Elected members of Swindon Borough Council will soon be asked to provide details to allow checks into their background and whether they have a criminal record.

Earlier this year members of the authority’s standards committee were provided with a range of options for possible disclosure and barring checks for councillors.

The committee voted unanimously to require all elected members to have a check - there are already mandatory for both council officers working with children and other vulnerable people, but not councillors.

Euclid Street’s monitoring and legal officer Lisa Hall told the standards committee things were close to starting.

She said: “A budget has been identified for the management of the checks, and we are due to start the process shortly.

“We’re still working on the protocol.”

She told councillor Mike Davies that the costs for all 57 members to be checked would be £2,200.

Ms Hall’s annual report to the committee also included some details of complaints made against members under the council’s code of conduct.

There were nine complaints, one made by a borough councillor against a fellow borough councillor and by a parish councillor against a parish councillor, and seven were made against parish councillors by member of the public.

Four cases were closes after a validity check, and four by the monitoring officer after assessment and one closed by an assessment subcommittee. None were progressed.