Torbay councillor cleared of bullying - but did bring council into disrepute

Independent investigation follows heated council meeting aftermath

A Torbay councillor has been cleared of bullying and breaching the authority’s code of conduct after an independent inquiry.

But the investigator says Shiphay independent councillor Katya Maddison did bring the council into disrepute and failed to treat officers with courtesy and respect.

The inquiry followed an exchange between Cllr Maddison and Torbay Council chief executive Anne-Marie Bond after a heated council meeting at the Riviera Centre in Torquay in May last year.

Following a row in the council chamber over the selection of the following year’s civic mayor, and a walkout by Liberal Democrat and independent councillors, Cllr Maddison said ‘Shame on you, Anne-Marie’ twice as she and Ms Bond passed in a corridor.

Cllr Maddison later posted a comment about the issue on Facebook, saying the council was a ‘sick institution’ with ‘certain leading council officers at the heart of it’. And she said she had christened the authority’s governance support team ‘Conservative Support’.

Ms Bond complained that Cllr Maddison had been ‘disrespectful’ to her in person, and later on Facebook to her, the council’s governance support team and the senior leadership team as well as the council itself.

In her complaint Ms Bond said: “Given her remark [at the council meeting], I have no doubt that her reference is in respect of me and my senior leadership team.”

Describing the encounter at the Riviera Centre, Ms Bond told the inquiry: “I have never been spoken to like that and have never faced such an insinuation.”

In her response to the inquiry, Cllr Maddison said the council meeting had been ‘theatrical’. 

She added: “My language was entirely polite. I spoke quietly in a low, conversational tone for her ears only. There was no malevolence.

“No one heard what I said. She asked me to repeat my words, and I did so and said ‘Shame on you Anne-Marie’ for a second time. By saying what I said I was telling Anne-Marie that something wasn’t right.

“She may have been sensitive to what I said, but what harm was done?”

She said she did not think she had breached the code of conduct by saying what she said, and it was appropriate for councillors to communicate with officers when they thought something was wrong.

Talking about the Facebook post, she continued: “I don’t recall writing it, but I can see myself writing it in the context of what had happened [at the council meeting].

“I don’t think I would write that today. Is it my act of writing it that has caused the reputational damage or the governance failures, scandals and shenanigans which lie behind them? What is the harm done here?”

Cllr Maddison was originally elected to the council as a Conservative in Shiphay in May 2023. She later joined the new Prosper Torbay group with another councillor, and now sits as an independent.

The inquiry was carried out by a firm of independent investigators called Kenyon Brabrook.

It concluded that Cllr Maddison did not breach the council’s code of conduct during her exchange with Ms Bond after the meeting and did not bully or harass anyone.

However, she did breach two paragraphs of the code with her Facebook post, by failing to treat others with courtesy and respect and conducting herself in a manner that brought the council into disrepute.

Details of the inquiry have been published in a report to a meeting of a standards hearing sub-committee being held on Tuesday 11 February.