The Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council has two stalkers and a significant number of local councillors have considered leaving their job due harassment, intimidation and abuse.
A task and finish group has been set up to address the increasing levels of harassment, abuse and intimidation following a survey being carried out amongst councillors regarding their personal experiences.
Councillor Fiona Wilson provided an update on the work of the Harassment, Abuse and Intimidation Task and Finish Group at a meeting of the Corporate Policy Committee on Thursday, 20th March along with the results of the recent councillor survey.
Councillor Fiona Wilson said "The results showed that women councillors feel more at risk. 35% of all respondents had considered leaving their role as a councillor because of intimidation, harassment and abuse.
"43% of respondents felt that the volume of abuse, intimidation and harassment had increased. Indeed 62% of councillors had experienced personal harassment, 26% had had members of the public come to their home.
"I consider that the results have shown that our concerns of the Corporate Policy Committee that were raised by myself and the deputy leader some meetings ago have been fully justified by the results of this survey and the experiences of our councillor colleagues.
"Now this isn't just about debate on social media, although some commentators seem to have no bar to their behaviour, so it does form part of the overall procedure but from the statistics I have given you this is a shocking situation of councillors, some of whom feel unsafe in their own homes."
Next month task and finish group is meeting with Cheshire Constabulary, the Police & Crime Commissioner and hoping the Crime Prosecution Service will be able to attend.
Councillor Fiona Wilson added "The excellent work will continue so we can deal with the abuse the level of abuse, harassment and intimidation is not acceptable and I think it is very important that it is not portrayed as or seen elsewhere as simply being councillors who can't hack it or feel they don't like being challenged on their decisions. That is not what this is about, we must focus on the results of our own survey of our councillors about the personal experience they've had."
Deputy leader Michael Gorman said "This is really serious stuff when you have got those kinds of figures. I am quite prepared to say that I've had quite a lot of harassment. I've got two stalkers.
"This is a real problem for councillors regardless of political affiliation and how do we expect people to come forward and stand for election when they hear this kind of narrative and this kind of discourse.
"It's very very worrying, we have to listen to this committee, to this working group there are implication her for our security and we need to think about that I have been to other council where they are taking security very seriously."
He continued "It is really important we that reassure the public that we will protect local democracy and we will protect local government and this is a real challenge to those people who just peddle misinformation, they peddle disinformation and they try at all all points in the press and social media to undermine trust in local democracy and local government."
