minutes

The Minutes of the Meeting held on 4th August 2009 (Minute Nos. 242 - 250) were taken as read, approved and signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

The Minutes of the Standards Appeal Sub-Committee held on 4th August 2009 (Minute Nos. 237 - 241), the Standards Referral Sub-Committee held on 17th September 2009 (Minute Nos. 351 - 353) and the Standards Referral Sub-Committee held on 1st October 2009 (Minute Nos. 374 - 377) were accepted by the Committee and signed by the Chairman.

declarations of interest

Councillors Cindy Davis, Bryan Mulhern and David Simmons declared prejudicial interests in respect of Minute No. 482 (Dispensations from the Code of Conduct) as they had a close association with the Leader of the Council. They withdrew from the meeting during consideration of this item.

change to the order of business

The Chairman altered the order of business, as minuted.

part b minutes for information

dispensations from the code of conduct

The Monitoring Officer introduced the report which summarised the recent guidance from Standards for England on dispensations. The report set out the individual requests for dispensations received from six Councillors to enable them to consider the planning application submitted by the Leader of the Council at the relevant Planning Committee meeting.

part a minutes for confirmation by council

monitoring officer's report

The Monitoring Officer introduced his annual report which set out the activities relating to his role as Monitoring Officer. He went through the report and Members made the following comments:

Council appointments to external bodies needed to be reviewed as it could make it difficult for Councillors to represent external organisations if they had to declare interests. The Monitoring Officer confirmed that this would be considered as part of the review of the Constitution.

The need for Councillors to understand the changes to the Officer delegations.

The Monitoring Officer advised that the Head of Development Services was working with the Planning Advisory Service to develop Planning Training for Members, which would also incorporate the Code of Conduct.

The Chairman raised concern that taxpayers were funding the cost of investigations by the Standards Sub-Committees and that the budget required to support these arrangements could continue to increase each year. He considered that this issue needed to be discussed by Group Leaders.

The Monitoring Officer advised that any concerns about the cost being incurred by local authorities on Standards Committee issues would need to be addressed through the Local Government Association. He explained that if the numbers of complaints continued to increase it could have significant resource implications, which would need to be considered as part of the budget-setting process.

The Monitoring Officer confirmed that a record of gifts and hospitability received by Members should be registered on their Register of Members' Interests form for three years.

The Monitoring Officer referred to the number of meetings serviced from 1st November 2008 to 31st October 2009 and thanked the Democratic Services team for their hard work.

Members discussed the attendance statistics and the need to remove Member Training from the number of meetings. Members also stressed that these figures did not include outside meetings attended by Members on behalf of the Council. It was confirmed that a more comprehensive system to record attendance statistics would be developed.

assessments made clear - an aid for councils when assessing complaints about councillors

Members were shown a DVD from Standards for England on "Assessments made clear - an aid for Councils when assessing complaints about Councillors".

Members then discussed the issues raised in the DVD. It was agreed that it should be provided to any Members of the Standards Committee who were absent from the meeting as a useful training tool.

The Chairman considered that it would be useful for the Standards Committee to meet with Group Leaders.