A SCHEME protecting town hall staff who blow the whistle on wrongdoing has been given the thumbs-up by councillors.

But if employees act maliciously they could find themselves in hot water, the councillors decided.

The Ribble Valley Council's personnel committee gave the go-ahead to a scheme encouraging employees to report matters of concern without fear of victimisation.

The council's legal director Paul Timson said scheme would encourage workers to disclose malpractice in the form of "irregularity, wrongdoing or serious failures of standards at work."

And the new code emphasised that the whistleblowers would be protected from "unfavourable comeback" as a result of their disclosures.

Complainants would have to prove sufficient grounds for their concerns and report them at the earliest opportunity.

The council would deal with the matter within 10 days, but where the whistleblower had acted "maliciously or vexatiously" the council might take disciplinary action.

The new code was being adopted following a Government study of standards in public life, the legal director told the meeting.

"The Nolan committee report on standards of conduct in local government concluded that one area underdeveloped in councils was the handling of internal concerns about standards.

"The committee recommended that local authorities should institute procedures for whistleblowing that would enable concerns to be raised confidentially inside and, if necessary, outside of organisations," he said.

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