A parish councillor who appeared in a notorious Zoom meeting did not “have the authority” to mute and eject councillors, a report into the row has found.
Millions watched on social media during the pandemic as Jackie Weaver ejected the chairman for challenging her “authority” in a chaotic Handforth Parish Council meeting where councillors shouted and swore at each other.
During the meeting in December 2020, Ms Weaver was told: “You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver. No authority at all.”
Six reports have since been published by Cheshire East Council, in an investigation that cost more than £85,000.
One said that Ms Weaver “was not acting in an official capacity at these meetings” and “she did not have the authority to manage the attendance at those meetings”.
But the 145-page reports added that “it is understandable why she acted as she did”.
The reports looked into the behaviour of councillors at the parish council, with three looking at complaints prior to the viral meeting and three looking at behaviour in that meeting.
It stated: “Faced with what were unusual and difficult circumstances, and the deep-seated issues underpinning those circumstances, we can understand why Jackie Weaver acted as she did, despite her action being without any formal footing in terms of appropriate process and procedure.”
Reacting to the reports, Ms Weaver told the BBC: “We were still very vague about how virtual council meetings worked and I did not actually remove them from the meeting, in my opinion, I moved them to the waiting room.
“A little later in the meeting the remaining councillors voted to remove them.
“So I welcome the findings of the report but am deeply saddened that it took so long and cost so much to get there.”
Three members were found to potentially be in breach of the Members Code of Conduct and were issued with determination notices by Cheshire East’s monitoring officer and were due to attend a hearing sub-committee meeting.
But these matters could not be pursued due to the resignation of all three of the members, the report said.
A statement on behalf of some of the former councillors said that they did not accept the findings of the investigations and “do not recognise any of them as being valid”.
“In terms of the findings of the reports, we wholly refute the findings and view them as being extreme fiction. The investigations were in our opinion conducted with more than an air of mendacity,” they said.
“We did not, at any time, breach the code of conduct and now plan to fully contest these findings.”
