Reference to social media attacks by elected members about officers has been labelled ‘fake news’ by a Pembrokshire county councillor, in response to a corporate peer challenge report discussed this week.

Last year’s corporate peer challenge included reference to overview and scrutiny functions with the corporate committee singled out and in response to further evidence as to why a member seminar was arranged by the Local Government Association peer team.

In a report to the seminar, discussed at Thursday’s (April 22) committee Clr. Jacob Williams said that reference to - ‘the way in which social media is being used by a small number of elected members, involving personalised attacks targeting council officers, is entirely inappropriate’ was not backed up by examples or evidence.

“I’m not aware of a single complaint of social media use referred to in the report. It’s fake news,” he said, adding that if there were such attacks being made then councillors had a duty to report them either to the monitoring officer or the ombudsman.

Clr. Mark Carter argued that the councillors as employers should not criticise officers on social media but Clr. Williams and Clr. Mike Stoddart referred to relevant case law that politicians and senior officers must be “thick skinned” with political but not personal criticism allowed.

Also highlighted were questions around the political balance of committees, whether unaffiliated members could nominate a substitute attended in their absence and why they are excluded from being committee chairs.