Issue - items at meetings - Documentation Accompanying Reports to Assessment and Review Sub-Committees - 12 month Review

Issue - meetings

Documentation Accompanying Reports to Assessment and Review Sub-Committees - 12 month Review

 

 

Meeting: 08/06/2011 - Standards Committee (this Committee has now been combined wit the Audit, Standrds and Governance Committee and no longer meets) (Item 10)

10 Documentation Accompanying Reports to Assessment and Review Sub-Committees pdf icon PDF 77 KB

[To review the documentation currently available to the Assessment and Review Sub-Committees when assessing complaints against Members for alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct.]

 

Minutes:

Members were asked to review the Committee's current policy on the documentation made available to the Standards Assessment and Review Sub-Committees, and to determine whether any changes should be made to this. 

 

It was noted that existing policy allowed for the provision of publicly available information/documentation only to the Sub-Committees, with an added provision that a Sub-Committee could make a request to the Monitoring Officer (MO) for any other piece of information to be made available to it, which the MO would then consider.    

 

The Deputy Monitoring Officer (DMO) stated that the current policy assisted officers as it made clear the boundaries relating to which documentation could be made available to the Sub-Committees.  The MO added that she was comfortable with this approach and that to include any additional information over and above that which had submitted by a complainant and which was publicly available could put officers in a difficult position.  She added that officers had to ensure that they could not be accused of effectively commencing an investigation by gathering any additional information, particularly given the limited role of the Sub-Committees.

 

It was noted that only one request had previously been made by a member of a Sub-Committee for additional information which, albeit that the information was in the MO's possession, was not publicly available information and had therefore been refused.  The MO stated that there would be a point during any resulting investigation when relevant additional information could be gathered, which was a separate process. 

 

The Committee agreed that it was important for there to be an easily definable way of deciding what information should be placed before a Sub-Committee, and that if such guidance was not in place there could be the potential for officer bias entering into the process.  The present system appeared to work well and still gave some scope for the Committee to make a request to the MO for additional information; a process which the MO confirmed she was happy to continue with.  It was further agreed that there might be scope to review the position under any new local standards regime which might be introduced following the demise of the current standards framework under the Localism Bill.

 

RESOLVED that the Committee's policy on the documentation that could be made available to the Standards Assessment and Review Sub-Committees remain unaltered.