WE write this with a sense of both sadness and being ill-served. It concerns a groundless claim, made to Crediton Hamlets Parish Council (minute 8446).

In it a councillor falsely stated that the neighbours of the derelict house in this hamlet (Bell Cottage) had been using its garden, for around 10 years, trespassing in order to obtain squatters rights. In an email on Council business, seen following a Freedom of Information request, they named us twice.

They said they were complaining, with the claimed support of several neighbours, using the pronoun “we”, disseminating their fake news beyond minute 8446, including, according to an independent witness, immediately prior to the start of a public meeting in Crediton.

Certainly one friend from Bow told of having heard the accusation second hand.

In fact the boundary between Bell Cottage and us zigzags, a form of flying freehold, running within five metres of the cottage, as our deeds (since the 1960s) and Land Registration confirm.

To a thoughtless, casual observer it might appear our use of our 10 x 25 metre vegetable garden behind Bell Cottage was trespass, although the councillors’ Code of Conduct obligations call for a higher standard than casual observation.

To show the ridiculousness of the claim, one of us (ALS) was growing salad plants there competitively in the 1970s while a pupil at Yeoford School, when Bell Cottage was a well-kept family home the other side of a fence.

A straw poll of the hamlet’s long standing residents showed none of them supported the councillor. When asked who the several “supporters” were, only three names (scarcely “several”), were forthcoming, with two of them openly denying any involvement. The councillor eventually backtracked from directly supporting the accusation, saying they were just reporting the concerns of the “several”.

When first confronted over the false accusations the councillor was evasive and obfuscative. On May 9, 2022, after a substantial cooling off time, we (TRH and SEH) discussed the matter with the councillor, who agreed to issue a retraction and apology through the Parish Council, accompanied by a statement in the “Crediton Courier” and the Yeoford Village Voice.

None of these have happened, despite them saying at the time they wanted to clear up the matter; even though they asked to shake hands on the agreement.

On October 11 that year I (TRH) spoke to the councillor, asking about their progress with the agreement. Their reply was abruptly dismissive and they drove off.

The following October 4, I saw them and repeated the question.

They said “What are you going to moan about now?” and walked away. Subsequently I gave a brief statement of the facts to the public session preceding the May 2024 Parish Council meeting.

A clear implication of it was that if the councillor did not carry out what had been agreed, we would complain to the Mid Devon District Council (MDDC) Monitoring Officer, who is responsible for parish and district councillors’ Code of Conduct and their standards, as set out as the “Nolan Principles”.

As the councillor’s promised statement has not been forthcoming our resort turned to the MDDC Monitoring Officer and their complaints procedures.

The preliminary paragraphs of MDDC’s rules covering complaints express a preference for an informal approach, and if wished, avoidance of their formal proforma.

This avoidance is necessary anyway for users of some Apple computers, such as ours, its software is not compatible with their proforma. In any event an informal approach has been our choice all the time.

Despite MDDC’s preference for informality the complaint was rejected because we had not submitted on their form and that the whole procedure had taken more than the three months limit they set for formal proceedings.

While appreciating the District Council has much bigger fish to fry, we are left feeling let down by their inability or unwillingness to enforce the Nolan Principles.

Those are rules for basic civility and decency in public office.

Beyond that MDDC has turned a blind eye; not even a two minute phone call with “a word to the wise”, all in their preferred spirit of informality.

That blind eye is to a councillor who disseminated untruths for motives best known to their self, then failed to honour an undertaking to retract and apologise, in spite of having shaken hands on it.

TR Harrod, SE Harrod, GH Harrod, LA Skipper

Woodland Head

Yeoford