Warwickshire County Council leader admits banishing SEND storm councillors would be ‘for me to consider’

In an answer submitted 51 days after the question was raised at a meeting of full council, Councillor Izzi Seccombe OBE (Con, Stour & the Vale) finally acknowledged she would lead her party's call on disciplining the trio.

Councillor Jeff Morgan (Con, Bulkington & Whitestone), Councillor Brian Hammersley (Con, Bedworth Central) and Councillor Clare Golby (Con, Arbury) are under investigation by Warwickshire County Council following a flurry of formal complaints over their contributions to a discussion on demand for special education needs and disabilities (SEND) provision during a council meeting in January.

Widespread outrage followed Cllr Morgan questioning whether some children put forward for SEND assessments were “just really badly behaved” and in need of “some form of strict correction”, Cllr Hammersley asking whether a surge in demand was down to “something in the water” and Cllr Golby referring to social media pages where “families are swapping tips on how to get their children diagnosed”.

Cllr Seccombe distanced her administration from the comments but also resisted calls from opposition councillors and the public to remove the whip from all three while the investigation took place.

Amid the maelstrom, Nuneaton mum Elissa Novak addressed Cllr Seccombe at March’s meeting of full council.

She asked the leader to make clear the difference between the council’s procedures over the complaints and Tory party discipline, arguing that “conflation of the two… risks undermining the hard work of council officers whose roles are not political”.

“To rectify this immediately, I would respectfully ask the leader to confirm whether it is her decision to remove the whip or whether that decision is made by the local group,” she added.

With no response forthcoming, Councillor Jonathan Chilvers (Green, Leamington Brunswick) asked later in the meeting and was told he would receive a written response.

It had not arrived 51 days later but landed in his inbox hours after the Local Democracy Reporting Service followed up the matter with Cllr Seccombe and the council’s chief executive Monica Fogarty.

The 17-word answer has since been added on a PDF on the bottom of the detailed minutes of the meeting. The link to it is on a web page that you have to click through to from the one that carries most of the detail of what happened in the meeting.

Cllr Seccombe’s response reads: “Any decision on the whip is for me to consider reflecting of course on all evidence available.”

In the days after the March meeting, Cllr Seccombe was invited to clarify the process behind any such decision, and whether she had sole responsibility for it.

She confirmed she would “have to go through the group” of Conservative county councillors but declined to comment further, including on whether any such decision would be led by her in consultation with other councillors. She only went as far as saying that it would be “an internal Conservative process”.

Invited to offer an explanation as to why she would not provide more clarity at that point, Cllr Seccombe replied: “I don’t feel I need to offer one.”

Cllr Seccombe has been approached for further comment.