Complaints made about Barnet councillors saw a slight increase in the last year, with nine cases handled between March 2025 and April 2026. This marks a rise from the previous year's total of eight.
The council's Monitoring Officer, Jessica Farmer, reported to the Governance, Audit, Risk Management and Standards Committee (GARMS) that most complaints were filtered out at the initial stage due to a lack of merit.
The most common complaint received from residents was that councillors had not responded to correspondence. Farmer clarified that this is not always a breach of the code of conduct unless it is a consistent problem.
One case did result in a breach of the code, leading to the councillor being asked to attend training and issue an apology. The report also recommended that councillors use out-of-office messages on their emails to manage resident expectations regarding response times.