Agenda item

To receive any Chair’s announcements.

The Chair said that an email had been received from Parish Councillor Ian Hunt regarding a consultation in respect of strengthening the standards and the conduct framework for local authorities in England. She invited the Head of Legal and Democratic Services to provide some more details.

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services thanked Parish Councillor Hunt for raising this matter. He said the consultation could be accessed from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) website, and this consultation was open until the 26 February 2025. It could be completed by individual Members or one unified response which he could submit on the committee’s behalf.

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services advised that the consultation could be pushed out to all Members via the Members Information Bulletin that was sent out every Friday. He invited the independent person to speak as he was attending a meeting at the MHCLG this week.

Nicholas Moss, Independent Person, addressed the committee in respect of the consultation. He said that hearing what Members had to say would help him prepare what he would have to say at the MHCLG meeting on 30 January 2025.

The Independent Person supported the government’s proposal to reinstate a national compulsory code of conduct. Such a code had been introduced in 2007 but discontinued under the Localism Act 2011 in favour of a requirement for every council to have a code but with discretion as to its content.

The Independent Person also noted the applicability of the current code in circumstances only where a member was acting ‘in capacity’, i.e., only when dealing with council business. He considered that this provision warranted tightening.

In his view, when individuals stood successfully for election, they became subject to an expectation that they would   be circumspect in their general conduct.

The Independent Person said that he was aware of instances where elected councillors had, for example, made unpleasant, offensive, or rude remarks on social media in a quasi-private capacity, capitalising on the fact that there were elected members and, therefore, known in their communities. He said that because they were not dealing with council business, the code could not be engaged, and they avoided the potential for a breach of the code and a possible sanction.

The Independent Person noted also that the sanctions arrangements needed to be updated, and that he favoured the proposal to reintroduce the power to suspend members for code breaches, subject to its being applied judiciously.

He concluded by suggesting that the automatic disqualifications in common law and in statute also merited tidying to ensure clarity so that people knew what was expected of them if they stood for election.

The Chair suggested that the Independent Person’s observations might usefully be made available to other members.

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services said that he would also be attending the meeting of the MHCLG in a remote capacity, and he would be listening to the discussion.

Members were advised that by including the consultation information in the Members Information Bulletin, this would encourage as many Members as possible to be involved.

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services confirmed to the chair that the link to this evening’s meeting could be included in the article in the Members’ bulletin. Councillor Parsad-Wyatt said that it would be helpful for all Members if the 5 key areas of the consultation could be lifted from the consultation website.

The Independent Person said that it would be useful if Members could see what the government was actually saying in the consultation. He said that some of the questions were more discursive but that the document was an easy read. He commended it to members as he felt it was central to the function of the Standards Committee.

The Chair said that the consultation would be pushed out to all Members with advice to view the beginning of this meeting, and to go onto the consultation website itself for a more in depth look at the questions.

Councillor Stowe said that it was important that Members complete the consultation individually as people in rural and town areas might see certain points quite differently.