Analysis: CPC's Vexatious Complaints policy

This month, Chilbolton Parish Council are proposing to adopt a new policy on “Vexatious Complaints”. What does this policy cover and how will it affect people considering a complaint to CPC?

The policy has been drawn up by the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) and has been adopted by many parish councils around the country. The SLCC is the professional body for local council clerks and senior council employees. Chilbolton Parish Council proposes adopting their Vexatious Complaints policy in full.

The policy explains that:

“Habitual or vexatious complaints can be a problem for Council staff and members. The difficulty in handling such complainants is that they are time consuming and wasteful of recourses [sic] in terms of Officer and Member time.”

It then outlines a total of 22 possible “features” of a vexatious complaint, although it says that “the list is not exhaustive”. These grounds include potentially deeming a complaint vexatious if a complainant:

  • Makes the same complaint to their Member of Parliament
  • Reports their complaint to the Police
  • Informs the Council’s Independent Auditor or the Standards Board of their complaint
  • Publishes their complaint “in other forms of media”

When the Council has deemed a complainant to be vexatious, there is a staged process of dealing with them:

  • First a letter of warning would be issued to them explaining “why this behaviour is causing concern”
  • Next “the way in which they will be allowed to contact the Council in future will be restricted”. This could include banning them from making contact with the Council, to the extent of even requiring them to make contact through a third party, such as a solicitor
  • Ultimately the abberant behaviour could be dealt with by a report to the Police or by taking legal action

Nor does the policy limit itself to actual complaints to the Parish Council. It extends its remit to “requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 1998 and reference to the Complaints Procedure is, where relevant, to be interpreted as meaning a request under those Acts”.

This seems to be a stretch too far. The Freedom of Information Act sets out clearly in Section 14 what a vexatious request is, and importantly is not, and how it should be dealt with. The Information Commissioner’s Office points out that responders to information requests need to separate the content of the request from the person requesting:

It is important to remember that you can only apply section 14(1) to the request itself, and not the individual who submits it. You cannot, therefore, refuse a request on the grounds that the requester themself is vexatious. Similarly, you cannot refuse a new request solely on the basis that you have classified previous requests from the same individual as vexatious.

By applying this Vexatious Complaints policy to FOI and DPA requests, the Parish Council would effectively be ignoring the due processes afforded to requesters within the law.

Chilbolton Parish Council’s Complaints Policy amounts to some 950 words and is clear: it explains how to make a complaint, how it will be dealt with, how long it will take and, importantly, what you can do if you disagree with the decision.

Councillors and council staff should absolutely not be subjected to harassment, badgering or intimidation. It’s understandable that a trade body which represents them should endorse a 2,400 word policy to prevent that. But, drawing their definition of “vexatious” so widely and formalising it in a parish council’s policy documents seems heavy-handed.

More to the point, extending the policy to matters such as Freedom of Information requests, which are already covered by a clear legal framework, risks drawing Chilbolton Parish Council into making decisions which later fall foul of the Information Commissioner’s Office.