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?

Are the Standards Committees for elected officials no longer in place? I was an Independent member on my local council one for several years. This type of behaviour would be covered under a Code of Conduct and the monitoring officer at the council would be responsible. It covers elected parish councils as well as district, borough and of course MPs.

spongedog
Eric Pickles abolished the Standards board when he abolished the Audit Commission

The Standards Board was abolished but each council must have a code of conduct & method of receiving & investigating reports of breach of code of conduct.
See my post on p2 saying monitoring officer cannot ignore this for link.

OP I forgot you have a right to film public meeting. I have been at meetings where a member of the public has done this.

Explanation from random council.
rosedale.ryedaleconnect.org.uk/parish-council/policies/policy-on-filming-of-parish-council-meetings/

@cantfindname
PCs make planning decisions at the lowest level.
They really don't. I'm.on the parish council of my village. All we can do is make comments/recommendations which really don't count for much with the DC.

OP in our parish council meetings if a councillor has an interest in a matter they are asked to leave the room whilst the matter is discussed. That should be the case for all parish councils. If that hasn't happened in your case then you can raise that with the ombudsman.

I was going to say about the filming. Our local council has had people arrested and all sorts. For years members of the public complained and nothing happened. Then someone started filming and they’ve had to tone it down a lot. They put the videos on the internet. Obviously you don’t want to do that if they mention you, but it’s good as evidence. Are they really going to talk about you meeting after meeting with you sat there filming them?

Ombudsman does not cover parish councils.

Code of conduct enforcement depends on the willingness of any individual very overstretched monitoring officer at the district council

Its all a bit of a shambles really