Freedom of Information request - Code of Conduct Investigations
Case reference FOI2025/00595
Received 5 August 2025
Published 22 August 2025
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting information on your council’s Code of Conduct investigations into councillors, for the financial years 2022/23, 2023/24, and 2024/25 (taking the financial year from 1 April to 31 March.)
1. Published Reports or Online Links Please provide the URLs or copies of any annual or quarterly reports published on your website that summarise Code of Conduct complaints, outcomes, and investigations for the above years. This may include Standards Committee reports, Monitoring Officer updates, or local governance summaries. (For this request, I am not interested in any Parish Council investigations / complaints).
2. Case-Level Investigation Data For each individual complaint that was formally investigated (not just referred or dismissed at initial filter stage), please provide this data in a spreadsheet or CSV, one row per case:
• Financial Year
• Investigator Type
• Total Cost of case (£)
• Hours Charged in the case
• Outcome Type
• Investigator Type should be one of:
-
Internal officer (e.g. MO/DMO)
-
Reciprocal arrangement with another Council o Independent freelancer
-
Specialist agency (e.g. Hoey Ainscough)
-
Law firm or solicitor (e.g. VWV, Wilkin Chapman Rollits, etc.)
-
Other (please specify)
• Outcome Codes Please include a basic outcome classification, such as:
-
no breach
-
informal resolution
-
breach found
-
referred to full Standards Committee, etc.
3. Nil responses
Please indicate if there is a nil response in any year, i.e. if there were no formal investigations.
4. Parishes or Town Councils – out of scope Details of Parish / Town Council complaints which are referred to a District / Borough Council Monitoring Officer are not requested as part of this Freedom of Information Act request.
Confidentiality
Please do not disclose personal names of members, complainants, officers or investigators. Simply code anonymised cases for analysis.
This request is designed to enable analysis of who performs Code of Conduct investigations in practice, when external expertise is used, and at what cost. If any part of this request exceeds cost limits, please advise how it could be refined and I’d be happy to refine the scope.
Response
1. Published Reports or Online Links
No information held
2. Case-Level Investigation Data request
See attached spreadsheet
Documents
This is South Derbyshire District Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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