Agenda item

Report of the Director of Legal and Governance

Councillor Ginny Klein joined the meeting at this point.

Sarah Molyneux, Head of Legal and Governance and Nancy Barnard, Governance Manager introduced the report which invited the Committee to consider a draft response to the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s consultation on Ethical Standards in Local Government. During the discussion the following points were raised:

a)  The sanctions available to Councils to address breaches of the Code of Conduct for Councillors and Co-opted Members are too limited to deal with the most serious cases. Not having sufficient sanctions could lead to cases stagnating as little action can be taken and may lead to dissatisfaction with the process from citizens and others involved in the case.

b)  The Council has effective, legally compliant arrangements in place for dealing with alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct. These involve the political Groups, the Monitoring Officer, the Independent Person and, ultimately, this Committee but these are limited by national restrictions on action that can be taken. To ensure consistency, should new sanctions be brought in to address serious breaches, these should be accompanied by national guidance on the circumstances in which sanctions should be applied.

c)  Councillors are required to attend training on the Code of Conduct and on Safeguarding when they take up office. Training is also being arranged on the safe proper use of social media and there is a comprehensive induction programme for new councillors.

d)  The role of the Independent Person is valuable but in the more serious cases the involvement of an independent body separate from the authority of which the councillor or co-optee is a member would be appropriate. Options that could be explored could include reciprocal arrangements with other local authorities or panels made up of a number of Independent Persons appointed by local authorities in the area.

e)  The Committee acknowledged the challenges of requiring co-opted members to register and publish interests in the same way as councillors suggesting it might be appropriate for co-optees to register interests relevant to the role they have been appointed to and for those registered interests to be held by the Monitoring Officer and not published. Co-opted members would continue to be responsible for declaring their interests at meetings and not participating in any matter in which they have an interest. This is explained to co-opted members during their induction.

f)  The Committee was not aware of any serious intimidation of councillors having occurred locally but did raise concern about how to deal with difficult individuals such as vexatious complainants.

RESOLVED to

(1)  Approve the draft response to the consultation subject to amendments based on the comments outlined above,

(2)  Delegate authority to the Chair of the Committee to approve the final draft for submission to the Committee on Standards in Public Life,

(3)  Share the response with the Portfolio Holder with responsibility for Standards prior to submission,

(4)  Request that the Governance Manager raise the issue of arranging training for Councillors on dealing with difficult individuals.