Brother' tactics.
Morpheus
says...
5:50pm Wed 3 Nov 10
Christophe Hawtree
says...
8:47pm Wed 3 Nov 10
Cllr Kitcat was coolly cogent while the Council's "hotshot" lawyer, hired to attack Cllr Kitcat, was amazingly inept, all over the place, with scant grasp of the subject.
The lawyer was grilled for some while by the panel, and in the process the lawyer floundered all the more, even claiming that hits upon the Council website costs the Council money.
Although Cllr Geoffrey Theobald, in his absence, emerged as fairly dignified for distancing himself from his fellow Tories over this absurd case, the abiding fact is that as a whole the case shows up the Tories as out of touch. They seem to think that technology is something that will happen in the future; they do not grasp that is happening right now, and they are equally unaware that in a shifting city, it is likely they will lose seats at the May Election.
I am convinced that with the pervasive distrust of Cllrs Smith and Mears, combined with anxiety over the fate of the Lido, the long ward of Rottingdean Coastal is up for grabs: it is not a Tory stronghold. This planet has spun many times since then. And foolish challenges to a duel by Councillor Smith do not change that fact.
What puzzles me is why the local Standards board has for so long had upon it the "independent" fellow Wilkinson. To watch him today at the tribunal was to witness somebody incredibly edgy.
I suspect that he now knows that the local Standards panel was foolish to ignore the investigating officer's own take upon the situation and instead go for the cheap shot of trying to undermine Cllr Kitcat's position by making the Greens one vote fewer if Cllr Kitcat had to step down for six months.
All that is now left is for Mr Wilkinson to resign a position he has evidently held for far too long. He goes out under a shadow.
caeos
says...
9:01pm Wed 3 Nov 10
well done
Frank Booth
says...
8:14am Thu 4 Nov 10
I'm pleased for Cllr Kitkat but if the council was a bit more open in the first place. I know that the council purports to provide a webcast of its council proceeding but, in reality, they're impossible to access (I've just tried again and there's nothing there).
There's a clash here: the message from Tory central government is more openness, while the message from Brighton council is more secrecy. It's not a very inspiring message.
Andy R
says...
8:27am Thu 4 Nov 10
puddingandpi
says...
10:38am Thu 4 Nov 10
*And* it's cost a lot of cash - which some councillors seem to think comes out of a bottomless pot of money. They hired
These people get themselves voted in & then assume they're somehow different to the rest of us.
When you get voted in, do you get given a pill that turns you into a portly middle-class, middle-aged white person?
Fight Back
says...
11:00am Thu 4 Nov 10
I would suggest, come May, when you get a knock on the door from a Tory candidate asking for you vote you ask them how much this cost. When they refuse to answer or discuss it vote for someone else - anyone - just not the Tory. And that's coming from someone who voted Tory in the recent general election.
Note to Dawn Barnett - thanks to this you've lost my vote !!!!
Valerie Paynter
says...
11:36am Thu 4 Nov 10
Sadly not everyone can attend daytime meetings and so the postage-stamp, blurry-image, low-volume webcast online is all there is - apart from YouTube uploadings, of course.
Sadly, the loss of the Committee system has meant loss of opportunities to see Councillors calling each other to account - bigtime. That was done by Labour. The Coalition should now legislate the Committee system back into use!
Cllr Kitcat did Cllr Theobald a favour in my view. Since the You Tube uploadings (publicised by mention in council meetings by Cllr Theobald which is how I knew at all) the high-pitched voice, flailing arms and sullen refusal to answer questions have been replaced by a much better performance and respect towards questions from Cllr Theobald.
Cllr Kitcat is one of the most intelligent, obviously observant, diligently hard-working and worthwhile councillors this city is lucky to have got itself for Regency Ward. I base this judgment on the evidence of his contributions to council meetings I attend where he really shines.
He is young, energetic and a family man. He clearly puts in massive amounts of his time too for the £12,000 a year stipend cllrs get. Out in the real world, he is probably worth much more than that and I hope that it is worth his time to continue to serve as a BHCC councillor.
I'd like to see many more of the councillors' meeting performances on You Tube so the public can see how bad one or two of our councillors really are. Time wasters, doing absolutely no worthwhile work, just coasting on the backs of their Parties, occasionally grandstanding to make their presence felt and no better.
Nick Brighton
says...
11:57am Thu 4 Nov 10
Nigel Furness
says...
2:18pm Thu 4 Nov 10
Serenus Zeitblom says...
2:21pm Wed 3 Nov 10
Consider the facts. An opposition councillor puts public footage of a council meeting on You Tube. No manipulation, just an extract from the meeting. For this he is accused of "disrespect" and hounded through a disciplinary procedure which is operated by ... the ruling Tory party. Brighton Tories' actions are slammed by their own Local Government Secretary. But tens of thousands of pounds of our money is spent in the process, including the hiring of a hot-shot barrister. All for nothing. Cllr Kitcat is cleared of all wrongdoing, after months of grief for, yes, actually doing the job he was elected to do. Meanwhile the Council is making swingeing cuts to services for the most vulnerable.
So will Mears, Theobald, Watkins and Kemble now reimburse Brighton Council Tax payers for the cost of this farce?