Worthing Labour Councillor Accuses Conservatives Of 'Mischief-Making'

A Labour councillor has accused the leader of Worthing’ Conservatives of ‘mischief-making’ for submitting a code of conduct complaint against him.

Jim Deen (Lab, Central) said claims from Kevin Jenkins (Con, Goring) that he and others had ‘colluded and done deals behind closed doors’ in connection with planning applications were ‘false and vexatious’.

The matter came to a head during a planning meeting on Wednesday evening (March 22) when Mr Jenkins and two fellow Tories walked out when a vote of no confidence in Mr Deen – who was chairing the meeting – failed.

After the meeting, Mr Deen said:

“In bringing these accusations, Cllr Jenkins exposes his limited understanding of the work that all councillors on the planning committee should be doing to prepare for the meeting and make themselves fully aware of all the issues involved.

“Our Labour councillors on the committee pride themselves on the depth of research they do on each application through a detailed reading of the full application details and the consultation reports that are too detailed to be presented at the meeting itself.

“On occasions we meet to share our knowledge and understanding of the information.”

Mr Deen said there was ‘nothing underhand’ about the meetings and the Labour councillors did not ‘come to a collective decision on how we vote on any particular application’, with every member free to vote as they wish.

Mr Jenkins, though, had a different view.

After submitting the code of conduct complaint, he said:

“This is totally unbelievable.

“I’ve never heard of a sub-group to be formed in this way, it is clearly politically motivated, as they have excluded councillors from other political groups.

“There can be very little doubt that this was to agree a way forward for each application and present a united decision-making [front] to the public as they have the majority on the committee and can rail-road it whichever way they choose.

“This is a total abuse of the planning process and politically motivated in every way possible.”

Mr Jenkins added that the planning process was ‘in tatters’ and said the Labour councillors  had ‘rigged the planning process’.

Several of the councillors defended themselves during the planning meeting, pointing to voting records which showed plenty of occasions when the voting did not run along party lines.

Mr Deen added:

“Far from being in tatters, the planning process in Worthing is now in a much better state than it ever was.

“We have encouraged greater participation in the meetings by members of the public and helped them to express their views on applications by creating a friendly and helpful environment.

“It is just mischief-making by Cllr Jenkins to bring into doubt the validity of decisions made by the committee over the last year.”

The monitoring officer is assessing the code of conduct complaint, in line with council procedure, and will decide if the matter needs to be investigated.