New Reform leader 'breached city council code'

A Reform UK councillor in Derbyshire breached a council's code of conduct after reading out extracts from a confidential report on social media, a hearing has found.

Alan Graves, the incoming leader of Derbyshire County Council, was found to have breached the code in his role at Derby City Council, where he represents Alvaston.

Graves said he had been dissatisfied with the outcome of the report, which originated from a dispute between him and another councillor.

The 62-year-old will face no sanctions for the breach.

Graves was elected this week to lead Derbyshire County Council's new Reform UK administration following the party's victory in the local elections.

He told the BBC after the meeting of Derby City Council's hearings panel sub-committee on Thursday evening, which found he had breached the code, that he had no regrets about his "deliberate" actions and the outcome had been "better than he was expecting".

"It's exposed the council for the fact that there's lots of injustices going on," he said.

Though the subject of the hearing itself was Graves' behaviour, the root of the issue related to the handling of a previous complaint about a Labour councillor following Graves's election as mayor of the city in May 2023.

Sarah Chambers, a Sinfin Labour councillor, said in a now-deleted social media post that Graves was a "racist, xenophobic, misogynistic mayor".

Graves claimed he had sought a direct apology from the councillor via council officers, but that it was not forthcoming.

Instead, Chambers apologised to the council more generally through the authority's monitoring officer, Emily Feenan.

The matter had been referred to the authority's standards committee after a complaint about Chambers' post by a member of the public.

The committee closed the matter after the apology to the council.

Graves, who was a member of the committee at the time and dissatisfied with the outcome, read out confidential extracts from the committee's report on a video he posted on social media.

In the video, posted in November 2023, Graves blasted the "injustice" and the lack of transparency surrounding how the matter was treated.

He acknowledged in the video the information he was sharing was "supposed to be hush hush", but said "instructing a councillor to apologise shouldn't be a difficult thing to achieve".

Emily Feenan said Graves had ignored her requests to take down the video, in which he also criticised her judgement.

He removed the video about three months later, by which time Feenan had already reported Graves for a potential breach of the council's code on disclosing confidential reports.

At the hearing she accused Graves of "disrespect" towards the council.

"The disclosure of confidential information is in my view a potentially very serious breach of the code," she said.

"This was deliberate and planned... a unique and serious breach that goes to the very nature of how as officers we share confidential information."

Simon Goacher, an independent lawyer tasked by the authority with investigating whether Graves had broken the rules, told the hearing it was "clear that he knew that the information he disclosed was confidential".

Conservative councillor Steve Hassall, who chaired the hearing, said Graves would not be sanctioned because "he was entitled to feel aggrieved by the original social media comments."

He did, however, recommend new procedures for handling future complaints.

Graves told the hearing that he had been "slandered".

"I have not been protected by this council," he said.

He will be formally signed off as Reform UK's leader of Derbyshire County Council at a meeting next week.

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