Issue - meetings

Review of the Local Assessment Regime

Meeting: 20/05/2009 - Standards Committee (this Committee has now been combined wit the Audit, Standrds and Governance Committee and no longer meets) (Item 10)

10 Review of the Local Assessment Regime pdf icon PDF 75 KB

[To receive a report on the findings of the review undertaken by officers on certain aspects of the local assessment of complaints about Members regime.]

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Further to Minute 59/08 of the 31st March 2009 meeting of the Committee, a report was received on the findings of the review undertaken by officers on aspects of the local assessment of complaints about Members regime.  The Deputy Monitoring Officer provided an overview of the key aspects of the report and the following were noted/agreed:

 

(i)       Publicity to and promotion of the ethical framework and complaints

          process

 

Members were advised of the various methods which were to be used in publicising and promoting the ethical framework and standards regime.  A new "brand" was to be developed for use in all publicity, literature, information etc., which it was anticipated would be implemented in September 2009, following the Council's adoption of the new members' Code of Conduct.  The primary aim of the new branding was to portray the positive benefits of the framework, in a language that was not legalistic and which would therefore be easily understandable to the public.  The introduction of the new branding would coincide with the launch of the Council's new website and it was proposed that there a high profile press release, or series of releases, to promote the standards regime.  Regular updates on progress in this regard would be given in future Monitoring Officer Reports.

 

(ii)      Assessment criteria

 

The Deputy Monitoring Officer advised that an immediate change was required to the Standards Assessment Sub-Committee Assessment Criteria form to specify whether, at the time of the alleged breach of the Code of Conduct, the subject member was acting in either a personal or official capacity.  Such a change was necessary as, save for conduct which constituted a criminal offence and which had resulted in a conviction, the Code currently only applied to Members acting in an official capacity.  It was noted however that this issue might need to be revisited following the introduction of the new Code of Conduct, and that the form was an ever evolving document which was under constant review.

 

(iii)     Notification of complaint to subject member prior to assessment

 

Members noted the legal advice detailed in the report as to whether or not a subject member should be notified of a complaint prior to the complaint having been assessed: in particular, the prohibitions in place under s63 of the Local Government Act 2000 on the disclosure of any information obtained by a monitoring officer in the course of performing any of his or her duties relating to complaints about members, except in specified circumstances.  Were the Committee to decide that it intended to notify the subject member of a complaint prior to assessment, the only information which could be given to the subject member at that stage was the fact that a complaint had been made, the name of the complainant (subject to Data Protection and any request by the complainant for confidentiality) and the relevant paragraph(s) of the Code which may have been breached.  A written summary of the actual allegation could only be provided once the Assessment Sub-Committee  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10