A housing association has thrown two councillors off its representative body after a hearing found they had broken its code of conduct. Councillors Danny Meredith and Sultan Ali have been removed from the Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) panel for publicly criticising controversial plans to demolish four of the town’s ‘Seven Sisters’ tower blocks.
It comes after the pair tabled a motion at a council meeting calling on the mutual to ‘reconsider’ its proposal to drop the landmark flats, noting that RBH were leaving 300 flats ‘dormant’, while 8,000 people in the borough were waiting for a home. The representative body - made up of tenants, employees and councillors - has responsibilities that include approving RBH's corporate strategy and appointing non-executive directors.
A disciplinary panel found the Labour duo had significantly breached the requirement to act in the best interests of RBH at all times, work cooperatively with its board and not bring it into disrepute. A letter to Coun Meredith notes press articles in which he is ‘directly quoted’ as well as ‘the contents of social media posts and video posted on Twitter by yourself, again regarding the College Bank flats’.
