Part 1: Lyminge Parish Council: A Serving Councillor on Bullying, Clerk-Bashing and a Toxic Breakdown in Governance

As a parish councillor with no family ties to the current (on-maternity leave) Parish Clerk, I have watched the behaviour of some of my colleagues on Lyminge Parish Council deteriorate over the past year — and I am angry about it.

This isn’t about party politics or minor personality clashes. It’s about adults who were elected to serve three villages deciding that their grudges, egos and private power games matter more than basic standards of conduct and the boring, necessary business of running a lawful council.

The clerk isn’t the enemy – but you wouldn’t know it from the way some behave

Let me start with something unfashionable in Lyminge: defending the clerk who is on Maternity Leave.

She has spent the last year doing what any competent Proper Officer is supposed to do. She has tried to pull us into line with the law: reminding us that only the council as a corporate body can make decisions; that individual councillors cannot go off and instruct contractors; that public money must not be promised in casual conversations; that invoices need formal authorisation; that big-ticket items like grounds contracts and play parks require a paper trail and proper procurement.

In response, a small but noisy group of councillors has treated her like an uppity servant who doesn’t know her place.

I have sat in meetings and heard colleagues describe her as “power mad” and a “dictator”. I have watched them ignore clear advice about not freelancing with suppliers and then blame her when it all goes wrong. I have seen them dismiss her insistence on procedure as if it were a personal hobby, rather than a legal requirement that protects all of us – councillors, staff and residents alike.

Let’s be blunt: if we insist on acting like we still live in the age of handshakes and back-of-an-envelope deals, while the clerk is trying to operate in the age of audit trails, contracts and data protection, we are the problem, not her.

When “initiative” means trampling over governance

There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm. We all want people who are prepared to roll up their sleeves, chase up projects, talk to residents, get things done.

But in Lyminge, “taking the initiative” has become code for “doing whatever I like and daring anyone to stop me”.

We have had a councillor dealing directly with playground companies and talking about “steering” working groups toward a preferred supplier before the group has even properly met. We have had unilateral approaches to developers and the district council about street names, with decisions effectively pre-empted and other members left scrambling to catch up.

When challenged, the refrain is always the same: “I’m only trying to get things moving.” As if basic governance – the stuff that stops a parish council sliding into chaos or illegality – is some fussy obstruction rather than the foundation of what we do.

It’s nonsense. If you can’t cope with the idea that you are one vote on a corporate body, not a lone ranger with your own personal fiefdom, then you should not be sitting at the table.

Ex-councillors running an opposition from the outside

Then there is the strange phenomenon of former members who can’t quite let go.

We have a recently resigned councillor who was, undeniably, energetic – especially on play parks and the Neighbourhood Plan. But after stepping down, instead of stepping back, he has carried on acting as if he still speaks for the council: fronting meetings in village halls, organising campaigns, drafting leaflets, lobbying district councillors and residents, and positioning himself as the “real” voice of the parish against the very council he used to sit on.

Those leaflets talk of “14 resignations in three years”. They point to the fact that the chair, the clerk and the council’s handyman are all from one family and call the whole thing “superficially at least, incestuous”. They quote staffing budgets – the combined cost of clerk, handyman and RFO jumping from somewhere around £13,000 a few years ago to over £40,000 now – as if that, on its own, proves corruption rather than reflecting the reality that we’ve moved from a part-time set-up to something approaching professional support.

Do those numbers deserve scrutiny? Of course. Every line of public spending does. But what we have instead is a parallel parish politics – ex-councillors whipping up suspicion, fuelling rumours, and encouraging residents to believe the worst about the people still in the room trying to keep the wheels on.

It is perfectly possible to oppose, criticise and campaign without sabotaging the very institution you claim to care about. That line has not just been crossed; it has been erased.

Confidential doesn’t seem to mean what some people think it means

If there is one word that should make every councillor sit up, it is “confidential”.

We are trusted with tender documents, staffing matters, legal advice and financial information that is not meant for general distribution. When those papers are clearly marked as restricted, that’s not a polite suggestion. It is part of our duty of care to the council and to those we do business with.

Yet I have watched confidential contract summaries and pricing information – for example, on grounds maintenance – leak straight out to people who no longer sit on the council, and to friends who have no formal role at all. I have watched former members picking over scoring sheets and questioning decisions from the sidelines, using information they should never have had in the first place.

That is not “openness”. It is a serious governance failure. It undermines our ability to run fair competitions, exposes us to challenge and damages our reputation with suppliers and residents alike.

And when the clerk, quite correctly, queries an invoice where there is no formal instruction and no record that the work was agreed, instead of backing her up, some colleagues run straight to the contractor to apologise and blame her – calling her “a dictator” to the very people we may need to work with again. That is not just disloyal; it is reckless.

Bullying cuts both ways – but some of it is very one-directional

Everyone is very quick these days to cry “bullying” the moment they feel challenged. We have councillors who insist they have been harassed by the clerk, and staff who say that aggressive, nit-picking and sarcastic behaviour from members – especially directed at one officer – has gone way beyond what is acceptable.

From my seat, what I see far too often is a group of adults who cannot distinguish between being held to the rules and being “picked on”.

If you insist on acting outside agreed procedures, ignoring decisions, spreading rumours and undermining staff in public, you are the one doing the bullying when you then attack the clerk for trying to pull things back onto a legal footing.

We have colleagues whose first instinct, when something doesn’t go their way, is not to raise it calmly in the council chamber but to fire off snide comments, to stir up neighbours, to whip up little factions, to describe the clerk in terms that no professional should have to hear.

That is not scrutiny. It is intimidation dressed up as victimhood.

Money, rumours and the locum question

More recently, we’ve even dragged staff pay into the mud.

We now have a locum clerk in post alongside the permanent officer. There are mutterings in the parish about day rates, overtime and “fat payouts”. I have heard figures thrown around as if they were proven fact, when in reality most of the people repeating them haven’t looked at a single payslip or timesheet.

Let me be clear: I want those numbers on the table. I want to see exactly what we are paying, for what hours, on whose authority. That’s basic financial governance and residents are entitled to the answers.

But I am not prepared to join in public character assassination of any individual member of staff, permanent or locum, based on half-heard gossip. If there is a problem with authorisation or value for money, we deal with it through proper processes – scrutiny at committee, questions to the RFO, external audit if necessary – not by shouting accusations in the pub.

This is not what parish service was supposed to be

When I stood for this council, like most of us, I imagined helping to improve local facilities, shaping the Neighbourhood Plan, supporting community groups, making sure our corner of Kent has a voice.

Instead, much of the last year has been eaten up by firefighting: dealing with fallouts from private feuds, patching things up with contractors who feel insulted, trying to reassure residents who have been told that the council is corrupt or incompetent, and comforting staff who are frankly worn down by the constant sniping.

Life on a parish council is not always – in fact, is rarely – a bundle of fun. It is evenings away from family, wrestling with planning policy and insurance clauses and standing orders. It is being prepared to say “no” to things that are popular but unaffordable, and “yes” to procedures that look slow but keep us safe.

The least we can expect of ourselves is that we behave like grown-ups while we’re doing it.

Right now, in Lyminge, too many of my fellow councillors are failing that basic test. Until we stop treating the clerk as a punchbag, stop leaking confidential information, stop running parallel politics from the sidelines, and start respecting the rules we signed up to, the real losers will be the residents we claim to serve.

And they deserve a lot better than this.

If you have a story we should be telling, then please do contact us at: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me – Always Discreet, Always Confidential.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism For The People NOT the Powerful