Issue - meetings
Monitoring Officer's Report
Meeting: 21/03/2012 - Standards Committee (this Committee has now been combined wit the Audit, Standrds and Governance Committee and no longer meets) (Item 41)
41 Monitoring Officer's Report 
PDF 83 KB
[To receive a report from the Monitoring Officer on any matters of relevance to the Committee.]
Additional documents:
Minutes:
The Committee noted the contents of the Monitoring Officer's (MO's) report and the issues detailed below were raised during the consideration of this.
(i) Complaint References 07/11, 08/11 & 09/11
Further to paragraph 3.4 of the report, the Deputy Monitoring Officer (DMO) advised that at the Assessment Sub-Committee meeting on 2nd March 2012 it had been decided that linked Complaint References 07/11, 08/11 and 09/11 against a District Councillor Whittaker be referred to the MO for local investigation.
(ii) Complaint References 03/10 & 04/10
The DMO advised that Parish Councillor Matthews's appeal to the First-tier Tribunal - General Regulatory Chamber (Local Government Standards in England) against the Standards Committee's decision was the first appeal to the Tribunal against a decision of the Committee.
It was noted that Councillor Matthews had raised points in his appeal which he had not raised during the Final Determination Hearing, and that the Tribunal had been prepared to consider those points. She went on to explain the appeal process and that the Tribunal had ultimately allowed Councillor Matthews's appeal, the effect of which was that the decision made by the Standards Committee had been quashed as the Tribunal did not agree with the Committee's finding that there had been a breach of the Code of Conduct.
The Tribunal agreed with the Standards Committee's view that Councillor Matthews would benefit from receiving training on the Code of Conduct, which could therefore still be undertaken by Councillor Matthews on a voluntary basis. The DMO advised that she had written to Councillor Matthews to establish whether he was willing to complete such training. It was noted that whilst Councillor Matthews had not replied to the DMO directly, he had replied to a separate communication from the Ethical Standards Officer indicating that he wished to attend a training session which was taking place for the parishes in the summer on the new Code of Conduct under the Localism Act 2011.
The DMO highlighted that the reason why the Tribunal had come to a different view to the Committee was based on the interpretation of the definition of a family member. The Committee had followed the guidance given by Standards for England on this, which was that the definition should be interpreted "widely", and which was therefore applied in Councillor Matthews's case. However, the Tribunal had responded that they did not agree with Standards for England's guidance on this, and that the interpretation of family should be based on the Oxford Dictionary meaning. The DMO stated that guidance issued by Standards for England would, as a first port of call at least, normally be followed at local level, and that in this instance a higher authority had decided that the guidance was perhaps not appropriate.
The DMO stated that the Committee did have a right of appeal against the Tribunal's decision but that from a legal point of view there was not a strong case for pursuing an appeal.
The Committee noted the Tribunal's ruling and expressed concern that ... view the full minutes text for item 41
Copyright Bromsgrove District Council