It is the latest escalation in a long-running stand-off between Mr Snowdon and Commissioner for Standards Dr Melissa McCullough, who has now found against him three times.
Mr Snowdon, pictured, was originally ordered in April 2026 to write apologies to fellow member Stuart Clark and the Economic Development Committee after a breach of the Code of Conduct. He did not appeal, but refused to apologise. That refusal led to a second finding against him in July and a two-day suspension – in which the commissioner confirmed the apologies were still required and gave him seven more days to provide them. He again declined. At the same time he was handed a further day suspension following another complaint, that he had disclosed confidential information.
A fresh complaint, this time by former politician Robert McDowall, prompted the latest report. Dr McCullough found Mr Snowdon had further breached the code through his ‘deliberate and continuing’ refusal to comply, and by stating he no longer wished to take part in the investigation.
In his response, Mr Snowdon said he would apologise to Mr Clark only once a series of steps had been taken over the island’s proposed data centre project – including postponing the tender, and carrying out risk, environmental and feasibility studies – but ‘not before’. He described his stance as a ‘political statement and protest’ against determinations he called ‘biased and unfair’, and was reported as saying the code was being used to ‘gag’ him.
Dr McCullough said Mr Snowdon was entitled to disagree with and publicly criticise her rulings, and to voice his views on the data centre, but could not ‘substitute political protest for compliance’. His conduct, she said, ‘strikes at the authority and effectiveness of the standards system itself’.
She suspended him from the service of the States of Alderney for 30 consecutive days, without pay, barring him from meetings and States business. However, she noted that the suspension would not prevent him attending meetings of the States of Deliberation in Guernsey – a ‘jurisdictional limitation’ she recommended the States review, warning it risked making the sanction ‘appear incomplete’.
The requirement to apologise remains binding, with a further seven-day deadline. The suspension will take effect once the period for appeal expires, or, if Mr Snowdon appeals, once that appeal is determined.
Mr Snowdon said in response that he had not refused to apologise but explained that he would not do so until a data centre tender process had been at the least postponed.
He maintained that he was being ‘gagged’ by the commissioner and said that the latest complaint against him was politically motivated in relation to the data centre controversy.
‘Clearly I have not refused to apologise rather I am making a political statement and protest against your judgments, which I see as biased and unfair and failing in your duty to look after the public,’ he said in a letter to Dr McCullough.
Alderney is due to hold an election in November, but Mr Snowdon is not due to stand, having been re-elected for a four-year term in 2024.