(a)

Standards Committee –

• a Standards Committee would be appointed at the Annual General Meeting and would remain in place until changes brought on by the Act come into affect on 1 July 2012;
• Monitoring Officers across the country were of the opinion that it was generally a good idea to keep a Standards Committee following the changes on 1 July 2012;
• the Standards Committee would no longer have the existing powers to impose sanctions however it would be the most appropriate place to decide what action may be appropriate, for instance a strongly worded letter to the Chair of a political group.

(b)

Code of conduct –

• Members are required to adopt a code of conduct which is consistent with the 7 Nolan principles;
• Disclosable Pecuniary Interests would still need to be registered;
• Council could adopt a standing order which requires members to withdraw from a meeting.

(c)

Dealing with misconduct complaints –

• The current regime forced monitoring officers to forward ‘tit for tat’ complaints to the Standards Committee which could have been dealt with earlier if the Monitoring Officer had the power to deal with it themselves.

(d)

Independent Person(s) –

• The position of ‘independent person’ would need to be advertised and the post would attract remuneration;
• The current independent members would be disqualified from applying for a period of 5 years.

(e)

The register of members interests –

• the Act still required the registration of Councillor interests, however there is a new requirement to register interests of the Councillors spouse, civil partner or someone living with the member in a similar capacity;
• failing to register interests was now a criminal offence;
• the referral of a potential criminal offence would be reported by the Monitoring Officers by way of the submission of a statement of fact to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP).

(f)

Disclosure of interests and withdrawal from meetings / Disclosure and withdrawal in respect of matters to be determined by a single member

• there were a number of important changes to disclosures of interests and training would be provided to members on these changes.

(g)

Sensitive Interests -

• These were interests connected to property and would mean that members would not have to give details of their home address.

(h)

Dispensations –

• Dispensations would experience a great deal of change and so a further report would be provided in this in due course.

(i)

Transitional arrangements –

• the Assistant Director for Democracy and Governance would brief Chief Whips on transitional arrangements

(1)

the Assistant Director for Democracy and Governance be requested to look into options  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.