I began writing the column on Monday. By Tuesday evening it was quickly overtaken by events and I have made a few adjustments in light of events at Bournemouth’s town hall.

I’ll come to that in a minute. But first, it’s election time. We have the little matter of the national contest on June 8.

Before that next Thursday voters in ‘rural’ Dorset go to the polls to elect representatives to the county council for what could the last time. There are no elections in Bournemouth and Poole.

If all goes to plan, in two years, Dorset County Council will no longer exist.

It will be abolished to re-emerge as part of what local government types like to call a ‘single tier, all purpose authority.’

To recap, under the Future Dorset proposal currently sitting on Sajid Javid’s desk at the Department for Communities and Local Government, there’ll be one council in the conurbation (Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch - although not if Christchurch can help it) and one in the rest of the county.

I have a bit of soft spot for Dorset County Council, having been a member of this august institution decades ago soon after leaving university.

Those of you voting on Thursday in Christchurch, East Dorset, Purbeck, North Dorset and the west of the county will have various motivations for casting a ballot. Party loyalty, quality of candidate, local issues, national issues.

But it might be useful to reflect briefly on what we should expect from our elected representatives. And there’s no better guide to that than each council’s Code of Conduct.

Every council has a duty under the Localism Act 2011 to promote and maintain high standards by its members.

The code must be consistent with a number of principles of service in public life. These are

Selflessness

Honestly and Integrity

Objectivity

Accountability

Openness

Leadership

In addition, personal judgment, respect for others, a duty to uphold the law and stewardship must also be taken into account. You may not always be able to judge how your representatives measure up against these benchmarks but there are some instances where you may think they do not.

Which brings me to the latest developments at Bournemouth where the unfailingly courteous leader, Cllr John Beesley, has a little local difficulty over just such a matter.

The issues have been well documented by this newspaper in recent weeks - purely on the basis that this our job and not because we have any other agenda. Supporters of Cllr Beesley suggest the Echo has been out to wreck the merger process by any means possible and that the council leader has been collateral damage.

Clearly this is nonsense. We have one agenda and that is to hold those in power to account and to do our best to assist with rather important issues like openness and transparency.

The fact that ten of his own Conservative councillors (others may be waiting in the wings) have now filed a formal complaint under the Code of Conduct should put the lie to this suggestion.

The inquiry process will take its course, but one thing is already perfectly obvious. This cannot be carried out internally. Cllr Beesley is a powerful figure and has already stated that he has taken advice from the council’s monitoring officer, Tanya Coulter over what he does and does not have to declare regarding his business activities. If the inquiry stayed in-house, Mrs Coulter would oversee the process. This is clearly unacceptable. An independent outside body must be a red line. Bournemouth Borough Council is simply not open and transparent enough. Its leadership is too secretive. The windows need to be thrown wide open and the disinfectant of sunlight allowed to shine into every corner.