Venue: Mandela Room
Contact: Susan Lightwing
No. | Item |
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Welcome and Evacuation Procedure Minutes: The Chair welcomed all present to the meeting and read out the Building Evacuation Procedure. |
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Declarations of Interest To receive
any declarations of interest. Minutes: There were no Declarations of Interest at this point in the meeting. |
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Minutes- Standards Committee - 23 January 2023 PDF 20 KB Minutes: The minutes of the Standards Committee meeting held on 23 January 2023 were submitted and approved as a correct record. |
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Quarterly Update Report to Standards Committee PDF 272 KB Minutes: A joint report of the Director of
Legal and Governance Services and Executive Member for Legal and Governance
Services was presented to provide
information in regards to the recent and current position concerning Code of
Conduct Complaints so that the Committee had assurance about the practice and
process. There was 1 complaint from 2020,
4 complaints from 2021, and 4 ongoing from 2022 at various stages of the
process which had not yet concluded. We were unable to give any specifics about
those complaints at this time so as not to prejudice any outcomes, and/or
create a conflict should any of those complaints need to come to Standards
Committee at a future date. The total
outstanding complaints pre 2023 was 9. Since the last quarterly update,
1 further complaint from 2022 had been rejected. This was reflected in the
table at paragraph 2 of the submitted report.
There had been 29 complaints
submitted to date in 2023. Of the 29
complaints, there had been 9 complaints rejected further to the assessment
criteria. There were 20 outstanding
complaints in 2023. As per the table above, there had
been a significant increase in complaints in the first quarter of this year,
with 29 received to date, compared to a total of 12 in 2022, and 27, 31 and 33
for 2019-2021 respectively for the full year. The internal resource to deal
with the complaints was provided by the legal services team, primarily the
Monitoring Officer and two Deputy Monitoring Officers. Senior officers might
also be tasked to complete an investigation where required. A significant increase in complaints would
of course mean that legal resource is diverted away from other areas. Members expressed concern with
the numbers of potentially frivolous complaints that were being submitted. The Deputy Monitoring Officer explained the
procedures in place and stated that efforts were being made to expand the pool
of Independent Members who assisted with the assessment process. Of the 29 complaints received in
2023 to date, 23 of them involved the inappropriate use of social media in some
capacity. In order to try and address this issue, some proposals were contained
in the report. The timescales for the
following actions were amended at the meeting and agreed. AGREED as follows that: 1. that the
information provided was received and noted. 2. within 14
days of the meeting an advice and guidance email would be sent by the
Monitoring Officer/Deputy Monitoring Officer to all current members reminding
them of the guidance around social media use with reference to the Code of
Conduct. 3. within 21
days of this meeting a meeting would be held between Group Leaders and the
Monitoring Officer/Deputy Monitoring Officer to discuss the issue and seek
support around trying to address it. 4. Within 28 days post-election a training session would be carried out with newly elected Members focussing specifically on guidance around social media use. |
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Any Other Urgent Items which in the opinion of the Chair, may be considered Minutes: None. |