Agenda item

The Principal Solicitor presented a report on the progress of Best Practice Recommendations and in doing so drew Members’ attention to the Recommendations, the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) Local Government Ethical Standards -15 Best Practice Recommendations and the updated Arrangements for handling Member Complaints.

It was reported to Members that the CSPL Local Government Ethical Standards -15 Best Practice Recommendations ran parallel with a review of the Code of Conduct.  Issuing a model Code of Conduct, in the interim, the CSPL had also issued the Best Practice Recommendations that they felt councils should adopt when dealing with the code of conduct and the processes in place for handling member complaints. 

The CSPL had required an update on what the council had done / were doing to meet the Best Practice Recommendations.

Members were asked to note that, by and large the council had implemented all of the recommendations and that there were only two elements that needed to be addressed.

Members were informed that it was a statutory requirement to have Arrangements in place as to how the Council would handle complaints, and it was felt that this was the correct place for two of the recommendations to be included.  Members were advised that the Monitoring Officer in conjunction with the Independent Person would decide whether complaints should be further investigated.

Should Members be minded to agree with the Recommendations as detailed in the report, then officers could answer positively to the majority of questions that had been asked by the Chairman of the Standards Committee.

Some Members commented that, if there was a conflict of interest by the Monitoring Officer, there was the Worcestershire Network of Monitoring Officers, but there was nothing regards a potential conflict of interest if the complaint involved the Monitoring Officer and therefore, she would delegate that to another Monitoring Officer.  There were no formal mechanics so that the Monitoring Officer could delegate any such complaints to another Monitoring Officer within the County, if she felt that there was a conflict of interest and that she could not personally resolve the complaint.

The Principal Solicitor responded and in doing so stated that she was happy to take this up with colleagues.  The Monitoring Officers met regularly, and she would raise this at the Monitoring Officers forum, if this could be made formal and included in the policy.

There was discussion in regard to Independent Person recruitment, and that some authorities struggled to recruit into this role.  It was noted that Coventry City Council had a panel of Independent Persons that could be used by other authorities and would it be beneficial to have a committee of Independent Persons across the County that other authorities could share rather than one or two Independent Persons just for Redditch Borough Council. West Midlands Combined Authority used this arrangement along with West Midlands Fire authority.

The Principal Solicitor informed the Committee that this was already implemented across the County and where necessary / relevant, other authorities would make one Independent Person available to another authority.  However, she was happy to take the suggestion forward, as there was no formal agreement in place.  But as part of the review process, this could be considered as part of those review discussions.  She was happy to look at the possibility of a panel of Independent Persons. In addition to this it was queried how often the Independent Person was changed and what training they received to ensure that safeguards were in place in order to maintain a transparent and healthy authority.

Members queried the role of the Monitoring Officer and the Principal Solicitor explained that the Monitoring Officer was a member of the Corporate Management Team, who reported directly to the Chief Executive / Head of Paid Service.   It was clarified that this was a statutory role within the Local Government regulations and Housing Act 1989, which required local authorities to have a number of statutory officers. The Monitoring Officer was responsible for ensuring that the authority acted lawfully and within the statutory framework of all the functions and powers that the council executed.

The Chief Executive reiterated this, and further added that the Monitoring Officer post was one of the three statutory officer roles within the authority, and as such had autonomy within that perspective in order to ensure that the Council accords with all procedures the Council had.  As Head of Paid Service, his role was to make sure that that person was suitably equipped in order to discharge their functions and to be trained and developed to keep up with current legislation.

The Principal Solicitor took the opportunity to further explain to Members that with regard to the Independent Person, the Council had established very good working relationships with the existing Independent Person; and in her personal opinion that was not something you might have with a revolving panel of Independent Persons.  It was very important that you built up an understanding around the Council’s Code of Conduct, legislation and all of the framework under the Localism Act and Code of Conduct for handling Member complaints.  That relationship was very important and generally Independent Persons had been very upstanding members of the community who had filled those roles.  Therefore, they were not expected to undertake the same training offered to Members.

The Principal Solicitor agreed to provide further reports at future meetings of the Committee on the new national Model Code of Conduct. 

It was clarified to Members that the Standards Hearing Sub-Committee comprised of three Members from the parent Committee (Audit, Governance & Standards), it was not politically balanced, as the political group of the Councillor who was the subject of the complaint had to be taken into account. Furthermore, the Chair would not be from the same political group as the Councillor who was the subject of the complaint.

In response to Members, the Principal Solicitor undertook to find out if the Independent Person was a paid position and to provide the information to Committee Members. 

RESOLVED that

a)    the amended arrangements for the handling of Member complaints, be approved; and

b)   the Council’s response to the Chairman of the Committee of Standards for Public Life’s recommendations be approved and returned to him before the deadline of 30^th November 2020.