Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council

Having obtained power in 2020, Mellor's administration announced a "Big Plan" for the conurbation, to "harness the potential of our coastline of opportunity"[28] - though the plan also included some specific pledges, such as investing in the Bournemouth International Centre and rejuvenating Poole. To facilitate this work, the Council set up an urban regeneration company, BCP FuturePlaces Limited, with Mellor and his deputy Philip Broadhead initially on the board, albeit unpaid. The company attracted controversy from the outset, with concerns about the six-figure salaries paid to its management[29] and its reliance on large infusions of public money, including an £8 million working capital loan advanced in July 2022.[30] As of October 2022, the company still hadn't produced an outline business case for any of its regeneration projects, these plans being pushed back first until the end of the year,[31] then until 2023.[32]

Another aim of the "Big Plan" was to "invest in an iconic cityscape",[33] and in November 2021 BCP Council voted for Bournemouth to enter the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours contest in an attempt to acquire city status. Broadhead had intimated earlier in the year that residents would be consulted prior to any such application,[34] but in the event they were not consulted, nor was the Bournemouth Civic Society (whose members strongly opposed city status[35]) or the Throop and Holdenhurst Village Council.[36] It later transpired that the application, though for Bournemouth only, contained photographs of multiple sites in Poole and Christchurch.[37] The application proved unsuccessful in any case, Bournemouth losing out to Doncaster and Milton Keynes.[38]

The Mellor administration featured seven times in Private Eye during 2022, initially following its decision to abolish the Council's overview and scrutiny board (OSB), which held the monthly Cabinets to account. The debate on abolishing the OSB began at full Council on 26 April 2022, and due to a large number of absences on the Conservative side the Opposition won an amendment that would have kept the OSB while introducing extra scrutiny. Two Conservative councillors with COVID were then telephoned during an interval and turned up to the debate shortly afterwards, despite having sent apologies hours previously on COVID-related grounds.[39] The meeting was then abandoned due to safety concerns,[40] and at the reconvened meeting on 10 May there were enough Conservatives present to win a further amendment which abolished the OSB and replaced it with four smaller committees which would meet less frequently. Members of the Conservative group were elected as chairs and vice-chairs of these new committees (giving Mellor's party all the casting votes) - despite the convention, evident on Dorset Council and elsewhere, that scrutiny committees are chaired by Opposition councillors.[41] Mellor's Cabinet assistants, too, were installed on the new committees,[42] though they were removed from all scrutiny panels following a vote at full Council on 5 December 2022.[43]

Mellor's most controversial policy[44][45][46] was his proposal to sell the Council's 3,605 beach huts to a Council-owned company for twenty years, to cancel out a £54 million overspend.[47] A report on commercialising Council assets was commissioned from KPMG and this, the first in a series of reports from KPMG, was completed on 22 September 2021.[48] The report warned that if a company could only acquire Council assets because the Council had loaned it the money to do so, then "it is probable that the original borrowing ... would be deemed to be for an improper purpose";[49] similarly, if the Council were to provide a guarantee to the company to enable it to borrow the requisite funds, this too could "be deemed ... for an improper purpose".[50] A second report, specifically on beach hut sales, was then commissioned from KPMG and completed on 22 November 2021.[51] At the Council's budget meeting on 22 February 2022, Mellor denied that a completed report from KPMG existed (even though two existed) instead stating that he had "received comfort" from KPMG about his policy following "a series of workshops".[52] The beach hut scheme was voted through, therefore, without Council having had sight of the foregoing warnings.[53][54]

After several delays, the beach hut scheme came before the Council's corporate and community overview and scrutiny committee on 20 July 2022. Mellor did not turn up to the meeting, no reports or papers were produced, while a democratic services officer was left to answer questions from residents and anxious beach hut tenants.[55] The Conservatives' chief whip then proposed that the meeting be adjourned prior to any debate - despite Procedure Rule 17 of the Council's constitution, which forbids the use of the whip on scrutiny committees.[56] Nine days later, Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Levelling-Up, announced that he was stepping in to outlaw the beach hut scheme. It transpired that Kemi Badenoch, a minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, had written to Mellor on 16 June expressing "concerns" that the regulations surrounding local authority asset sell-offs were "not being used appropriately, as the assets ultimately remain within the Council's group structure".[57] Greg Clark went on the record to denounce councils that make "dodgy deals",[58] and on 1 August he wrote to Mellor stating that he was tightening up the guidance on local authority asset disposals, adding: "I will not hesitate to act where the spirit of the law is ignored or flouted".[59] BCP Council meanwhile set about applying for a £76 million "capitalisation direction", essentially a loan from Government, to balance its books.[60]

The KPMG reports - which cost the Council £120,250, plus VAT - were finally published at the end of August 2022, by which time the beach hut policy had long since been abandoned.[61] At back-to-back scrutiny meetings on 2 September, Mellor denied several times that he had played any part in suppressing these reports at the time of the February budget. The following week, at Cabinet, he stated that he had, in fact, suggested that the reports be held back.[62]

A petition from local residents to remove Mellor from office - along with his deputy, Philip Broadhead - was debated at BCP Council on 8 November 2022, having attracted 2,066 valid signatures.[63] A Conservative backbencher, Duane Farr, attacked the petition organiser Ian Lawrence during the debate, attributing the petition's authorship to "politically motivated trolls", "creepy, sad little people with nothing better to do", who "need calling out and exposing".[64][65][66] The Council voted to take no action over the petition.

The Council sold off assets, including three industrial estates, at the beginning of 2023 in an attempt to balance its books; this was dubbed a "fire sale" by Opposition groups.[67] The Council's external auditor, Grant Thornton LLP, nevertheless commended the administration for returning to more orthodox methods of budget-setting. In January 2023, Drew Mellor began planning a late amendment for the forthcoming budget, which would have involved deliberately overborrowing for a capital scheme, then applying the surplus to the Council's revenue account to minimise council tax increases. The Council's senior officers were so concerned about the legality of this proposal[68] that they contacted Grant Thornton, who urged them to consider their "statutory responsibilities" if the scheme went ahead.[69] Mellor by this time was also facing complaints from the public about his dishonesty in withholding the KPMG reports and other information from the 2022 budget, and these were upheld by the Council's standards committee on 17 January 2023.[70]

It was around this time too that Cllr Mark Anderson, who held the Environment post in Mellor's administration, devised what came to be known as "cleaning for votes" - a street-cleaning scheme aimed at benefiting Conservative wards in the run-up to the local elections.[71] The whole of Mellor's Cabinet were notified of this scheme in an e-mail sent by Anderson on 15 January 2023;[72] three days later, all Conservative members of BCP Council were e-mailed, again by Anderson, with a request for cleaning sites that would benefit them electorally - "the idea is to raise your profile".[73] As independent investigator Janet Kealey noted in her subsequent report, none of the Cabinet or Conservative group raised any concerns "querying the use of Council funds or resources in this way".[74] A complaint against Anderson was raised by an Independent councillor on 26 January and the matter was referred to Dorset Police, who decided not to take any action as the scheme had not yet been implemented.[75] The Council's standards committee subsequently found, however, that Anderson had breached the Council's code of conduct on six counts.[76]

Mellor resigned as Council leader on 13 February 2023, and announced he would not be standing for re-election in the May 2023 local elections.[77] The resignation took place while the investigation into Mark Anderson's conduct was ongoing, and three days prior to an audit and governance meeting, where Mellor's budget proposals were due to be censured by the external auditors, Grant Thornton.[78]