Liz Bryant (Head of Legal Services/Monitoring Officer) introduced the item and highlighted the following points:

a)    In July 2023, the Leader announced his commitment to conduct this review and set out terms for the scope of the review;

b)    This commitment was formalised into a court order as part of the judicial review proceedings;

c)    The terms of the order were: it would be an independent learning review, the terms of reference needed to be approved at this meeting and reflect the matters that the Leader committed to in July 2023;

d)    The review would commence immediately upon the completion of the extant court proceedings or the finalisation of the terms of reference;

e)    Once started, the review had to be completed within three months of commencement, the findings must be presented to City Council, published on the Council’s website, and made available for public inspection;

f)     As the Commissioning Officer for the review, Liz Bryant would be looking at suitable candidates for undertaking the review as an independent reviewer;

g)    Although the terms of reference were due to be approved at the meeting, there would be an opportunity for the independent chair to review them and to make agreed amendments prior to the commencement of the review;

h)    The terms of reference dealt with the principles and purpose of the review, the issues that would be considered as per the court order and the way in which the review itself would be conducted;

i)     In line with the conduct of the review, it was proposed that an independent Chair would lead the review. The independent Chair would be someone with suitable local government expertise and would be supported by advisors possessing legal and environmental regeneration and planning expertise;

j)     The review would be supported by Plymouth City Council administrative officers and there would be a panel of Officer Advisors which would be chaired by Liz Bryant who would support the review. These officers would have had no previous involvement in the Armada Way Scheme;

k)    It was expected that the reviewers would want to speak with Officers, Member and there would be stakeholder engagement by means of seeking written representations from members of the public, which would focus on the terms of reference;

l)     Interviews with officers and members would be private discussions;

m)  CVs would be sought from suitably qualified professionals of local government to establish a suitable Chair and panel members;

n)    Panel members would be remunerated for undertaking the work;

o)    At the end of the review a draft report would be produced;

p)    Any officers or members who were interviewed as part of the review would have the opportunity to review the transcripts of their interview to ensure factual correctness and this would be taken into account prior to the report being finalised.

In response to questions, it was explained:

q)    The wording on the report was directly extracted from the court order, and therefore the Review must commence immediately once the outstanding Court proceedings have been completed;

r)    There were two sets of court proceedings, which were the contempt of court proceedings regarding the induction, and the application for permission to appeal against the Judicial Review outcome;

s)     The proposed timeframe before the commencement of the review was at least three months, however this was not confirmed and was subject to change.

Cabinet agreed:

1.    That the Terms of Reference included at Appendix 1 were approved to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Order of the High Court of 25 March 2024 (the Court Order) which stated:
‘The Terms of Reference for the review would be approved at a meeting of Cabinet scheduled for 20 May 2024’;

2.    That the Monitoring Officer proceeded with the commissioning of an Independent Chair and Independent Learning Review (ILR) members to conduct the ILR which would identify suitably independent candidate to fulfil the roles requires to conduct the ILR. This would ensure that the ILR was conducted by individuals who had the relevant expertise and were independent of Plymouth City Council and would ensure further compliance with the Court Order which stated:
‘The Commissioning Officer for the Review would be the Defendant’s Head of Legal Services and Monitoring Offer, Liz Bryant’.