Issue - meetings
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Meeting: 23/10/2024 - Standards Committee (Item 5)
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
To receive petitions, comments and questions from the public.
Decision:
A verbal presentation was received from Mr David Cook on Agenda Item 6 ‘Standards Matters Report’.
Minutes:
Audio recording – 5 minutes 14 seconds
The Chair invited Mr David Cook to address the Committee regarding the Standards Matters Report. Mr Cook thanked the Chair for the opportunity and provided the Committee with a verbal presentation, including that:
· It was detailed in the appendix to the Complaints Handling Procedure, in relation to a breach of the Code of Conduct for Councillors, the reasons why a complaint might not be investigated. One of these reasons was that a complaint over three months. This should be changed to three months from when there was knowledge of the incident, as it may not be apparent straight away.
· Some complaints may become apparent through a Freedom of Information request.
· Having a hard deadline of three months was not always practical especially if deceit was involved, as this may not become apparent within that timeframe. The procedure should follow the Employment Tribunals style of timing of when a person became aware of the incident. Page 18 of the appendix detailed what a good apology should look like, and he was concerned about a genuine apology and that the Monitoring Officer and designated Independent Person (IP) would potentially be advising on the apology and whether this would conflict with their impartiality. They should, in his opinion refrain from advising on the content of any apology.
· An apology was not impartial if the Monitoring Officer and IP had a hand in it.
· There were concerns whether a secret apology met the tests of the procedure.
· It was felt that if an incident occurred in public then any apology should also be publicly available.
The Chair thanked Mr Cook for his presentation.