Agenda item

REVIEW BY COMMITTEE ON STANDARDS IN PUBLIC LIFE

Minutes:

The Monitoring Officer presented the report which set out details of the Review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.  The Standards Committee was asked to consider the recommendations and best practice suggestions set out in the report.

 

Members briefly discussed the recent case of R (Harvey) v Ledbury Town Council [2018].  The court held that a council cannot run a grievance procedure alongside, or as an alternative to, a standards regime procedure under the Localism Act 2011, and that complaints regarding a councillor's conduct have to be dealt with under the authority's standards arrangements.  The Monitoring Officer agreed to send a copy of this case to the Chair for information.

 

The Committee discussed each of the best practice recommendations which were directed to local authorities.  It was noted that the Council already complies with Best Practice Recommendations 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14.

 

RESOLVED:  To take the following actions in respect of the best practice recommendations set out in the Review:

 

·  Best Practice 1 – Local authorities should include prohibitions on bullying and harassment in codes of conduct.  These should include a definition of bullying and harassment, supplemented with a list of examples of the sort of behaviour covered by such a definition.

 

Action – To ask the Monitoring Officer to bring a report to the next meeting setting out a proposed list of examples of the sort of behaviour covered by the definition of bullying and harassment.

 

·  Best Practice 2 – Councils should include provisions in their code of conduct requiring councillors to comply with any formal standards investigation, and prohibiting trivial or malicious allegations by councillors.

 

Action – To ask the Monitoring Officer to bring a report to the next meeting setting out revisions to the code of conduct to include these.

 

·  Best Practice 3 – Principal authorities should review their code of conduct each year and regularly seek, where possible, the views of the public, community organisations and neighbouring authorities.

 

Action – To add an annual review of the code of conduct to the Standard Committee’s work plan.

 

·  Best Practice 4 – An authority’s code should be readily accessible to both councillors and the public, in a prominent position on a council’s website and available in council premises.

 

Action – To ask the Monitoring Officer to ensure that the code of conduct is in a prominent position on the council website as part of the current website review that is taking place.  To ask the Monitoring Officer to carry out a review of Parish Councils to check if they are also compliant with this recommendation.

 

·  Best Practice 6 – Councils should publish a clear and straightforward public interest test against which allegations are filtered.

 

Action – To request the Monitoring Officer to review the Council’s public interest test as part of the annual review.

 

·  Best Practice 11 – Formal standards complaints about the conduct of a parish councillor towards a clerk should be made by the chair or by the parish council as a whole, rather than the clerk in all but exceptional circumstances.

 

Action – To ask the Monitoring Officer to draw this to the attention of Parish Councils.

 

·  Best Practice 15 Senior officers should meet regularly with political group leaders or group whips to discuss standards issues.

 

Action – To ask the Monitoring Officer to meet at least twice yearly with Group Leaders to discuss standards issues.

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