Victoria's ombudsman has found a number of local councils are unnecessarily shutting the public out of council meetings, in a report which she said demonstrated "a lot of poor practice".

Almost 25 per cent of all approaches to the ombudsman were about local government.

The report said although councils were "not engaging in widespread, deliberate, secretive behaviour", there were examples where certain councils were failing to give "sufficient attention to transparency".

Ombudsman Deborah Glass said there was evidence councils were closing meetings for matters that could be embarrassing or that related to conflict of interest.

Ms Glass found closing a council meeting was often the "default position" and the rules around closure were very "non-specific".

"You can drive coach a coach and horses through the requirements," she said.

"They pretty much allow councils to close a meeting for any matter that might prejudice the council in any way.

"What we found was a lot of poor practice across the state and a lot of different practice across the state."

Call for mandatory code of conduct

The Frankston Council closed a meeting to avoid negative media attention, Ms Glass said.

"Well that was an example in the report where the council was concerned about embarrassing behaviour, discussions of social media and the decision then was to close the meeting because it would cause embarrassment," she told 774 ABC Melbourne.

"Now that's not a good reason for closing a meeting under the [Local Government] Act."

Ms Glass said the relationship between councils, chief executives and councillors was at times "fraught" and sometimes "downright toxic" which would have implications for transparency.

"The recommendation in this report essentially is that there be mandatory a core code of conduct across the state," she said.

"At the moment there are 79 different ones and that can't be right.

"There should be a consistent set of minimum standards together with mandatory training of those councillors

"It does need to be enforceable."

'Confidential, not secret'

Melbourne's Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said he believed his council was very open and transparent, but there were some things that were "confidential".

"They're not secret, they're confidential, contractual matters or where we're giving grants," he said.

"That decision is made by the chief executive officer, not by councillors, and invariably what we do once we've made the decision, we make that decision public."

Councillor Doyle said they tried live streaming a council meeting once but there was "zero interest".

Victoria's peak local government body is confident the code of conduct process is holding councillors to account, but welcomed the ombudsman's suggestions for improvement.

"It really does provide opportunities for councils to look at the case studies which are in the report and look to see how they could improve their processes," Municipal Association of Victoria's acting president Coral Ross said.

"One of their core issues would be to ensure greater transparency."

Ms Ross encouraged councillors to engage in training.