Suffolk County Council has been run by Reform UK since May. In June its Leader, Cllr Michael Hadwen, launched a legal challenge to the streamlining of Suffolk’s councils from six to three. On 29 June I used my right as a member of the Council’s Scrutiny Committee to refer to it the way that decision was taken. There are now 28 matters. The Committee meets tomorrow, 94 days on, and until today nobody outside the Council has been able to read them.
The same day, I wrote to the Council’s two Deputy Monitoring Officers setting out five ways the decision appeared to have broken the law, and asked them to consider whether the Monitoring Officer’s duty to report had been triggered. On 3 August he concluded that it had. His report, which the Cabinet considered on 17 September, found two breaches: one of the five I’d set out, the record of a decision the Leader took alone published eight days late and only after I asked for it, and the 47 days it took to give me documents I was entitled to within ten. The Leader told the Cabinet he did not accept that eight days was unreasonable. The Cabinet voted to take no further action. The other four matters have never been examined.
Nor has most of the rest. Cabinet members were asked to continue a legal claim none of them had seen. Councillors lodged formal objections that should have had the decision reviewed before it took effect, and there is no record of who dealt with them or why. And the Council has disclosed that its business is discussed on twelve messaging groups, most set to delete themselves within a day or a week, with nothing to stop information being destroyed before it reaches the record.
Since the agenda came out on 23 September the Council has declined four times to publish the referral, for four different reasons, none of them legal. The Chair of the Committee has confirmed in writing that the Council’s rulebook is silent on the point, and nobody has said any of the 28 matters is wrong.
In May the Leader told the Council that “being transparent with residents” was the first of the principles that would “shape every decision we make and every action we take”. Residents can judge for themselves.
A committee can’t examine questions its members haven’t read, so I’ve sent the referral to every member and I’m publishing it here. Tomorrow I’ll ask the Chair to accept it as a paper for the meeting, and I’ll ask the Committee to decide how the review is run and when the Leader and the Monitoring Officer will answer in public. Those concerned will have every opportunity to respond.
The referral and covering paper: Referral to the Scrutiny Committee under Rule 11.9.1
Cllr Martin Cook
30 September 2026