Last summer we reported that Peter Chegwyn, Lib Dem leader on Gosport Council, had been banned from being a councillor on both Gosport Council and Hampshire County Council for two years in a dispute over a local music festival.
However, Peter Chegwyn has taken that Standards Board ruling to the Hight Court and this week won a significant set of victories. The two-year disqualification from Hampshire County Council was quashed completely. The two-year disqualification from Gosport Borough Council was quashed and replaced by a two-month suspension, and the Judge ordered the Standards Board for England to pay Peter Chegwyn’s full costs.
The Judge also criticised the Standards Board and Adjudication Panel for the way they had handled the case.
Peter Chegwyn told us that he was delighted to have won his Appeal:
I always said that I had acted with the best of intent and the Judge acknowledged this. It has taken me two years to clear my name but it has been worth it.
As the Judge described a Conservative Party leaflet attacking me as being “defamatory”, I think the Conservative Party owe me a great big apology.
Sadly, instead of apologising, the Conservative Party are continuing with their spiteful personal vendetta against me. I face yet another Adjudication Panel hearing on March 15 following a quite ludicrous Conservative allegation that I somehow ‘bullied’ Gosport Council officers into accepting a lower Council tax rise in 2009 that that sought by the Borough Treasurer.
I will fight this latest nonsensical and completely false allegation as vigorously as I fought the last case.
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Just to update…
The Adjudication Panel have postponed my next case at just a week’s notice due to their Chairman being ‘unavailable’… thereby inconveniencing barristers, solicitors and witnesses on both sides… not forgetting my good self.
They re-arranged the hearing for April 22 without any consultation, not seeming to realise that (i) there may well be a General Election in progress by then and (ii) I’ll be in the middle of my council re-election campaign meaning that if they attempted to disqualify me again they may force the abandonment of the election with all the costs involved of a re-run!
My legal team have politely explained the legal precedent this may set, and the public money that may be wasted. The Tribunals Service have now accepted this and postponed the Hearing yet again, this time until sometime after Polling Day on May 6.
And so it goes on, and on, and on…
Meanwhile my Gosport Lib. Dem. colleague Cllr. Dave Smith still faces an Adjudication Panel Hearing of his own on March 31. I wish him well.