Agenda item

The Divisional Director of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer presented the report. He said that the main difference between the revised complaints procedure and the version considered by the Committee at its meeting on 6^th February 2014 was the addition of indicative timescales for each stage of the process.

He drew attention to paragraph 5.3 of the report and invited members to decide on whether there should be mechanism for appeal against a decision not to investigate a complaint by the complainant and to investigate by the subject councillor. Almost every complainant who had been told that their complaint would not be investigated had expressed dissatisfaction about this. At the moment complainants could complain to the Ombudsman who would only consider procedure not outcome. Under the previous standards regime there had been a Review Sub-Committee which reviewed decisions of the Referrals Sub-Committee not to investigate. There was no mechanism for subject councillors to challenge a decision to investigate. Members discussed this and made the following points:

• an extra appeal layer seemed superfluous now that the Monitoring Officer consulted the Independent Chair and the newly-appointed Independent Person about the initial assessment of complaints

• if the initial process was robust, appeals should be allowed only if the complainant could show that important information had been overlooked

• the investigation process was the opportunity for the subject member to make their case

• subject members would feel aggrieved if complaints initially rejected were subsequently taken further

• the Review Sub-Committee had never overturned a decision of the Referrals Sub-Committee

• reviewing rejected complaints might absorb an undue amount of officer time

• establishing an appeal process might be a sensible response to the fact that such a high proportion of complainants felt aggrieved when their complaints were not pursued

• if there was a review process, it would have to be done by different people from those who had done the initial assessment

It was agreed that there should be a review process for complaints rejected after initial assessment and that it should involve an Independent Member other than the Chair. The Divisional Director of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer said he would draft a review process.

The Divisional Director of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer drew attention to paragraph 5.4 of the report and asked Members to decide whether or not subject members should be advised of complaints against them rejected after initial assessment. It was the current practice in this council to do so, but other councils did not. It was agreed by the Committee that subject members should continue to be notified of rejected complaints and that complainants should know that this would be the case.

The Chair raised points about the wording of the procedure. After discussion, it was agreed that the following amendments should be made to improve style and clarity:

passim: there should be consistency in the use of “he/she/they” etc.

page 22, 7^th bullet point:“admitted making an error” should be “apologised for making an error”

page 23, 2^nd paragraph: the second sentence should be omitted

page 24, 2^nd paragraph of section 10: this should make it clear that the only witnesses permitted were people referred to in the evidence and not, for example, character witnesses

page 24, third paragraph of “Local Hearing – Procedure B”:“such comments” should be “any comments”

Page 26: Constitution of the Standards Committee when conducting a Local Hearing:“one member may be a town/parish council representative” should be “one member must be a town/parish council representative”

RESOLVED to approve the procedure for handling complaints subject to comments made by the Committee, including the need for adequate resourcing of the complaints handling process.