Agenda item

Report CSD21024

The report updated the Committee on a number of standards issues.

Work Programme and Matters Outstanding

Recognising that a large proportion of Code of Conduct Complaints related to planning matters it was agreed that the Chairman of the Development Control Committee and the Assistant Director for Planning should be invited to the next meeting of the Standards Committee on 15 July 2021.  It was agreed that the discussion should centre around the report of the Planning Advisory Service and the Council’s existing Planning Protocol.

A Member further requested that the report of the Planning Advisory Service be circulated to the Standards Committee for information.

LGA Draft Code of Conduct Consultation

It was recognised that the Council had only recently approved a compliant Code of Conduct.  Members agreed the LGA Code of Conduct should not be adopted at the current time however, it would be worth giving the matter further consideration over the course of the next municipal year in order to determine whether the LGA Code could be adopted for the new Council from 2022.

Publishing Complaints procedure on Website

A Member expressed concern that in the event of a councillor being taken through a formal investigation process there was no right of appeal without going through the High Court.  The Member suggested that there should always be a right of appeal without cost to the individual purse and the procedure should be amended to reflect this.  In response the Monitoring Officer highlighted that in reality the sanctions available were very limited – reprimand, removal from a committee, requirement to undertake training or removal of resources. Other than a differently constituted Sub-Committee it was difficult to introduce a process of appeal.  Members also noted that prior to sanctioning a councillor, the Standards Committee was required to seek the view of the Independent Person and this was an element of safeguard within the system.

Members suggested that the wording of Paragraph 3.3(i) should be amended to ensure that there was no risk of allegations demonstrating a pattern of behaviour being rejected.  The Monitoring Officer confirmed that the purpose of the criteria was to manage a chain complaint revisiting issues that had previously been investigated and found to have no substance.  Dealing with such complaints may not be a good use of officer resource.  The Committee noted that one of the reasons for the list was to address the mismatch between formal investigation and volume of complaints.  The Monitoring Officer reported that he had spent some time reviewing the historical complaints that had been received.  Throughout the history of the Standards Regime there had been three main means of dealing with the initial assessment of complaints – The Standards Board for England which was totally independent of Local Authorities, the Filtering Sub-Committees led by the Independent Members, and the present approach which was Officer led with support from the Independent Person.  When looking at the complaints dealt with totally independently of the Local Authority by the Standards Board for England, there was one matter deemed worth of proceeding beyond initial assessment and ultimately once a further investigation had been completed it had been decided that there was no case to answer.  Of the complaints received under the Independent Member led system, one went forward for investigation and that complaint led to a 6-month suspension.  Subsequently there had been a number of matters that had not cross the threshold.  There were some themes arising from the complaints received including councillors not responding to correspondence.  Early Standards Board decisions made it abundantly clear that councillors did not have to respond to correspondence from their residents.  If they chose not to respond to correspondence, councillors ran the risk of not being re-elected in future.  As such it was a matter for the ballot box rather than the standards system.  This threshold was intended to deal with the disparity between expectation and reality.  It was not meant to dissuade residents from complaining, rather to divert complaints to more appropriate routes and to provide an indication of what was an acceptable complaint.

There was also a focus on informal resolution.  There were a number of complaints (not those where a councillor’s integrity was called into question), where on reflection a councillor may consider a matter could have been handled differently and in those circumstances an informal resolution was sought rather than pursuing a formal standards investigation.

In relation to the question of anonymity and whether it was legitimate for a complainant to withhold all details apart from their name when submitting a complaint by email, the Committee noted that where complainants completed the online form they were asked to provided information which would enable due diligence around verification of identity, such as postal address and contact telephone number.  The Monitoring Officer confirmed that his personal view was that unless there was an allegation of serious dishonesty or threats of violence (which would more than likely require investigation by the Police), it was right and proper that someone facing accusations should know their accuser.  The legislation required complaints to be in writing but then gave local authorities considerable flexibility to determine their own procedures for dealing with complaints. As such, if a complaint did not want to put their name to a complaint or sought to withhold their details for reasons other than personal safety (which would rarely, if ever, be an issue) then the Council should reserve the right not to investigate a matter.  Sometimes there were issues where further questions could be asked to verify the validity of a complaint and if there was an expectation that the Local Authority review and investigate then complainants should be upfront about who they were because ultimately the standards system was in place so that local residents could hold their local councillors to account where they considered than standards had fallen short what could reasonably be expected.

The Committee noted that minor amendments could be made to the procedure and approved prior to publication on the website.

Recruitment of an Additional Independent Person

It was agreed that arrangements should be put in place for the recruitment of a third Independent Person.

Anonymised Schedule of Complaints

The Monitoring Officer reported that he had received a request from a Member in respect of access to the Part 2 appendix on the Standards Committee agenda.  The Committee noted that due to the personal sensitive nature of the information within the Part 2 agenda of the Standards Committee access was more tightly restricted than some other Council Committees.

The Committee agreed that an anonymised schedule could be shared with Members of the Council on request for the purposes of learning, on the condition that information about Code of Conduct complaints in respect of Councillors remained in Part 2 and was not more widely shared.  The Chairman stressed that access to information about complaints should not be used as a phishing exercise and should only be used for the purposes of improving ethical standards across the Council.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.