A new report sets out how local authorities can better support councillors
Councillors are the lifeblood of local government, representing the needs of their residents and working across their local areas to improve outcomes for all.
Their decisions contribute to people’s wellbeing and prosperity; it is therefore vital to support strong and vibrant local democracy with councillors who reflect the communities they represent.
However, there is a growing issue of abuse and intimidation in public and political discourse that can harm councillors and their families and deter people from local democracy.
This time last year, the LGA published a report setting out the results of our ‘call for evidence’ of abuse and intimidation, and made the argument that abuse is increasingly impacting councillors and local democracy.
In the report, we highlighted that, according to the LGA’s 2022 national councillor census, seven in 10 councillors reported experiencing abuse and intimidation, and 28 per cent said they frequently or occasionally felt at risk while fulfilling their role.
Most councillors who experienced abuse said it happened on multiple occasions, with high volumes of online abuse, and half said the abuse was ongoing.
In that report, we outlined five themes for further consideration:
- normalisation of abuse in public discourse, particularly online
- targeting of individuals with protected characteristics for particularly vitriolic or high volumes of abuse
- vulnerability of councillors because of their local visibility and accessibility to the public
- personal and democratic impacts of abuse on councillors, their families and the wider community – including the deterrent effect on prospective candidates standing for election
- the variability of support and response offered by councils, political parties and the police across the country.
We committed in the report to support councils and encourage other relevant partners to take greater responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of councillors.
We promised to do our part to gather and disseminate good practice from across the sector, generate new solutions, and provide councils with the tools they need to address this pernicious issue.
This year, we’ve taken our first steps in delivering on this promise, by running a project to identify the barriers stopping councils and other relevant agencies from providing better support, and identifying and developing solutions to those challenges.
We’ve brought these together in one report, ‘Ending abuse in public life’, which performs multiple functions.
It sets out actions councils can take to improve the support they provide and work better with partners, and highlights issues that local authorities cannot influence directly.
The report digs deeper into some of the themes identified in our research last year and sets out how the response to abuse of councillors has grown up organically in response to changing dynamics.
Abuse has presented differently in different places and – coupled with a varied level of capacity and awareness in councils, police and other agencies – this has resulted in various preventative and supportive measures aimed at addressing abuse of councillors.
To support councils in taking a proactive approach, we have established five principles they can use to reflect on their own support processes and what more they could do to ensure councillors are protected from abuse by the public.
We propose that councils take a zero-tolerance approach to abuse to combat the normalisation of abuse in public and political discourse.
Visible actions are vital to demonstrate this approach, including establishing and enforcing strict policies on public engagement with councillors and officers.
Setting expectations with councillors from the outset can help them identify and report unacceptable behaviours.
Reporting processes and responsibility for supporting councillors with abusive residents vary from place to place. For example, one council we heard from uses its anti-social behaviour system to take reports of abuse against councillors, while others report through democratic or legal services.
However, it is essential that councillors know who to go to when experiencing an issue and understand how their complaints will be dealt with.
Strong relationships with local police are absolutely vital to handling both low-level abuse and threats against councillors.
Proactively fostering strong relationships at a strategic and neighbourhood level can improve coordination and advance a mutual understanding of abuse that affects councillors, and the policing role in addressing it.
In many places, increased support had often been precipitated by a local or national incident that brings home the risks associated with being elected. However, councils shouldn’t wait for an incident to occur.
Risk assessments should be tailored to individual risk and be used to proactively and dynamically manage risk associated with the councillor role.
This approach can make it easier to scale support up and down, as Telford and Wrekin Council demonstrated when it worked in partnership with local police to individually grade the risk for each councillor and put in place appropriate mitigations during a period of community tension.
A critical strand of addressing abuse and intimidation is prioritising councillor wellbeing, and considering how the council can support councillor wellbeing and resilience in the face of robust challenge, personal attacks or hurtful commentaries.
We know these issues deter people from staying in local politics, so it’s critical to provide them with appropriate aftercare to help them recover and continue playing their role in local government.
Criminal thresholds and the current legal framework can also make it challenging to support councillors experiencing abuse.
Serious threats clearly meet the threshold for police intervention and are easy to understand under the current legal framework, as they usually concern a ‘single victim and perpetrator’ dynamic.
However, online abuse by multiple individuals, so-called ‘pile-on abuse’ – or individual incidents that appear low level, but may be part of a course of behaviour that amounts to harassment or stalking – are more challenging to address.
We recognise that some of these issues are outside of local government control. To have an impact, we must look to national government, other public agencies and private agencies to effect change.
In the report, we make three recommendations.
We call on the Government to work with Ofcom to ensure that harmful and abusive behaviour does not continue unrestricted online, and that the experience of elected members is considered in any relevant guidance mandated by the Online Safety Bill.
We also want the Government to work with the police to set out clear and consistent guidance on the role of policing in addressing abuse, intimidation and harassment of elected members. This includes creating specialists in each police force to monitor crime against elected members and act as a single point of contact for councils and councillors.
Finally, we call on the Government to widen the scope of the ‘Defending democracy’ programme, to explicitly consider the safety, security and wellbeing of locally elected politicians.
All councillors should expect to be treated with mutual respect.
We hope this work will set the context for a wider discussion across national and local governments, and provide the basic tools for councils that want to protect their elected members from the negative impacts of abuse by the public.
- You can read ‘Ending abuse in public life’ in full at www.local.gov.uk/publications. The report will also be discussed at the LGA’s annual conference in Bournemouth on Tuesday 4 July, in a parallel session called ‘Supporting councillors to prevent and handle abuse and intimidation’. Please visit www.local.gov.uk/conference to find out more and book your place