Councillors in Brighton and Hove attract more complaints than politicians elected to other councils, according to a new report.

Comments posted on social media were a “common factor” in complaints from the public, Brighton and Hove City Council said.

A standards panel is expected to be asked to give its verdict on three of the latest batch of complaints, according to the report.

It said an external trainer had been helping councillors learn about the “challenges and opportunities” of using social media.

In the past couple of years, two formal investigations were outsourced at a cost of almost £5,000 to the council.

The report, to the council’s audit and standards committee, said 11 unnamed councillors were the subject of complaints. Seven of those were the subject of two or more complaints.

Fourteen complaints were made about Conservative councillors, ten about Greens, one about a Labour member and one about an Independent.

Other councils received fewer complaints than Brighton and Hove, which had on average more than two a month.

From April 2021 to last March, West Sussex County Council received four complaints and East Sussex County Council received three.

Southampton City Council received one complaint which did not require investigation while Bristol City Council received five, none of which required investigation.

The report, Brighton and Hove City Council’s annual review of standards, said 26 complaints about councillors were made in 2022, down from 36 in 2021 and 33 in 2020.

Twenty three of the 26 complaints were made by the public and three by other councillors.

Complaints were typically made about the way councillors did – or did not – carry out their duties in their ward as well as their comments or behaviour at meetings or on social media.

Not all councillors had responded to officials when complaints were referred to a council standards panel.

In one case, referred to as “A/2022”, the unnamed councillor was asked to delete a comment made during a debate with a resident on social media by the council’s monitoring officer Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis but did not respond.

Nine complaints were made about Conservative councillor Robert Nemeth, who was not named in the report, after online exchanges about a story in the Daily Mail last February.

The story was headlined: “Parent fury as Brighton primary schools tell staff NOT to say ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ and use ‘grown ups’ instead to avoid stigmatising ‘non-traditional’ families.”

In response to the Daily Mail article, the council said: “Recent reports claiming four Brighton schools are not allowing the words ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ to be used are untrue.”

Two of the complaints against Councillor Nemeth – “E/2022” and “J/2022” – were referred to a council standards panel last month, with hearing dates yet to be set.

The report said the council had “no means of compelling” councillors to co-operate with investigations and there was no power to suspend a member who had been found to have breached the council’s code of conduct.

The report is due to be debated by the audit and standards committee tomorrow.