Issue - meetings

To recieve a summary of recent Member Code of Conduct complaints and associated investigations involving elected members of Handforth Parish Council.

Page 16 of the report contains exempt information as defined in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972. It may therefore be necessary for the Committee to exclude the press and public in order to consider this page. 

Jonathan Goolden attended the meeting as an Independent Legal Advisor to the Committee.  David Brown, Director of Governance and Compliance, and Monitoring Officer advised the Committee that he would remain in the room but was there to answer factual questions on the report only and that Jamie Hollis, Interim Head of Legal would add any detail.

The Interim Head of Legal advised the Committee that across the borough of Cheshire East, there were 108 parish councils comprising of over 1000 parish Councillors.  The overwhelming majority had no interaction with the standards process at all. 

A working group comprised of members from this Committee had been formed to reconsider the Cheshire East code of conduct and process.  Sufficient and robust training and development would be offered to colleagues within Town and Parish Councils, to implement changes and be sufficiently adequate for councillor to challenge where appropriate and resolve local issues.

The Committee were advised that the council had received a number complaints about and between Handforth Parish Council, and this was the first practical application of the member complaints process in five years.  The summary report was requested by the working group before the new year.

In total, between 2018-2020 a total of 21 formal complaints were received, and rose significantly after media attention in 2020/21.

The costs and resources to deal with these complaints were outlined within the report, and the Committee were advised that the time and proportionality were key to its deliberations on this matter.

Recommendation 2.1 b and c as outlined within the report had been amended after the papers had been published to reflect as follows:

2.1. That the Committee –

b) Request that the Audit & Governance Committee Working Group consider any consequential amendments to the Code of Conduct and associated process arising from this report;

c) [ Request publication of the investigation reports referred to in this report, following appropriate redaction, within 14 days of this meeting ]

The Committee challenged the amendment to the recommendations after publication of the agenda, Councillor David Marren gave reassurances to the Committee that it was normal practice to brief the Chair and Vice Chair of any changes post-publication, and the changes were due to the potential for confusion and lack of clarity on 2.1 b.  The new wording made the recommendation clear, and the Chair was confident had these changes not been implemented now, the Committee would have had the same debate to change the wording.

The Committee were reminded that this was a forward looking review, to learn from and it would inform future process.

There was some discussion by the Committee that included:

·         The acknowledgement that whilst it was appropriate to outsource this work, there was a substantial cost associated with this report;

·         The adoption of the new process would help to mitigate anything like this happening in the future and the need to escalate complaints in a timely manner;

·         The personal cost to those involved and the need to support the volunteers within the town  ...  view the full minutes text for item 67