Meeting documents

Details of all Members’ interests in District, Town and Parish Councils will be displayed in the meeting room. The Statutory Register of Member’s Interests can be inspected via the Community Governance team.

The Committee is asked to confirm the minutes of the meeting held on  28 October 2016 are an accurate record.

The Chairman will allow members of the public to ask a question or make a statement about any matter on the agenda for this meeting. These questions may be taken during the meeting, when the relevant agenda item is considered, at the Chairman’s discretion.  

To consider the report of the Monitoring Officer, covering the following items:

1.  A review of the Council’s Standards arrangements, as discussed initially at the last meeting of the Committee in October 2016.

2.  Review of the recent Hearing Panel process

3.  Conduct issues: Member induction and training proposals for the new Council.

4.  Verbal update on complaints dealt with since the last meeting of the Committee.

Resolved

Review of standards arrangements:  To RECOMMEND to Council to reaffirm the following recommendations to the new Council for consideration after May 2017:

1.     To support the option of amalgamating the Standards and Constitution Committees into a single committee;

2.     To recommend that the new combined committee should include co-opted members and that the political balance rules should be waived, as with the current Standards Committee.

3.     That the Committee should be able to appoint its own chairman from its elected members.

4.     That the Independent Person and the deputy Independent Person should be invited to attend meetings of the Committee in an advisory capacity.

Hearing Panel:  Resolved that the Monitoring Officer would add further clarification to the Complaints against Elected Members Procedure to state that any complaints determined by the Hearing Panel by way of written representation would be held in confidential session.

Member Induction and Code of Conduct Training: 

1.     Resolved to RECOMMEND to Council that all councillors should be requested to undertake Code of Conduct training and that all Group Leaders are asked to encourage their members to do so.

2.     Resolved to include the following in the induction training:

·       the use of case studies to illustrate Code of Conduct issues (but not recent, local cases)

·       to include ‘perception of conduct’ and potential impact on reputation in the ‘Danger Zones’ section of the training.

·       to include role descriptions and officer conduct as part of a rolling programme of training, as and when appropriate.

The Chairman may raise any items of urgent business.