Councillors found that he breached the code of conduct multiple times
Joseph Boam, county councillor for Whitwick(Image: Joseph Boam)
A Reform UK councillor has been told to apologise after he made “reckless” and “disingenuous” posts on social media whilst also launching an “insidious form of public pressure” on a former council worker.
Joseph Boam, Reform UK councillor for Whitwick, was found to have breached the council’s code of conduct multiple times following complaints from the former monitoring officer Lauren Haslam and Conservative councillor Ozzy O’Shea.
Leicestershire County Council’s Member Conduct Panel met twice on Friday, October 30, to see whether or not he had breached the code on two separate occasions.
Councillors found that Cllr Boam had breached the code in both instances for a total of four breaches.
The first investigation was launched after Cllr Boam created a clip in which investigators say he selectively edited Mrs Haslam’s response to a question he asked at a meeting in November 2025.
Cllr Boam asked Mrs Haslam if she thought that a rise in council complaints was “from far-left activists trying to cancel and silence Reform UK councillors”.
She replied: “No, I wouldn’t agree with that statement, thank you”.
Cllr Boam later published a Facebook post with Mrs Haslam’s initial three-second reply and deliberately omitted a further explanation that followed.
Investigators found that Cllr Boam later claimed on the Facebook post that Mrs Haslam was “far from neutral” and “definitely not” impartial.
Investigators found that he engaged in an “insidious form of public pressure” and an “offensive attack on a senior officer’s personal integrity” after he selectively edited Mrs Haslam’s response to a question he had asked at a meeting in November 2025.
Mrs Haslam admitted in her response that Cllr Boam’s posts contributed to her resignation from her position as well as the way she was “treated and spoken to” by the Reform administration.
Mr Alex Oram, representing ch&i associates, told the panel that Cllr Boam “refused to engage with the [investigation] process”.
He added: “We were never given the opportunity to ask him what prompted his concerns or ask him what evidence he had.
“We have had no other evidence of other councillors sharing similar concerns”.
Cllr Boam argued in his initial response to the complaint that “not enough weight” had been given to his freedom of speech, but Mr Oram argued that he “directly challenged” Mrs Haslam’s integrity instead of going through proper channels and ways to address his impartiality concerns.
“It’s not in place for people to personally attack individuals”, Mr Oram added.
Independent person Mr Richard Gough told the panel he felt Boam had a “dismissive attitude” through the investigation and the complaint.
“Not appearing today is illustrative of that. If someone had made some very serious allegations, you would at least try and respond to them”, he added.
In a separate conduct meeting, investigators found that Cllr Boam presented a “fabricated timeline to suit his political ends” in response to the rerouting of the Arriva Service 12 bus down Church Lane in Whitwick.
In Facebook posts, Cllr Boam claimed that Conservative councillors, including Cllr Ozzy O’Shea, had made a “crazy decision” to send buses down the road before Reform UK took over the county council.
They also found that, despite finding no evidence for his claims, he continued to “double down” and accused those who challenged him of “telling lies”.
Mr Oram, who also presented the investigator’s findings, said they feared it was a “deliberate attempt to mislead”, despite the route being fully commercial with Arriva at the time.
Once again, Mr Oram said they were unable to speak to Boam about his decisions regarding why he posted and “went beyond expressing opinions” regarding the Arriva 12 bus route.
He added: “He [Boam] repeatedly referred to being evidence them as provable facts and therefore anyone challenging these facts were lying.
“We felt this was disingenuous”.
Cllr Boam, in his defence, argued that his comments “reflected genuine understanding of events at the time” and that he didn’t “seek to mislead the public or fabricate events”.
He also argued that his posts in both complaints were protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and freedom of speech.
Regarding Mrs Haslam’s complaint, the panel found that Cllr Boam had breached the code of conduct twice: by failing to treat council officers with respect and by compromising the impartiality of a council employee.
The panel said that Cllr Boam’s post created a “materially misleading impression of her response” and “amounted to an unreasonable personal attack upon her professional integrity and failed to respect both her and the statutory role she performed”.
Regarding Cllr O’Shea’s complaint, they also found that he breached the code twice regarding treating councillors and members of the public with respect and bringing the council or councillors’ roles into disrepute.
The panel found that Cllr Boam’s posts “went beyond political satire and criticism”, lacked “sufficient factual basis”, were made “recklessly”, and amounted to a “personal attack” on Cllr O’Shea.
They also found that Cllr Boam’s posts were “materially inaccurate and false” and that he “acted with a lack of integrity”.
He was ordered to be formally censured in both complaints, to write an apology to Mrs Haslam and Cllr O’Shea, and it is recommended that he be removed from all council committees and outside bodies until May 2027.
Cllr Boam told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he did not wish to comment on the panel’s decisions.
Reform UK was contacted for comment.
