Agenda and minutes

Councillor Sue Catterall was elected as Chairman of the Standards Committee for the municipal year 2021/22

Councillor Phil Orme was elected as Vice-Chairman of the Standards Committee for the municipal year 2021/22.

Members will declare any pecuniary or significant other interests they have in relation to the items on this agenda.

None.

To confirm as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Standards Committee held on 18 March 2021.

The minutes of the Standards Committee meeting of 18 March 2021 were confirmed as a correct record.

Report of the Legal Services Manager and Monitoring Officer.

The Monitoring Officer (MO) submitted a report presenting for approval the Local Government Association (“LGA”) Model Code of Conduct for Members (“the model code”) with amendments as set out in Appendix 1 of the report. If approved, the committee could either recommend to Council that the revised Code of Conduct be adopted or consider whether to set up a working group to further review Wyre’s Code in line with the model code as suggested at previous meetings.

The MO expressed disappointment that the government had not reintroduced sanctions allowing for potential suspension of councillors for bad behaviour and the Vice Chairman asked that the Democratic Services Officer email to all Wyre councillors a petition that was currently in circulation asking the government to introduce sanctions.

Decision

The committee decided unanimously that a working group would not be required and to recommend the adoption of the revised Code to Council with the addition of a proviso to refer to or seek advice of the Independent Person.

The committee also agreed to recommend that all town and parish councils in the borough adopt Wyre’s Code and to circulate the petition about sanctions to all Wyre councillors as suggested.

Summary prepared by the Legal Services Manager and Monitoring Officer.

The MO submitted a schedule that summarised the complaints of alleged breaches of the Council’s Code of Conduct completed since the previous report to the Standards Committee. The Deputy MO provided further information about the statistical format of the schedule and the committee discussed the new format at length, requesting that the MO include more detail as “the misuse of social media” gave no indication as to the nature of such misuse that had prompted the complaint.

Decision

The committee noted the report and asked that the MO, Deputy MO and Democratic Services Officer investigate the practice elsewhere and how complaints are reported at Standards Committee meetings of other authorities and consider what further information might be provided in future without prejudicing any hearings that may become necessary.

The next scheduled meeting of the Standards Committee is due to be held at 6pm on Thursday 17 March 2022.

The meetings for 2022-2023 have been scheduled for 16 June 2022, 10 November 2022 and 16 March 2023.

Noted that the next scheduled meeting of the Standards Committee would be held at 6pm on Thursday 17 March 2022 and that the meetings for 2022-2023 have been scheduled for 16 June 2022, 10 November 2022 and 16 March 2023.