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BBC<\/p>\nBrendan Hughes<\/p>\n
BBC News NI political reporter<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n
DUP councillor Linda Clarke with her husband, party MLA Trevor Clarke<\/p>\n
A Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) councillor has been suspended for three months by a standards watchdog over her involvement in planning decisions lobbied on by her husband.<\/p>\n
Linda Clarke, of Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, was investigated by the Northern Ireland Local Government Commissioner for Standards.<\/p>\n
It found she failed to declare her interests for council planning decisions on which her husband, DUP assembly member Trevor Clarke, was making representations.<\/p>\n
Mrs Clarke is a DUP councillor for the Dunsilly area and works in her husband’s constituency office in South Antrim.<\/p>\n
![\"DUP](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/577a8760-5cb1-11f0-ae37-a7df7603ca40.jpg.webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n
DUP councillor Linda Clarke has since apologised<\/p>\n
The watchdog began investigating in 2019 following a series of newspaper reports.<\/p>\n
A hearing on Wednesday was told Mrs Clarke sat on the council’s planning committee in May 2017 when her husband made representations on two applications.<\/p>\n
He was noted in council records as representing the applicant.<\/p>\n
Mrs Clarke had received guidance from the council’s lawyer earlier that month advising of a possible conflict of interest.<\/p>\n
The advice said that Mr Clarke was understood at the time to be “connected with a planning consultancy business”.<\/p>\n
Assistant commissioner Ian Gordon found Mrs Clarke had breached three sections of the councillors’ code of conduct relating to declaring interests.<\/p>\n
The hearing was told the councillor had apologised in submissions to the watchdog.<\/p>\n
She expressed “regret” that she did not declare her “dual conflict of interest” in the planning applications and withdraw from the council meeting.<\/p>\n
Mr Gordon said the councillor “did not display insight into her actions” and did not accept her conflict of interest “until very recently”.<\/p>\n
He said the councillor had a “significant private and personal non-pecuniary interest”.<\/p>\n
“The area of planning is a matter of substantial public interest,” he added.<\/p>\n
The commissioner said Mrs Clarke had “no previous history” of breaching the code and had self-referred to the watchdog following media reports.<\/p>\n
Controversies<\/p>\n
The watchdog probe was among a number of controversies which emerged in 2019 surrounding the Clarkes.<\/p>\n
At the time, the couple insisted they “made all the relevant declarations and adhered to all rules”.<\/p>\n
In 2023, another DUP councillor who worked in Mr Clarke’s constituency office was suspended from the council’s planning committee for three months.<\/p>\n
The watchdog found John Smyth breached the code of conduct by not declaring an interest when Mr Clarke made representations to the committee.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the assembly member apologised for not declaring to a constituent who was opposing a planning application that he was lobbying for the plans through a side-line consultancy business.<\/p>\n
The apology followed a complaint made to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s standards commissioner.<\/p>\n
Clarke had faced questions in 2019 after it emerged he was running the consultancy business, which represented applicants in the council planning process.<\/p>\n
He denied it was a conflict of interest that breached assembly rules, but later ceased its operations.<\/p>\n
It also emerged Mid and East Antrim Borough Council had launched a planning enforcement investigation into a triple garage built at the Clarkes’ home without approval.<\/p>\n
Mr Clarke, at the time, insisted it did not require planning permission.<\/p>\n
But he later submitted a retrospective application, which was granted.<\/p>\n
The DUP has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Hughes BBC News NI political reporter BBC DUP councillor Linda Clarke with her husband, party MLA Trevor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-250638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114823079353176052","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}