Issue - meetings

Further to Minute 31, the Monitoring Officer’s General Report on this agenda updates the Committee on the Local Government Chronicle Awards, and on recruitment to independent member vacancies.

Amendments to the Minutes were agreed as follows:

• The inclusion of Councillor Curry in the list of attendees
• Minute 28 paragraph 2 to read: “Whilst there were growing legislative powers for the Council to hold non-elected bodies to account, there were still frustrations where unelected bodies such as the Schools Forum were able to exert considerable sway over the Council’s ability to deploy resources as it wished”.

Councillor Curry expressed his disagreement with aspects of Minute 28 and requested that it record his recollection that the Chief Executive had described the Council as ‘member-led’ whilst acknowledging that he had, after discussion with the administration, instructed officers not to consult local ward councillors about a bid for projects that might be undertaken within their wards supported by government funding; and his challenge to the Chief Executive on this point at the meeting.

It was agreed that future agendas should contain a specific report on outstanding matters from previous meetings.

Connected to both Minute 26 and 30, the Committee discussed the extent to which public questions of the Standards Committee could and should be encouraged, and the extent to which there could be issues or confusion about the distinction between service delivery, process and ethical concerns. The Committee requested that practice from other councils should be explored, and that consideration should be given at a future meeting of the Committee to constructing an explicit ethical framework for council decision-making to be measured against.  Committee members agreed to pass on any good practice examples they felt could inform the debate to the Monitoring Officer as soon as possible.

RESOLVED that

1)  the Minutes of the Meeting held on 8^th December 2009 be confirmed, subject to the amendments outlined above;

2)  future agendas should have a standing item on issues outstanding from previous meetings; and

3)  a report be put to the November meeting of the Standards Committee on developing an ethical framework for decision-making, with Committee members forwarding good practice examples to the Monitoring Officer in the meantime.