Bromley Council This Week: Standards Committee, 1 Complaint

Bromley Council has one public meeting in the next seven days. The Standards Committee, which polices councillors’ conduct, meets on Wednesday 30 September at 7pm at Churchill Court, 2 Westmoreland Road. It is the committee’s first meeting since the May elections and its first since 1 July 2025 (agenda).

The meeting is short on paper. Six items, two of them substantive: the election of a vice-chairman and the Monitoring Officer’s general report. The report is where the news is.

One complaint in fourteen months, and no breach

The report, CSD26091, gives the anonymised summary of every complaint against a councillor received since the committee last met in July 2025 (Monitoring Officer’s general report). There is one.

• Received 22 July 2026. Alleged predetermination of a planning application, meaning a claim that a councillor had made their mind up before the decision.
• Considered with Independent Person Andrew Jackson and answered on 6 August 2026.
• Outcome: no breach of the code. The application in question “had to come forward to a committee for decision”.
• Follow-up: the complainant replied with further information and “a series of questions about the initial filtering exercise”.

The report also records that no dispensations have been granted to councillors since July 2025, and that there are no formal standards investigations outstanding.

Two Independent Persons have gone

Councils must appoint Independent Persons, members of the public who are consulted before a complaint against a councillor is decided. Bromley resolved to have four. Two of them, Jonathan Farrell and Kath Nicholson, have reached the end of their terms and chose not to seek an extension. The committee is asked to thank them formally, and the council will recruit two replacements. The remaining Independent Persons get refresher training from the Monitoring Officer after the meeting closes.

The suspension powers on the way

The longest section of the report is a briefing on the government’s plan to rebuild the councillor standards regime, published in November 2025 in response to a consultation that closed in February 2025. The report lists the measures the government intends to legislate for:

• a mandatory minimum code of conduct for every council
• a power to suspend a councillor for up to six months for serious misconduct, the first such power since 2012
• discretion for standards committees to withhold allowances from suspended members
• interim suspensions, initially of three months, for members facing serious external investigations such as criminal charges
• automatic disqualification for anyone suspended for the maximum period twice in five years
• compulsory standards committees at every principal council
• a local right of review and a new national appeals function
• mandatory support for both complainants and the councillors complained about

The report says Bromley “had already implemented versions of the last three recommendations” before the government published its response. The rest need primary legislation, which the government says it will bring forward “as soon as parliamentary time allows”. None of it changes what the committee can do on Wednesday.

There is one other recent record on the Monitoring Officer’s work. In August the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman declined to investigate a resident’s complaint that the council had not answered governance concerns sent to the Monitoring Officer, and had not properly handled a later corporate complaint. The Ombudsman found the council had responded in September 2025, explaining it did not regard the matters as a corporate governance issue, and said any injustice was “not significant enough to justify our involvement” (decision 25 024 729).

How to attend

The meeting is open to the public at Churchill Court, 2 Westmoreland Road, Bromley BR1 1AS, from 7pm. Public questions had to be submitted in writing ten working days in advance, and questions seeking clarification of a report by 5pm on 24 September, so that route has closed. The agenda, the report pack and, afterwards, the minutes are on the council’s meetings site. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is 9 March 2027.

Coming up: the next fortnight

After Wednesday the calendar fills again. These meetings are published in the council’s diary; their agendas appear in the week before each one (October calendar).

The full Council on 12 October is the one to watch. Two special meetings are booked five minutes apart before it; what they are for will be in the papers, due around 5 October. The Executive next meets on 28 October.

What it means for you

If you want to complain about a councillor, the route is the Monitoring Officer, and the outcome of the initial filtering is decided with an Independent Person, as Wednesday’s report shows. The council’s standards of conduct pages set out the code and the form.

If you want to speak at a meeting, the Standards agenda cites the constitution’s rule that public questions must be received ten working days before the meeting. If the same count applies to the full Council on 12 October, the deadline is Monday 28 September; the council’s question time page has the rules for each committee.

If you are following a planning application, Plans Sub-Committee No. 1 on 8 October is the first planning committee of the month. Our planning this week round-up lists what was registered this week and when comments close.

Sources

• Bromley Council: Standards Committee, 30 September 2026, agenda
• Bromley Council: Monitoring Officer’s General Report, CSD26091, 30 September 2026 (dispensations, complaints summary at Appendix C, Independent Persons, the government’s standards reforms, next meeting 9 March 2027)
• Bromley Council: September 2026 meetings calendar and October 2026 meetings calendar
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, decision 25 024 729, London Borough of Bromley, closed after initial enquiries, 4 August 2026