Parish Council Complaints Procedure: Handling Code of Conduct Complaints

A resident contacts your council to complain about a councillor's behaviour at last night's planning meeting. A neighbouring parish clerk emails to report that one of your councillors made threats during a joint committee discussion. A councillor files a complaint against another councillor.

Your instinct as clerk is to try to resolve it. That instinct is wrong — at least for code of conduct complaints. Here is what to do instead.

How to complain about a parish councillor: who actually decides

A complaint that a parish or town councillor broke the code of conduct is decided by the principal authority — the district, borough or unitary council — through its monitoring officer, not by the parish council. The parish council has no power to investigate its own members' conduct, and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will not investigate the councillor either. The clerk's job is to get the complaint to the right place quickly and keep out of the substance.

The statute is unusually clear on this. Section 28(6) of the Localism Act 2011 puts the duty to investigate on every relevant authority except parish councils:

"A relevant authority other than a parish council must have in place— (a) arrangements under which allegations can be investigated, and (b) arrangements under which decisions on allegations can be made."

And section 28(9)(b) makes the principal authority's arrangements cover parish councillors, defining an allegation as a written allegation "that a member or co-opted member of a parish council for which the authority is the principal authority has failed to comply with the parish council's code of conduct." Note the word written — a complaint made by phone at the end of a meeting is not yet an allegation the monitoring officer can act on.

The Ombudsman's own fact sheet on standards and member conduct puts it the same way: "Complaints about the conduct of parish and town councillors are handled by the Principal Authority, which may be a county, district, unitary or borough council. Such complaints must be investigated under the standards procedures and not through other processes such as staff grievance procedures."

The Ombudsman's parish council fact sheet adds that a complaint about a parish councillor's conduct "should be made to the council itself", with the monitoring officer considering it if the complainant is not satisfied. Read together with section 28, the practical position is the same: the parish council may be where the complaint first lands, but it cannot investigate or decide it — the clerk's job is to acknowledge it and pass it to the monitoring officer, as set out below.

That last sentence of the standards fact sheet matters to clerks personally. If you are the person on the receiving end of a councillor's behaviour, the conduct complaint still goes through the principal authority's standards process — your council's grievance procedure is not the route for deciding whether a councillor breached the code.

Which complaint goes where

Complaint is about	Who decides it	Where it can go next
A councillor's behaviour or interests (code of conduct)	Principal authority's monitoring officer, after consulting an independent person if investigated	The Ombudsman can look at how the principal authority handled it — not at the councillor's conduct itself
A council service or decision (grass cutting, allotments, minutes not published)	The parish council, under its own complaints procedure	Usually nowhere — the Ombudsman cannot investigate parish councils, except where the parish is acting for another council
A service the parish runs on behalf of the district or county (e.g. delegated verge maintenance)	The parish council first, then the council that delegated it	The Ombudsman may be able to look at it
A mix of both ("the councillor was rude AND the hedge wasn't cut")	Split it: conduct to the monitoring officer, service to the council's procedure	As above, separately

Two types of complaints

Parish councils receive two distinct types of complaint, and they follow entirely different processes. Mixing them up is one of the most common governance errors clerks make.

Service complaints: A resident is unhappy with something the council has done (or failed to do) — grass cutting, planning consultation handling, allotment management, minutes not published on time. The council handles these internally using its own complaints procedure.

Code of conduct complaints: Someone alleges that a councillor has breached the council's code of conduct — disrespectful behaviour, undeclared interests, misuse of council resources, bullying. These go to the principal authority's monitoring officer, not to the parish council.

The critical distinction: you investigate service complaints. You do not investigate code of conduct complaints.

Code of conduct complaints: the clerk's role

Under section 28 of the Localism Act 2011, your principal authority (the district, borough, or unitary council) must have arrangements for handling allegations that a councillor has breached the code of conduct. Section 28(7) requires those arrangements to include at least one independent person "whose views are to be sought, and taken into account, by the authority before it makes its decision on an allegation that it has decided to investigate". The councillor complained about may also seek the independent person's views — section 28(7)(b)(iii) extends that to a parish councillor whose behaviour is the subject of an allegation.

Your role as clerk when a code of conduct complaint arrives:

1. Do not investigate. You are not the monitoring officer. You do not have the authority to investigate code of conduct complaints, and any investigation you conduct has no standing.

2. Direct the complainant to the monitoring officer. Provide the monitoring officer's name, contact details, and the principal authority's complaints process. Many principal authorities have an online form. Make this information easy to find — publish the monitoring officer's contact details on your council website alongside the code of conduct.

3. Do not discuss the substance of the complaint with councillors. If you tell the accused councillor "Mrs Smith has complained about your behaviour at the planning meeting," you have potentially compromised a future investigation. The monitoring officer decides who is told what and when.

4. Record that the complaint was received. Note in your records (not in public minutes) the date the complaint was received, the complainant's name, and that you directed them to the monitoring officer. This is your evidence that you handled it properly.

5. Do not mediate. Offering to "sort things out" between the complainant and the councillor may seem helpful, but it undermines the formal process. If the complaint later escalates, informal mediation can complicate matters.

6. Cooperate with the monitoring officer's investigation. If the monitoring officer decides to investigate, they may ask you for meeting minutes, agendas, correspondence, or other council records. Provide these promptly.

What happens after a complaint is filed

The monitoring officer follows this general process (exact procedures vary by principal authority):

1. Initial assessment — the monitoring officer decides whether the complaint warrants investigation, sometimes consulting the independent person
2. Investigation (if warranted) — the monitoring officer or their delegate investigates and produces a report
3. Standards hearing — if a breach is found, the principal authority's standards committee holds a hearing
4. Outcome — if a breach is upheld, sanctions can include formal censure, removal from committees, or a recommendation to apologise

A significant limitation: a code of conduct finding cannot suspend a parish councillor or remove them from office. Section 28(11) lets an authority that finds a failure "have regard to the failure in deciding— (a) whether to take action in relation to the member or co-opted member, and (b) what action to take" — it names no sanction, and there is no suspension power. A government consultation floated restoring one, but the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 did not: its only provision on councillors, section 65, deals with publishing members' addresses in registers. In practice the strongest outcomes are formal censure and removal from committee positions.

Removal from office does happen, but through other routes:

• Criminal conviction for an interests offence. Failing, without reasonable excuse, to register or disclose a disclosable pecuniary interest is an offence under section 34 of the Localism Act 2011, and on conviction the court may "by order disqualify the person, for a period not exceeding five years" (s.34(4)). That is a criminal court's decision after a prosecution by or on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions — not something the monitoring officer can impose. Our code of conduct guide covers how interests are registered and declared.
• Six months' non-attendance. Under section 85(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 a member who fails "throughout a period of six consecutive months from the date of his last attendance to attend any meeting of the authority" ceases to be a member (committee attendance counts, under s.85(2)) "unless the failure was due to some reason approved by the authority before the expiry of that period".

When the Ombudsman can and cannot help with a councillor complaint

The Ombudsman will not investigate the councillor. What it can do, once the principal authority has finished, is look at the handling. Its fact sheet: "If you are unhappy with the final outcome of your complaint to the council, or the council is taking too long to look into the matter – we think 16 weeks is reasonable – you can complain to us." And: "The Ombudsman does not offer a right of appeal against a council's decision on member conduct complaints, but we can consider if there was fault in the way the council considered the complaint." It also expects complaints within 12 months of the complainant first knowing about the problem.

That gives clerks a useful line when a resident asks what happens if the monitoring officer dismisses their complaint: the outcome is not appealable on its merits, but the process can be reviewed.

Service complaints: the council's process

For complaints about council services (not councillor conduct), the council should have its own written complaints procedure. If your council does not have one, adopt one — it protects both the council and the complainant.

No statute prescribes the stages or the timescales for a parish council's service complaints — the council sets them in its own procedure, and county associations publish model versions. A common shape:

Stage 1 — Informal resolution. The clerk tries to resolve the issue directly with the complainant, acknowledging it promptly.

Stage 2 — Formal complaint. If that fails, the complainant puts it in writing and the council (or a complaints committee with delegated authority) considers it.

Stage 3 — Review. Some procedures add a final review by the full council. Others stop at two stages.

Whatever timescales you adopt, write them into the procedure and keep to them — an unanswered complaint is the most common way a minor grievance becomes a public row at the next meeting. For a benchmark, the Ombudsman's parish council fact sheet notes that its Complaint Handling Code "says councils should have no more than two stages in a complaint process. The longest a complaint should take is 16 weeks." That code is written for the councils the Ombudsman can investigate, which do not include parish councils, so treat it as a reference point rather than an obligation.

Important: The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman generally cannot investigate parish council complaints. In its own words: "The Local Government Act 1974 (S34(1)) defines the authorities that we may investigate. Parish and town councils are not included in this definition." The exception is where a parish council is acting on behalf of another council (e.g., a delegated service). Make sure complainants understand this — directing them to the Ombudsman when the Ombudsman cannot help wastes everyone's time.

Common mistakes

Blurring the two types. A councillor complaint sometimes includes a service complaint ("the councillor was rude AND the council didn't fix my hedge"). Separate them: the service element stays with the council, the conduct element goes to the monitoring officer.

Treating a complaint about a decision as a conduct complaint. A resident disagrees with a planning consultation response. That is a service complaint, not a code of conduct matter — unless the councillor(s) involved had undeclared interests or behaved improperly during the decision-making process.

Discussing complaints under AOB. Code of conduct matters should never appear on a public agenda. If the council needs to discuss its response to an investigation, this may need to be in a confidential session — take advice from the monitoring officer.

No written procedure. If you do not have a documented complaints procedure, adopt one. Without one, each complaint is handled ad hoc, responses are inconsistent, and the council is vulnerable to challenge.

Questions clerks get asked

Who do I complain to about a parish councillor? The monitoring officer at your district, borough or unitary council, in writing. Most principal authorities publish a complaint form. The parish clerk can tell you who that is but cannot decide the complaint.

Who are parish councillors accountable to? To the electorate at the ordinary elections, and — for conduct — to the principal authority's standards arrangements under the code of conduct their own council has adopted.

Can the parish council investigate one of its own councillors? No. Section 28(6) of the Localism Act 2011 deliberately excludes parish councils from the duty to have investigation arrangements; the principal authority does it for them.

How can a parish councillor be disqualified? Not by a code of conduct finding. Disqualification comes from a court order after conviction for a section 34 interests offence (up to five years) or from the general disqualification grounds that apply to all councillors. Separately, six months' unapproved non-attendance under section 85 of the Local Government Act 1972 ends a councillor's membership: they "cease to be a member of the authority", but that is not a disqualification.

Can the Ombudsman overturn the monitoring officer's decision? No. It can consider whether there was fault in how the complaint was handled, usually after the principal authority's process has finished.

For the full code of conduct framework — adoption, interests register, declarations at meetings, and annual review — see our complete clerk's guide to the code of conduct.

Check your council's governance compliance using the free compliance checklist.

Sources

• Localism Act 2011, Section 28 — Codes of conduct
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman — Parish and town councils fact sheet
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman — Complaints about standards and member conduct
• Localism Act 2011, Section 34 — Offences
• Local Government Act 1972, Section 85 — Vacation of office by failure to attend meetings
• English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 — contents

This article is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific questions about code of conduct complaints, contact your principal authority's monitoring officer.