Chegwyn v Standards Board for England
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE COLLINS |
| Judgment Date | 15 February 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWHC 471 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | C0/8132/2009 |
| Date | 15 February 2010 |
[2010] EWHC 471 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Before: Mr Justice Collins
C0/8132/2009
MR LOFTHOUSE appeared on behalf of the Claimant
MISS WARD appeared on behalf of the Defendant
: This is an appeal pursuant to section 78B(4) of the Local Government Act 2000 against a decision of a Case Tribunal of the Adjudication Panel for England, which decided to disqualify the appellant from being a councillor or becoming a councillor in any authority for a period of two years commencing on 6 July 2009. In fact the disqualification was suspended on 29 July so he has served just over three weeks of that disqualification, and if this appeal is dismissed the balance of the disqualification will have to be served from today.
The appellant accepted that he had breached the code of conduct or one of the relevant paragraphs of the code of conduct alleged against him, so the hearing before the Tribunal was limited to the appropriate sanction which should be imposed. The appellant had had an interview, as is normal practice, with a representative of the ethical standards officer and had given his explanation for the breaches which were alleged against him. He was represented by counsel, Mr Lofthouse, who has appeared for him before me, when he appeared before the Tribunal.
Accordingly the crucial issue was in effect a decision upon his culpability in the breaches that were admitted. It is not necessary, I think, to go into great detail as far as the facts are concerned. The appellant has a great interest in live music concerts and has organised over a period of some years such concerts, I gather they are folk music concerts, in various places within the county of Hampshire. He is a councillor both in Hampshire County Council and in the Gosport Borough Council.
In 2008 he decided that it would be a good idea to hold one of these concerts in the area of Gosport. He had held, the year before I think, one of them at a site in Wycombe, but that had for various reasons proved to have some unsatisfactory elements. There was, in his view, a site which would be ideal in Gosport. He appreciated that as a member of Gosport Council he would have to negotiate with the council at arm's length and take care not to misuse his position as councillor in order to achieve the licences necessary to enable such a concert to be held. I call it a concert, I think what it was in fact described as was a festival. It perhaps makes little difference.
The first step was to apply to the council to approve the carrying on of the festival at the site in question, and this was done in February 2008. For various reasons into which I do not think it is it is necessary to go the decision was made at an extraordinary meeting of the relevant committee. There was nothing done by Mr Chegwyn which was wrong or which achieved that to his benefit, that was simply the way it was decided the matter should be dealt with, and it was a perfectly proper way for it to be done at the time.
An important issue was the amount of money that would be required up front, as it were, as a guarantee for the council, and indeed a payment to the council for agreeing to provide a licence for the site. The sum which was suggested by the officers was not the sum put forward by the appellant specifically. It was £5,000. On that basis the venue was agreed. The next step necessary was to obtain a licence to enable intoxicating liquor among other things to be sold on the site, as I understand it. In due course an application was made for that and it was granted, again by a committee; there was no decision made by or put to the full council.
It is important to note that there was objection by people to the holding of a festival on the site. There were a number of local objectors. Whether they could be pejoratively described as NIMBYs or otherwise is not perhaps the point. The point is that there was a relatively strong feeling in some quarters that this was not an appropriate site for the holding of such a festival.
It seems, too, that there was a political element entered into, possibly as a result of personal animosity between Mr Chegwyn, who was, I am not sure the leader of, but certainly high up in the Liberal Democrats, who were then in control of the council, and the conservatives, whose leader was Mr Hook. It is perfectly clear from what has transpired since that Mr Hook and Mr Chegwyn did not seem to be enamoured in any way with each other. Some three weeks or so before the festival was to take place a motion was put before the council whose purpose appeared to be to stop the festival, by this time of course a considerable number of tickets had been sold, and no doubt the acts, if that is the right word, had been booked to perform at the site, and more importantly from Mr Chegwyn's point of view local businesses had invested money in taking up the opportunity to have sites at the festival.
The manner in which Mr Chegwyn was dealing with the festival was through a company of which he was the sole director, called Wycombe Festivals Limited. The company was funded through the sale of the tickets. The total sum it was expected that the festival would cost was in the order of £270,000. I gather that in fact the festival made a loss in due course, although I do not have any information as to the precise extent of that loss. The important thing from Mr Chegwyn's point of view was that he said he stood neither to gain or lose personally, and as far as the company was concerned, although on paper it may be that it would come out of the matter with a debt if it did not at least break even, that was in reality not a true picture because it was commonplace in running these festivals that gains and losses would be offset against each other from year to year so that in due course he was not concerned that the company would suffer financially if it was decided even at such a late stage that the festival should not go ahead. That was his contention, and that is what he told the investigating officer, and he invited the officer to inspect the accounts of the company. Whether or not that is something which in the end was to be accepted would be a matter for the Tribunal, no doubt, to decide.
As far as the ESO is concerned, she took the view, understandably, that the company certainly would have a clear financial involvement inasmuch as if the festival had to be abandoned because of what the council decided at the relevant meeting then at the very least the company's standing would be compromised, confidence in it would be reduced and there was a reality of a degree of financial embarrassment, for want of a better word, as a result of the decision, and that Mr Chegwyn ought clearly to have appreciated. That certainly was the view taken, and as I say a perfectly reasonable view from the point of view of the ESO. The question of whether that was a proper view was one to be determined having heard all the explanations and if necessary the evidence by the Tribunal in due course. The point is made that Mr Chegwyn did declare a personal and prejudicial interest, which is what this is all about, in the obtaining of the licence, but did not do that when it came to the meeting of the full council. There were in fact three motions before the council, two procedural and those procedural motions were required to enable the substantive matters to be discussed. In fact the first motion, one of the procedural ones, was defeated by one vote, and thus the merits of the substantive matters were not in the end dealt with. It was his conduct in failing to declare that personal and prejudicial interest and remaining speaking and voting which was said to be, and indeed he now accepts was a clear breach of the relevant paragraphs of the code of conduct.
There is a slight degree of artificiality here because although he did not formally declare it, it must have been apparent to everyone that he had a personal interest because after all it was his application that was referred to in the motion, not the company's application, but his. The crucial question, really, was whether he ought to have left the chamber and taken no part in the decision making process. He took the view that notwithstanding that he had accepted in the licencing applications that he did have a prejudicial interest and therefore recused himself, as far as these proceedings were concerned he was of the view that the public and in particular the businesses would suffer if the council at that late stage changed its mind about agreeing to the festival taking place or imposed higher restrictions. That is important, because one of the matters that it turned out that Councillor Hook, who was behind the motion, had intended to put forward was a suggestion that £30,000 instead of £5,000 should be the appropriate payment for use of the site, but he did not tell Mr Chegwyn that that was what he proposed. Indeed Mr Chegwyn says, and there is no evidence to contradict this, that he did not know what those behind the motion had intended to suggest should be done. He said that he felt it was political and that he really was not particularly concerned about the overall result as far as he and the company were concerned, but as I have said his real concern was the damage to the local businesses and for the ticket holders who were expecting to come to the festival in a couple of weeks time. It was for that reason that he...
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Patrick Heesom v The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales The Welsh Ministers (Interveners)
...weight to be given to it as a factor) is a matter – just one of many – for the case tribunal to consider (see Chegwyn v Ethical Standards Officer of the Standards Board of England [2010] EWHC 471 at [37] per Collins J). It may attract little weight if it is unclear that the electorate was a......