Issue - meetings

[To consider two issues arising from the Standards Board for England (SBE) Bulletin 40 relating to adjournment of local assessment decisions and joint Ombudsman/SBE investigations.]

Members considered a report on two issues arising from the Standards Board for England (SBE) Bulletin 40, relating to adjournment of local assessment decisions and joint Ombudsman/SBE investigations.

In relation to adjournment of local assessment decisions, whilst appreciating and seeing the benefits of resolving matters as quickly as possible, and without the need of proceeding to a full investigation, concerns were expressed by both the Committee and the Monitoring Officer that:

i)          the proposal would suggest that the role of the assessment sub-committee would move away from merely determining whether there was a prima facie case to answer, to effectively determining whether a complaint was justified and how the complaint should be dealt with, which would be in conflict with the terms of reference of the sub-committee; and

ii)         whilst it was felt appropriate for the Monitoring Officer to act as a 'post box' to ask specified questions of the subject member and to relay the subject member's responses back to the sub-committee, it would be inappropriate for the Monitoring Officer to raise any further questions on the back of the subject member's responses as this would effectively be tantamount to starting a mini investigation.

Regarding Standards Board and Ombudsman joint investigations, it was noted that there could be some difficulties with this proposal, as in many cases the issues would be slightly different.  The ability to request the Standards Board to investigate such a matter would also depend upon the order in which the various complaints were received.  There were also some issues of confidentiality which would need to be considered in each case.

RESOLVED:

a)         that the report be noted; and

b)         that officers formulate a response to the SBE, in the terms outlined in the preamble above, on the issue of adjourning local assessment decisions.