A Hadleigh town councillor and football club treasurer could be hauled in front of a standards committee for failing to comply with a Babergh ruling after a Code of Conduct complaint against him was upheld.

Rolf Beggerow was found to have breached council rules by speaking, influencing and voting on Layham Road Sports Ground issues as a town councillor even though he is on the Hadleigh United executive committee and is the club's treasurer.

Cllr Beggerow was accused of having a conflict of interests and Babergh's monitoring office upheld the complaint and issued a number of sanctions against him, and the town council.

None have yet been complied with and Babergh has confirmed the authority can summon Cllr Beggerow to appear before Suffolk's Joint Standards Sub Committee to explain why they have failed to comply.

Part of Layham Road Sports Ground

Cllr Beggerow's failure to comply was questioned at a full council meeting last month when former councillor Andrew Knock Cllr Knock asked why the decision of the monitoring officer to uphold the complaint and sanctions were not on the agenda, as the town council's standing orders require,.

Mr Knock was told that the council was seeking clarification even though the decision of the monitoring officer is final and that there is no appeal.

Cllr Beggerow declined to comment but added he plans making a full and detailed public statement at the next full council meeting due to be held on 19 January.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the football club, that has distanced themselves from Cllr Beggerow's actions. (Full statement here...)

It is understood the item will be on the agenda when the clerk can make a statement and/or recommendation, and it is for the councillors to decide what sanctions and other actions to impose. after she shares background information or advice with councillors as background to the vote.

Hadleigh town council were asked for comment but failed to respond.

The code of conduct complaints lodged against Cllr Beggerow as he had been promoting the Layham Road Sportsground redevelopment project, including a new pavilion and a full-size artificial pitch, with costs to be met by the council, while treasurer of Hadleigh United, which according to the council's business case, the club will be the main user of the new pitch and one of the main users of the new pavilion. 

Given that the Monitoring Officer had stated that Cllr Beggerow should not have remained in the room when the project was discussed, let alone spoken at length, proposed and voted on items related to the project, it came as a shock to some councillors that he did not leave the room during last month's meeting when the new pavilion business case was discussed. 

Cllr Beggerow spoke on the item and went on to vote regarding an allocation of budget towards the fees for a review of the design of the pavilion and for a check of design with the Suffolk Football Association. 

When Cllr Beggerow was challenged by Cllr Wiltshire about his interest in the item, he and the town clerk protested that he had 'declared an interest' at the start of the meeting.

Cllr Wilson denying councillor's right to scrutinise

Cllr Wiltshire asked what the nature of his disclosure was because the Monitoring Officer had stated that he should leave the room. Other councillors sprang to Cllr Beggerow's defence, asking Cllr Wiltshire what she meant. Deputy mayor and chair of the meeting, Cllr Bill Wilson, going so far as to say that councillors had no right to say whether someone should leave because of an interest, to which Cllr Roberts replied 'but they have a right to ask'. 

There is concerns after former councillor Knock was called back to Babergh's standards committee for not complying fully with a sanction issued - to apologise to the mayor. Frank Minns, who was mayor at the time, complained that Cllr Knock had not apologised to him specifically when he had apologised to 'all councillors'.

Cllr Knock subsequently apologised to Mr Minns publicly at a full council meeting.

Cllr Knock resigned after last month's meeting when the findings of the independent review into the recruitment process were again to be 'noted' rather than discussed. Cllr Knock (and other councillors) feared that the resulting report was a 'cover up'.