We asked David Pugh for his comment on the Rumour piece that we put out about pressure being put on Cllr Vanessa Churchman to resign her chairmanship of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee yesterday.

He very quickly sent us the email that he’d sent to Cllr Churchman. (We were tied up with the live coverage of the East Cowes Waitrose planning application, so weren’t able to put it up.)

Looks like the rumour we had heard was correct.

The email confirms that Cllr Pugh has asked her to consider her position as chair.

Full details below.

Dear Vanessa

I have now received a copy of the Notice of Decision from the Adjudication Panel hearing last week.

Having read this Notice, and considered the seriousness of the issues raised, I feel that it would be appropriate for you to consider whether you should continue as Chairman of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

The Adjudication Panel found that you breached the Code of Conduct by failing to declare a prejudicial interest, and that by seeking to influence the Committee’s decision your behaviour was improper. Furthermore they found that the Council’s reputation had been affected, and that you brought the local authority into disrepute by your actions.

I was further concerned to read in the Notice of Decision that you had “still not grasped the implications of the Code of Conduct” and throughout the hearing you maintained that you were “not in breach of the Code of Conduct despite clear evidence to the contrary”. I understand that you have been required to undertake training in the Code of Conduct as a result.

As the Overview & Scrutiny Committee is a key committee in which the public and fellow members must have confidence, I consider that it would be inappropriate for you to continue in the role of Chairman, following the seriousness of the judgements made by the Adjudication Panel, as I have outlined above. Furthermore, I do not believe that it would be appropriate for you to be considered for any such position of responsibility until such time as your Code of Conduct training had taken place, and until when an appropriate period of time has elapsed during which you had demonstrated that you had “grasped the implications of the Code of Conduct”.

I appreciate that you are unlikely to appreciate the content and tone of this email, and you are likely to disagree with much of what I have written, but I feel that I have a duty to respond to the decision of the Adjudication Panel and demonstrate how the Isle of Wight Council, under my leadership, takes seriously the issues that they raised. My primary concern is to ensure that the public can have confidence in the work of our Overview & Scrutiny Committee. I don’t believe that the public can have confidence in the work of this committee whilst it remains under your continued chairmanship at this time.

I would therefore like to formally request that you resign as Chairman of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee. I would be grateful if you could let me know of your intentions by tomorrow (Wednesday morning). The reason for this short timescale is that if you feel unable to resign, I will need to consider whether a motion is submitted to tomorrow evening’s Full Council meeting to remove you from this position, and I feel it would be appropriate to give all members some advance notice of such a motion being proposed (i.e. no later than tomorrow lunchtime). I hope that this course of action will not be necessary.

If you would like to discuss this, please let me know.

Kind regards

David

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