A Brantham councillor has vowed to seek re-election in the May elections despite refusing to accept the sanctions made against him for breaching Suffolk's Code of Conduct, which he signed up to.

Although Mark Ahern missed last night's parish council meeting at Brantham Village Hall due to a family engagement, he made it clear in an email he planned to stand again even though he refused to accept rulings made against him.

Brantham parish council last night unanimously ratified the sanctions made against Cllr Aherne by the Suffolk Joint Standards Sub-Committee after he failed to comply with a ruling made by the Babergh monitoring officer in response to a Code of Conduct made against him.

The Deputy Monitoring Officer imposed the following sanctions on Cllr Aherne:

• To publicly apologise to the Clerk at the next available full Council meeting
• To undertake Code of Conduct training and Equality and Diversity training as soon as possible, but no later than three months from the date of the response letter (February, 2022)
• To undertake training on responsibilities as an employer within three months of the date of
• the response letter (February, 2022)
• Councillor M. Aherne has not complied with any of the sanctions issued to him.

The panel, which was made up of non-Babergh councillors, and local authority monitoring officer. decided that Cllr Aherne demonstrated a complete disregard for the Code of Conduct for Members of Brantham Parish Council and continues to demonstrate persistent and unreasonable behaviour towards Officers and Members of Brantham Parish Council and Babergh District Council including the Monitoring Officer.

The committee recommend the following sanctions to Brantham Parish Council:

• That Councillor Aherne comply with the sanctions previously imposed by Brantham Parish Council following the Monitoring Officer's recommendations
• That Councillor Aherne be given a single point of contact at Brantham Parish Council for the period of one year with a review after the first six months
• That the outcome of this decision and the sanctions imposed are published on Brantham Parish Council's website and other local media publications
• We request confirmation from Brantham Parish Council that these recommendations will be taken forward within the next three months.

The parish council last night agreed Sarah Keys, the clerk, will be the single point of contact (with safeguards put in place to protect her from any potential abuse.

The review period will be three months only and Babergh will be informed of these decisions immediately, as will Cllr Aherne.

Cllr Ahern denied any wrongdoing and said in an widely shared email: "I hope to be at the April meeting and in case of any doubt, I shall also be standing for election again, in order to carry on representing Brantham parishioners."

Brantham parish council chairman's full statement

Since October 2021, Councillor Mark Aherne has subjected the Clerk and Members of this Council to an unending series of attacks, harassment by email, and threats. It continues to this day. In fact, it has escalated over the last week.

The Clerk is an employee of BPC, and we have a collective duty of care to our employees. Members are entitled to expect that in their duties, they will receive the respect and behaviour due to them under both our Standing Orders, and here in particular, the Suffolk Code of Conduct contained within them.

Cllr. Aherne accepted these rules in signing his Declaration of Acceptance of Office. He voted for them repeatedly within our annual review of the Standing Orders.

The opportunity to apologise to the Clerk for his behaviour was repeatedly offered, and refused, before the Code of Conduct complaint was even made.

The ruling on that has already been discussed, along with his non-compliance as recently judged by a panel of Councillors from outside our Local Authority area. We have now ruled on their recommendations.

Here at BPC, for his non-compliance, we have already, successively:

1)   Removed Cllr Aherne from all appointments previously made, including Vice Chair and Chair of Finance by Motion and vote.

2)   Repeatedly asked if he will comply with the Code rulings and been refused.

3)   Required him to leave those meetings attended by him for disruption of the meeting.

4)   Walked out of a meeting as a Council in public protest at his actions and behaviour.

Throughout the entire period, since the end of 2021, Cllr Aherne has subjected the Clerk, Chair, Members of BPC and others to a continuous stream of harassing, offensive and insulting communications. In general, the tone of these has been either threatening, petty, irrelevant, or bizarre in the extreme. As is publicly known, this has been and still is, the subject of Police Investigation.

In these communications Mark Aherne displays an almost complete lack of knowledge or understanding about our own rules, Parish and District Councils, governance law, the law in general, standards of behaviour to colleagues and sensitivity to others.

In my view, he is not serving this Parish Council and the Community which elected him to serve and is totally unsuited to the role and responsibilities of a councillor. 

I make this statement with a heavy heart, as so much was avoidable by Cllr Aherne, whom I once regarded as a friend.

I ask that, if the Council is so minded, that they affirm the general thrust of this statement by a formal vote and so propose that affirmation.