Issue - meetings

To receive an update from the Parish Councils' Representatives on matters of relevance to the Committee.

Mr. Cypher reported that since the last meeting of the Standards Committee there had been no meeting of the Bromsgrove Area Committee of the Worcestershire County Association of Local Councils (CALC), the next meeting of which was due to take place on 3rd September 2008.  Mr. Cypher added that he would be taking forward some matters to that meeting, including parish councils giving publicity to their individual Codes of Conduct (following an article which had appeared in Alvechurch News in relation to the Alvechurch Code) and Members' Register of Interests forms (to flag up issues such as the completion of forms and the position in relation to co-opted Members).  These matters would then be discussed at the Parish Council Forum in September. 

The Deputy Monitoring Officer requested that Mr. Cypher highlight the fact that parish councils had previously been requested to forward a hard copy of their respective Codes of Conduct to the Council.  Although parish councils had adopted their individual Codes some did not appear to have hard copies of these available, headed up with the name of their parish council and setting out whether these included the optional paragraphs to the Code, which they were required to do should any members of the public ask to see these.

RESOLVED:

(a)       that the position be noted; and

(b)       that Mr. Cypher raise the issue of the individual parish council Codes of Conduct at the next meeting of the Bromsgrove Area Committee of the Worcestershire County Association of Local Councils (CALC).