MORE than $20,000 has been spent on code of conduct complaints by Bathurst Regional Council, a new report has confirmed.
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Each year, council's complaints coordinator is required to report on the code of conduct complaints made about the councillors and the general manager in the year to September.
Council is then required to provide the Office of Local Government with a report containing the code of conduct statistics within three months of the end of September of each year.
The report is part of the business papers for Wednesday's ordinary meeting of council, and states that there were a total of five code of conduct complaints received over the 12-month reporting period.
All five of the complaints were referred to the conduct reviewer, with three of them finalised at the assessment stage.
It is not reported publicly who those three complaints were against or what the allegations were, however the conduct reviewer determined not to take any action after assessing the complaints.
The remaining two of the five complaints, though, had to be investigated by an independent conduct reviewer.
Members of the community would already be well aware that those complaints were both against councillor Alex Christian.
One was lodged by councillor Jess Jennings and has yet to be determined, with council last month resolving to refer the matter back to the independent reviewer.
The other complaint was lodged by resident Sandy Bathgate and resulted in Cr Christian being formally censured over breaches of council's code of conduct and social media policy.
The report states that dealing with the five code of conduct complaints has cost council $21,654 as of August 31, 2021, not including staff costs.
However, as some of the complaints were not completed by August 31, it means council will incur additional costs relating to complaints against Cr Christian in the next 12 months.
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