Issue - meetings

The Board considered a report which detailed the Annual Governance Statement for inclusion in the Statement of Accounts 2011 / 2012. 

The Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Resources introduced the report and in doing so highlighted the six core principles within the draft Annual Governance Statement 2011 / 2012 as detailed at Appendix 1 to the report. 

Further discussion followed specifically on Core Principal 2: ‘The roles and responsibilities of Councillors are underpinned by an extensive Member Development Programme to include both mandatory and discretionary training’, as detailed at Appendix 1 to the report.  Councillor Ms. M. T. Buxton expressed concerns that decisions (Planning decisions) were not always made in accordance with the specific training and guidelines given to Members.  The Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Resources agreed to discuss the concerns raised with the Monitoring Officer. 

The Chairman raised the question ‘How do we measure the core principles within the Annual Governance Statement, how well are we performing against the core principles’.  The Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Resources agreed to discuss this with the Monitoring Officer with regard to preparing a report on ‘how do we measure the effectiveness of our governance’ to be presented to a future meeting of the Audit Board.  Members agreed that it would have proved useful if the actual number of member complaints had been included within the Appendix.

RESOLVED that subject to the comments, as detailed in the preamble above, being raised with the Monitoring Officer, the Annual Governance Statement be included in the Statement of Accounts 2011 / 2012.