Georges River Council's expensive code of conduct bill

The figures show a whopping $201,232 was spent on the 17 code of conduct complaints put forward by the council in 2019/20.

The Georges River Council was not alone in making multiple complaints with code of conduct complaints rising by 63 per cent from 2017/18 (241) to 2019/20 (395).

NSW Labor has urged the state government to conduct an urgent review of the model for code of conduct for councils following this significant spike in the number of complaints and the cost to deal with them.

Shadow Minister for Local Government Greg Warren said councils needed a major overhaul of the Model Code of Conduct to ensure the system was efficient, effective and not used for political point-scoring purposes at the expense of councils and their communities.

"When one council is spending more than $200,000 in one year to simply deal with code of conduct complaints, serious questions must be asked," Mr Warren said.

"There is no doubt that some people use code of conducts as a way to score cheap political points at a significant cost to the council and their community.

"A lot of time, effort and expense goes into investigating these complaints, but the reality is the investigation often results in very little action taken.

"Its councils and their communities who are counting the cost of an ineffective and inefficient Model Code of Conduct."

The Georges River Council was approached to comment on the cost of the code of conduct complaints.

A spokesperson from the Georges River Council told the Leader the Council cannot comment on Code of Conduct investigations.