BLOG | “I found myself flanked by shouting protestors at the doors to the Town Hall”

We work hard at Liverpool City Council to ensure that everyone is safe at work and is able to carry out their work with dignity. And that includes elected members. In this blog our Head of Democratic Services, Dan Sharples explains what work that is taking place to support councillors.

Abuse and intimidation of councillors

The safety of councillors is a pressing issue at all local authorities and has been well documented nationally for some time. In 2022, the Local Government Association (LGA) found that seven out of 10 councillors had experienced abuse from the public in the previous year. I was already aware of previous issues that elected members in Liverpool had faced when I arrived in February 2024. Notably a Scrutiny Committee had needed to be temporarily abandoned due to disruptive protestors in the summer of 2023, as well as issues around councillors' home addresses which had led to our Director of City Law and Governance allowing their addresses to be withheld from the register of interests due to "evidence of a real threat to councillors."

A light was shone on the significance of the issues faced by Liverpool councillors just 16 days after I started with the council. Only my second time stepping foot in Liverpool Town Hall, this time for an Adult Social Care and Public Health Scrutiny Committee, I found myself flanked by shouting protestors at the doors to the building with a camera in my face being asked about "councillor lies", and later the meeting would be temporarily abandoned due to protestors disrupting the meeting to shout that councillors would be "hanged for their treason". If councillors could be subjected to these levels of abuse and intimidation within the four walls of the Town Hall, what were they experiencing in their communities where many were working in single-member wards?

This incident sparked an initial review of the council's approach to the safety of its elected members. In response, the Chief Executive swiftly established a Councillor Safety Working Group made up of officers from Community Safety, Democratic Services, Communications and the Emergency Resilience Unit to look at how the council could better equip its councillors with the tools and resources to manage their safety.

Councillor safety protocol

Given the widespread issue of abuse and intimidation of elected officials, there were lots of resources available to try and understand what action needed to be taken. The LGA's Debate Not Hate campaign had been launched to raise public awareness of the vital role councillors play in local democracy, promote healthy debate, and improve responses to the challenges they encounter. As part of this, a self-assessment toolkit for "ending abuse in public life" had been produced to enable councils to analyse their arrangements for ensuring the safety of their elected members.

The Councillor Safety Working Group completed the self-assessment which highlighted that the robustness of our arrangements only scored 19 out of a possible 50. This highlighted the work required and culminated in the production of a Councillor Safety Protocol, which would document all the support available to councillors in tackling abuse and intimidation. This would include some of the key principles for ensuring councillor safety including how to communicate expectations for interactions with residents and being able to define what constitutes abuse and intimidation, how to report incidents of abuse and intimidation, what powers the council does and doesn't have and importantly the council's relationship with partners such as Merseyside Police.

The protocol has since been produced with input from several councillor groups including Cabinet Members, Scrutiny Chairs Co-Ordinating Group and Member Development Working Group. It provides a range of tools and guidance on how to manage abuse and intimidation and recognises that abuse comes in many forms and can be influenced by personal characteristics such as sex and race, as well as by virtue of a councillor's role within the organisation. It provides practical tools to support councillors' wellbeing, including:

• Risk Assessments for surgeries
• Lone Worker arrangements
• Target hardening at home addresses
• Guidance for abuse on social media
• Public meeting safety arrangements
• Managed contact arrangements

The protocol is now available on the bespoke to members on the council's intranet, alongside a form for reporting incidences of abuse and intimidation.

Learning and development

Several learning and development sessions have already been held as part of the Member Development plan for 2024/25, with the aim of equipping councillors with information and skillset to improve their overall wellbeing. These include:

• Emergency Planning and Civil Resilience for Councillors
• 'Prevent' Anti-Radicalisation Programme
• Personal Safety for Councillors (LGA)
• Handling Online Abuse and Intimidation for Councillors (LGA)
• City Watch walking tour
• Social Media training
• Stress Awareness, Mental Health and Work Life Balance for Councillors

This work will continue throughout the year, with additional sessions also being scheduled:

• Anti-racism briefing
• Improving the capacity of elected members to better meet the challenge of extreme right wing and anti-minority activity
• Launch of the Councillor Safety Protocol

Next steps

The council has taken several positive steps to support councillors with their safety and wellbeing and our arrangements are now scoring 38/50 on the "ending abuse in public life" toolkit, double from six months ago. There is clearly more work to do and many of the remaining gaps are relating to evaluating the effectiveness of our arrangement which will come over time. However, it has been heartening to see the progress already made and particularly how willing so many different sections of the organisation have been to provide support to our elected members.

The effectiveness of the arrangements will be monitored by the Member Development Working Group, to enable members to provide their perspective on the actions that both the council and where applicable the police have taken in response to reports of abuse and intimidation.

The 2025 Councillor Survey will also be seeking feedback from councillors on their experiences of abuse and intimidation to gain valuable insight of the challenges they face and understand what more the council can do to try and end abuse in public life for our 85 elected members.

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