CHRISTCHURCH town councillors have defended their voting at a recent meeting.

Councillors Gillian Jarvis, David Jones, Christine Lunn and Stuart Perry voted against adopting the Dignity At Work Policy and signing up to the Civility and Respect Pledge at the July full council meeting.

The policy promotes good governance and was proposed ‘due to growing concerns about bullying, harassment, and mistreatment within town and parish councils’.

But the four councillors have since clarified that they were not objecting to the principles of good governance, but to one clause of the pledge.

This clause was that Christchurch Town Council would support ‘the continued lobbying for change in legislation to support the Civility and Respect Pledge including sanctions for elected members where appropriate’.

Cllrs Jarvis, Jones, Lunn and Perry explained in a statement: “We do not feel it appropriate for town and parish councils to be obliged to lobby the government on a matter of political controversy.

“We also object to any introduction of mandatory sanctions on members, who should be judged according to the law or by their electorates.”

Cllr Perry added they had asked the acting town clerk if they could sign the pledge without accepting that particular statement, but “unfortunately the clerk never did that bit of investigation”.

They then asked, if this was not possible, whether they could adopt the Dignity At Work Policy without signing the pledge.

“The clerk said we had to do both”, Cllr Perry said.

Cllr Perry said after doing his own research, “it became quite clear the pledge was optional”.

The four then sought to separate the policy from the pledge.

They said in their statement: “When council declined to accept this, we felt that our objections to the pledge outweighed our willingness to accept the policy – which in any event contains nothing that we have not accepted, in May 2023, in our code of conduct.”

The Dignity at Work Policy was developed by the National Association of Local Councils, the Society of Local Council Clerks, and One Voice Wales.

More than 1,500 councils have already signed the Civility and Respect Pledge as part of the policy.