Show up to meetings or resign, councillors told

A senior Liberal Democrat in Liverpool has called for three Labour councillors to start turning up to council meetings or stand down.

Richard Kemp said Sarah Doyle, Tom Logan and Elizabeth Hayden, along with Collette Goulding, who is currently suspended from Labour, had only attended between three and five council meetings during the last 18 months.

He said they should all either turn down their annual allowance of £13,932 or resign and trigger by-elections.

The councillors said they would not quit and insisted they were working hard for residents.

In a statement, Liverpool Labour said: "Labour in Liverpool remains focused on delivering for local people, not engaging in political point-scoring over attendance statistics taken out of context."

The BBC has contacted all four councillors for comment.

Logan accused the Liberal Democrats of "playing games as usual".

He said: "This is typical of the nonsense theatre that plays out in the town hall, which is part of the reason why local politics in Liverpool feels so disparate to local communities and residents."

Doyle said: "I will not be resigning. I continue to fulfill councillor duties outside of attending council meetings.

"My priority is to be embedded in the local community. I am disappointed with Liverpool City Council for various reasons. I have little faith in the democracy or illusion of democracy that plays out in the town hall."

Hayden said: "I will not be resigning. I am active in my local community. I was out campaigning this weekend in fact. I do not post on social media due to its corrosive nature. I just don't live my life online like Richard Kemp."

Kemp, who was elected in 1973, is the longest-serving councillor in Liverpool.

He said members who did not attend many meetings were letting down those they had been elected to represent.

He said: "We all get tarred with the same brush 'you're all in it for yourselves, you do it for the money'. Well that's not true".

He added: "I have a responsibility to look at standards and probity and try and get the Labour Party to do something about this situation."

Kemp said he had combed council attendance records to support his claims that the councillors in question had only attended a handful of meetings.

He said he had not seen them feature in Labour or council social media accounts, or their own public social media accounts.

The Local Government Act 1972 states that when a councillor fails to attend any meeting for six consecutive months from the date of his or her last attendance, he or she ceases to be a member of the authority, unless the council accepts a reason for the failure to attend before the six-month period expires.

Kemp said: "Councillors should attend planning meetings, committee meetings and other meetings which affect the people in their communities."

He added that none of the councillors concerned had attended the authority's annual budget meeting in March, which he found "appalling".

Kemp added that if a councillor was ill or facing a difficult set of personal circumstances, it was up to their political group to organise a substitute.

He said there were two options for councillors who did not, in his view, participate fully: "Don't take the money or resign so we can have a by-election."

He said Robinson should "take the Labour whip fully away for them and let other councillors fill those places so that the constituents as a whole can be represented by hard-working councillors".

Speaking on BBC Radio Merseyside Robinson said he would not discuss the circumstances of individual councillors on air.

He said: "Where there are issues, those are being addressed, let me just put it as firmly as that."

A spokesperson for Liverpool Labour said "Cllr Kemp has been a councillor long enough to know that councillors carry out a wide range of responsibilities on behalf of their communities, much of which takes place outside formal committee meetings.

"Whilst the Lib Dems look through the council's website, Labour in Liverpool remains focused on delivering for local people, not engaging in political point-scoring over attendance statistics taken out of context."

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