Councillors call for tougher consequences on conduct breaches

Oldham’s town hall has called for a tighter crackdown on ‘badly behaved’ councillors.

A number of elected representatives want to introduce tougher consequences for those who break the council’s code of conduct. 

Councillors Holly Harrison and Graham Shuttleworth want to ‘restore faith in democracy’ by introducing harsher punishments on bullying and other toxic behaviour at local authorities.

The call comes after the townhall was found to have one of the highest numbers of standards complaints of any other Greater Manchester council – with a total of 22 ongoing investigations conducted during 2025. 

In a recently concluded case, Councillor Mark Kenyon was told to apologise after a £10k investigation found him in breach of Oldham’s code of conduct for ‘spying’ on a meeting between councillors and officers.

CCTV showed the councillor placing a device outside the door of the town hall leader, then walking forwards and appearing to listen to something on his phone in the middle of the corridor. 

The footage was shown as part of a special meeting, in which other councillors determined his punishment.

It was deemed by majority vote that councillor Kenyon had ‘suffered enough’ after losing out on an opportunity to run for MP during the general election and no further action was needed. 

But some council sources made it clear they believed the process of ‘councillors making decisions on councillor conduct is like marking your own homework’. 

At the time of the decision, Labour councillor Umar Nasheen, who argued for harsher sanctions, told the LDRS: “There is no question that Coun Kenyon brought the Council into disrepute, but in trying to legitimise and excuse these actions some members of the sub-committee have done the people of Oldham a disservice”. 

But a new government consultation could be leading to change.

Published last month, a special report by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government found that “The lack of meaningful sanctions, or the power to suspend elected members for serious code of conduct breaches, means local authorities have no effective way of dealing with more serious examples of member misconduct.”

It has proposed introducing tougher consequences including the power of suspensions of up to six months, withholding allowances, banning councillors from council facilities, and in extreme cases disqualification. 

Previously, the main sanctions available for councillors involved barring a member from their cabinet or committee duties or demanding an apology. 

Couns Harrison and Shuttleworth are raising a motion at a full council meeting on Wednesday, December 10, calling for the Chief Executive to lobby government to introduce the changes into legislation as quickly as possible, and prepare a standards committee for the potential shift.

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