THE current story about the standards of our district councillors seems to have grown out of all proportion.

For those that have been following this strange saga – I expect most people are not interested – the tortuous trail appears to be this:

In 2016 one Conservative councillor complained about the bullying behaviour of another Conservative councillor and it was decided that the appropriate body to deal with this was the district council’s own standards committee.

As an internal Tory spat, why it wasn’t dealt with by the local Tory Party seems very strange.

At a subsequent standards committee meeting a “pink paper”, meaning that anything discussed is not for public publication and that no-one other than duly appointed councillors and relevant officers of the council should be present, was issued with regard to the complaint.

Judging by a subsequent report in the local press it was fairly clear that procedure with regard to the pink paper was not followed properly.

The officers decided to pursue the matter by insisting on full extra training for all councillors despite the fact only 10 of them sit on the committee out of 48 elected members.

I would suggest that the breach with regard to the pink paper could have been dealt with by writing to relevant councillors as follows: “Members are reminded that the content of “pink papers” should not be revealed outside the committee meeting”

One further quirk appears to be that a sub-committee of the full council has taken matters into their own hands by demanding extra standards training for members.

At no time has the full council passed a resolution making extra training for councillors compulsory.

When elected all members receive induction training and a manual which includes details on how the officers would like members to behave.

However, there is no lawful statutory regulation which forces elected members to undergo standards training.

– Colin Guyton, Ruardean.