Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meetings of this Committee held on 27 April 2015 and 19 May 2015.

The Minutes of the meetings held on 27 April 2015 and 19 May 2015 were approved as true and correct records and signed by the Chairman.

There were no declarations of interest received.

The Committee considered the Governance and Audit Committee Forward Plan (Agenda Item 4). Councillor Lee Dillon noted that the Forward Plan did not always include the name of the Lead Member. This would be rectified by the next meeting.

RESOLVED that the Governance and Audit Committee Forward Plan be noted.

Purpose: To present the recommendation to create a Governance and Ethics Committee in place of the Governance and Audit Committee and Standards Committee.

The Committee considered a report (Agenda Item 5) which proposed to amalgamate the Governance and Audit Committee with the Standards Committee to create a new Governance and Ethics Committee.

The report had previously been considered by both the Standards Committee and Governance and Audit Committee, but the proposal was not supported by either Committee. However, Officers had been asked by Corporate Board to look into merging the two committees in order to streamline governance arrangements, particularly when considering that the workload of the Standards Committee had declined over the last few years.

Moira Fraser in introducing the item reported that the recent Peer Review had highlighted that the authority was bureaucratic in nature. This was borne out by the fact that during the previous Financial Year Strategic Support administered in excess of 330 meetings. This did not take into account the myriad of other meetings that Members were expected to attend including outside bodiess, group meetings, parish/ town council meetings, meetings with Officers and those administered by other teams. Officers had therefore been seeking opportunities to streamline the number of meetings and this merger seemed a logical choice. The skills required by the Members of the two committees were similar and their remit already overlaped in certain areas. A number of other authorities had already amalgamated the two functions.

During 2014/15 the Standards Committee met four times, two of these meetings were held virtually. With the exception of the October meeting the only item of business on the agenda was the quarterly update report. During the past three years 34 complaints had been received and the Standards Committee would only need to consider a maximum of five of these. Since the implementation of the revised standards arrangements around 80% of complaints were dealt with by the Independent Person and the Monitoring Officer at the Initial Assessment stage. There was no Member involvement required at this stage.

It was important to note that the current Standards Committee was constituted on a proportional basis. This would also be true of the proposed Governance and Ethics Committee. Officers had therefore proposed the retention of the Advisory Panel (which was not based on proportionality and was made up of two Members of the Administration, two Members of the Opposition, two parish council representatives and two Independent Members) to ensure that the perception of political neutrality was retained.

The Governance and Ethics agenda would be structured into two parts so that the Parish Councillors would not have to stay for the rest of the debate if they did not want to. They would be appointed in a non-voting capacity as they were on the Standards Committee.

In the event that a hearing was required a special meeting would be convened to conduct this item of business.

The paper was discussed at the previous Standards Committee and Members raised a number of concerns. They were nervous that the newly elected District and Parish Councillors might, due to their inexperience generate additional complainants. This was not  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.