A plan to "name and shame" North Herts district councillors who fail to take compulsory training on safeguarding and data protection has been rejected.

Daniel Allen (Lab), North Herts Council's executive member for governance, wants to crack down on the "scary" number of representatives who fail to complete training and proposed publishing an annual report with the names of the councillors in question.

He said that councillors who fail to complete training are "unsafe" after the council's monitoring officer, Isabelle Alajooz, said there can be "a corporate risk" from councillors who don't complete "crucial" training modules.

But Claire Winchester (LD), chair of the authority's overview and scrutiny committee, said that lateness in completing annual training did not necessarily mean a councillor was "unsafe", and committee members voted against the "naming and shaming" proposal.

Ralph Muncer, leader of the Conservative group, said the risk of data leaks or safeguarding issues being missed could never be "fully removed" and added that it should be up to the "conscience" of individual councillors whether they wished to take "a measure in order to mitigate it".

"It may be the case that we just have to accept that councillors are not necessarily going to go and engage and complete this training, for a whole host of reasons," he said.

Cllr Muncer, who is also a county councillor, admitted that he had not completed the North Herts Council's safeguarding training, and said that he had completed "so many different courses" elsewhere on safeguarding and was "unable to fit it in at this moment".

The "naming and shaming" plans were also opposed by Labour's Elizabeth Dennis, who described it as "unfair" and "unnecessary" and suggested the council should look into the possibility of verifying training completed by councillors elsewhere.

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Jon Clayden (LD) raised the possibility of naming councillors only to their colleagues rather than to the public, while his party colleague David Chalmers said he was "very uncomfortable with the idea of publicly naming colleagues, and added: "I don't think it works, I don't think it's right."Committee members heard from Cllr Allen that only 70% of councillors had completed data protection training, and that some councillors had used personal email addresses for correspondence about council activities, potentially breaching data protection regulations.

"It's important that members complete the compulsory training, both to ensure that processes are understood and that risk is managed adequately, as there are legal requirements for doing this training," Cllr Allen said.

He said it was "appalling" that some councillors had not completed their training, and continued: "It has reached a point where literally the naming and shaming, I think, is the only thing that is going to get people to complete this.

"If you're not willing to do safeguarding training, and have it known that you've done safeguarding, there's a problem."

Val Bryant (Lab), leader of the council, said she hoped naming would lead to "self-reflection" and to an increased uptake of training.

Martin Prescott, a Conservative councillor, backed Cllr Allen's proposal and said it would be "madness" to "keep on doing the same thing and expect a different outcome".

"If you don't want to be named or shamed, just do the training," he said.

Vijaiya Poopalasingham (Lab) also supported the proposal, which he said was about "accountability and transparency".

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He added: "For any other area, we are completely accountable and transparent, and everything we do is in the public sphere.

"Whether we like it or not, that's the nature of us being elected officials."

Instead of a report naming individual councillors, a yearly report will be published with details of the completion rate for compulsory training modules.