To ask why my parish council can bully me for 2 years and get away with it?

[Pariahoftheparish]

Very, very long back story. We live in a small parish where everyone knows everyone's business. We are renovating an old rectory, which is grade 2 listed and there is a public footpath across our property from the main street to the church.
For the last 2 years we have been bullied by the parish council (pc). They have discussed our property in open meetings and have published defamatory comments in minutes online, giving our name or the property name. For example, they have claimed that we have vermin, have blocked the public footpath and have a collapsed drain. All of these allegations have been reported to the district and county councils, who have investigated and said it is all untrue. This is never reported back. There are many other examples. We have been mentioned in the minutes every 6 weeks for 18 months.
Our DD has been bullied on social media by village kids who have spoken about council complaints. She would not leave the house for several weeks and has struggled at school.
The councillors are encouraging their friends to attend meetings to complain about us.

We had a brief respite for 6 months when we were persuaded to withdraw a complaint to the ICO in return for them leaving us alone. However, they are now continuing their campaign by trying to restrict access to our property across parish land and they are encouraging other parish organisations to make their own complaints about us.

The ICO complaint has been submitted and the pc have been contacted by the ICO. The pc are now editing their minutes (not sure that's legal!) but the original documents are still online. The changes they have made still enable us to be identified.
We have made a formal complaint to the pc which was ignored. The Monitoring Officer at the district council has indicated that they only intervene if there is a problem with pecuniary interests, our MP didn't want to get involved and the police will only deal with harassment issues if it is a person, not an organisation.

Has anybody else had similar problems? Any advice?
So, AIBU to think that the parish council should not be able to get away with this behaviour?

@hippee parish councils don't make planning decisions. That's done at District Council level.

I don’t understand what the cause of the pc’s concern is?

public footpath:

• this comes under the auspices of the highways agency, not the pc.
• As I understand from what you’ve said, you haven’t tried to block or divert it, and the only contentious issue is that you’ve placed cctv there. Do you have adequate signage that alerts the public to it?

@EmmaGrundyForPM PCs make planning decisions at the lowest level. My son in law in a councillor with this specific purpose. Their decisions are far from final but their recommendations carry weight with the District Council.

OP you have my full sympathy. I moved here over 30 years ago and the first few years were pure hell for myself and my children as a neighbour who was also a PC made many many untrue allegations against us purely because she didn't want children living next to her (it's a 4 bed LA house so I don't know who she thought was going to be living there!) One small minded petty person in a position of 'power' can cause so much pain and distress as everything raised at a PC meeting is minuted and available for reading.

I would really suggest seeing if your local paper is interested in your story. It might not be what you want but it might shame those involved into behaving better and acting as their position dictates rather than bullying for the sake of it.

I feel so sorry for your daughter, I honestly do know how bad it can be when these things get out of hand.

As a side note: son in law became a PC after they helped him with his PP to build a bungalow. The Planning committee on the local council blocked him at every turn and lied and lied. They told him (in writing) at one stage that he had PP and then withdrew it ten days later saying they had 'made a mistake'! This went on for 7 years and no one outside the LA could understand. Even the Secretary of State granted permission, but the council still blocked it. Turned out that was all about what a PP said.. a friend of the planning inspector had a friend or relative who had tried to buy the same piece of land and had been beaten at auction by s-i-l. Disgusting behaviour and complete abuse of power.

Our family member had the exact same issue- a pc failed at bidding the highest amount for a piece of land, held a grudge for the next 15 years a d got all his mates at the pc etc to block every single planning application (which was the exact same pa HE'D wanted, but because he didn't win the land at auction he had a massive tantrum and the little power he had as a pc got used to it's full advantage).

@AquaFaba the CCTV isn't the issue with the pc - a neighbour has kicked off about it and made false allegations to the police but it is completely lawful. She doesn't like it that our cameras caught her damaging our car! The cameras only view our property, nobody else's. There are plenty of notices to put off those who are using it inappropriately.

@cantfindname I don't understand how this can keep happening to people and they get away with it. We have been told that the way to change things is to elect someone else. Most of our councillors were co-opted and nobody wants to work with them. This is not democracy.

Their decisions are far from final but their recommendations carry weight with the District Council.

They may carry weight if they are reasonable objections, a list of which can usually be found on your local council planning website.

Pariah even if co-opted, there are elections every so often ( think its 4 years from memory ), so someone else can stand against the co-opted councillors. It isn't a difficult process and there are only a few limitations as to who can stand.

CCTV is a non issue, a lot of people have them. Whether it's a RING doorbell or actual cameras.

I don't have any suggestion other then to continue to go through the complaint procedure with the Parish Council, the ICO and don't stand down again if they make false promises.

I would maybe give all the information to a solicitor and see whether there is legal action you can take with either the Parish council as a whole or on a individual level because of the their behaviour.

@frumpety there are only elections if there is a contest. If nobody else is willing to stand then the councillors remain in post. Nobody round here remembers when the last election was!

Ex Parish Councillor here.
If minutes on the website are marked as "draft" or have an indication they havent been signed off such as "version1" they can be amended. Amendments are usually due to something like a gramatical error or a spelling mistake.
Parish Councils can have an opinion about a planning application and object for whatever reason but this can and has been ignored by the people above. The PC dont have as much power as people think.
I might be wrong but it seems as though you are having more of a neighbour issue and theyre using the PC as some sort of leverage.

You have my full sympathy though, living in small village can be tough!

We had a problem with our previous neighbour, who converted old farm sheds into stables for two horses. These sheds were attached to my house. My neighbours owned all the surrounding land, with other barns and buildings which could have been converted easily into stables. No planning permission initially. I contacted everyone I possibly could to have this stopped, or at the very least done with consideration to our property, to no avail. Contacted PC, Local MP, DEFRA. Absolutely went round in circles and no outcome whatsoever went in our favour. Their late submission of plans eventually got passed with "conditions". My neighbours went with one of the Parish Councillors to NFU (National Farmers Union), as my neighbour was a contract farmer, NFU wrote a letter to the planning dept and got every one of the conditions revoked. Low and behold, not long after, my neighbour got Co-opted onto the Parish Council. He lied about so many things and no-one even questioned his lies. It cost us thousands of pounds off the value of our house when we sold it. I have absolutely no faith in Parish Councils (I'm obviously not the only one, as no members of the public ever turn up for their bi-monthly meetings, total no-confidence from most in the parish).

I think I've missed it. Why and when did the problems start?

If this is impacting your happiness and your DC, I don't understand why you're so resistant to moving tbh. imo life is too short to get into endless battles with your neighbours and the pc.

How would you like this to be resolved? Perhaps if we start there, we can work backwards and offer solutions.

@wonderwomansspin
We have asked them to do two things - (1) remove the defamatory information and our name/location from minutes and (2) leave us alone
They initially agreed to this in return for us withdrawing a subject access request and complaint to ICO. All that happened was that complaints were started by others such as the parochial church council and various friends of the councillors. The councillors have started discussing us in meetings again this month but in a less obvious way.
I agree with @Rustyigloo, it is the councillors themselves and the pc is just a vehicle for humiliating us publicly.

EmmaGrundyForPM - either this has changed, or they make the recommendation to the district level, because it was definitely the Parish Council causing the blockage. This was 15-20 year ago.

I know that it seems odd to people that we are not considering moving but there is a huge emotional investment in the property and we always intended it to be our forever home. Most of the village are lovely and we've been happy here for 18 years before this vendetta started. Also DP was diagnosed with a degenerative condition (before this abuse started) which is made worse by stress, so moving is not an option. The pc are aware of the impact on his health.

Parish Clerk of many years here...PC's do not have the power to make planning decisions, this is done by the local planning authority. A PC is a statutory consultee for all planning applications but other matters such as CLUED's, CLoPTs and NHs are all legal determinations only.
A planning authority has to male a decision within the legal framework as set down by the government and local planning policies. No matter what a PC might recommend about an application the PA has do make a decision purely according to the framework or else the applicant can appeal.
Legislation regarding planning consent is constantly changing depending on what legislation is passed by parliament.

Hippee No, PCs have never been able to determine planning applications, they can only make comments to the Local Planning Authority - usually a District Council, but depends on the set up and the type of application.
If hte planning application was being consistently turned down, it would suggest that the objections raised by the PC were valid, and the LPA would have refused pp regardless of their comments.

That's weird then - no idea what the PC had said to the planning department, because as soon as the ombudsman became involved it was solved.

Was just about to say, I work for a top tier council, and my understanding of planning is that PCs are consultees, whose comments will be considered, but they are not decision makers. The decision making rests right the relevant LPA.

OP, I feel for you - your situation sounds unbearable. My suggestion would be to engage a solicitor to write a strongly worded letter, and also to contact the LG ombudsman and see what advice they can offer. This PC sounds to be acting well outside of their scope, and also not to be performing within the relevant code of conduct. As a council officer there is no way we could behave in the way you have outlined, so I'm surprised that they are getting away with it TBH!

*rests with

Do you have a local weekly newspaper? I used to be a journalist for a local weekly many many moons ago and went along to all the parish council meetings. I loved a village scandal, especially one where the parish council were breaching all sorts of rules.

Got a few briefs about litter and dog shit as well of course!

Get legal help.

Our pc resorted to bully tactics when we dared to paint our fence white. Nowhere near to the level you’ve experienced but enough to get our backs up. One legal letter sorted everything. They quickly found another focus for their seemingly endless negativity.

Our parish Council are behaving in an appalling way lately, including falsifying minutes. It's all kicking off, so hopefully something will be done by someone.

I would recommend attending every single meeting. Refute or respond to all allegations. When the minutes are read from the last meeting raise merry hell if they don't reflect what was actually said. For instance if they include the allegations but not your response.

And speak to a solicitor.

Have you taken their refusal to complete the SAR further? It's not an option for them to just not bother responding.

Also they all have to fll in a "Declaration of Interest form" , for every meeting. And a annually a list of interests too.
These should be publically availablevia the Clerk.
I had to declare an interest and leave the room when the Brownies asked for some funds while it was discussed.

That might be quite useful in who they are connected to and who they aren't declaring they have a connection to. Strictly the PC is an election isn't it?
Election fraud?