Row over BCP Council licensing committee vote on vice chair

After an argument, the vote was re-run with a Conservative councillor nominated, David Kelsey, who was elected.

Liberal Democrat Cllr David Brown, who lost 7-4, then declared that the vote had been illegal and said he would look at a legal challenge.

He said he spoiled his own voting paper in protest and said he would refuse to sit on any licensing committee in future until the decision was changed.

The contentious vote happened after the live internet feed of the meeting on September 15 was turned off.

The meeting went into confidential business after it had been running for just over an hour. Committee chair Cllr Judes Butt announced monitoring officer Susan Zeiss wanted to discuss “something of great importance” and instructed officers to stop the live stream.

Twenty minutes later the meeting resumed when Poole People member Mark Howell called for it to be deferred so Ms Zeiss could ask for a legal opinion about an appropriate way forward to elect a vice chair, given that several councillors had since left the meeting.

He said that he believed that there was a strong argument for Cllr Brown to take the vice chair’s position.

Cllr Brown, who represents Bearwood and Merley, revealed there had been a secret ballot with himself and Poole Local Group member Cllr Julie Bagwell, who was not at the meeting, put forward. Cllr Bagwell, a Hamworthy councillor, was successful by eight votes to six.

Cllr David Brown

Cllr Brown said: “Subsequent legal advice has advised that Cllr Bagwell was ineligible to be nominated.

“It was said during the closed session that advice had been sought at the time but that is not correct... no legal advice was sought but other members said ‘yes, that’s fine’ and we went ahead with the ballot.

“Myself and other members here were quite clear that Cllr Bagwell’s absence from the meeting and substitution meant that she was not eligible... the ballot was held, the vote was carried out,,, it’s now been proven that Cllr Bagwell was ineligible to be nominated and is, therefore, disqualified and I contend that we’ve already had an election for vice chair and I am, therefore, elected.

“We shouldn’t now be going back and re-run that item on the agenda. We’ve run that item, we’ve done the business and the legal advice is that she is not eligible, therefore we need to move on and finish the meeting.”

He later added: “It’s starting to get ridiculous that in this (Conservative) administration people still don’t know how to run a meeting properly according to the constitution and the law.”

Cllr David Kelsey described the incident as “a difficult situation” saying that none of the council officers present had raised an issue with the nomination and vote at the time. He suggested the item should be re-run.

Fellow Conservative Cllr Toby Johnson said: “Clearly we did it wrong. It was all in good faith, let’s re-run it and go from there.”

Committee chair Cllr Butt said she believed the best option was to re-run the ballot although was opposed by Cllr Brown, who said that in 15 years he had never come across a situation where decisions made were then re-run.

He said the original vote was valid and should not be re-run, claiming the mistake was the nomination of Cllr Bagwell was invalid.