36 | The Committee received a report on the local "filtering" arrangements for complaints under the Member Code of Conduct to be introduced under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.
The report set out relevant statutory powers and indicated that under the 2007 Act written allegations of breaches of the Member Code of Conduct would now be made to the Standards Committee rather than the Standards Board.
Regulations on the change were to be introduced in the Spring. The role of the Standards Board would in future be one of an advisory and monitoring body and the periodic information that was likely to be required from the Council was reported.
There would be three stages for complaint investigation and these were set out, together with a flowchart illustrating the process. The new arrangements would require a number of changes to current processes and procedures and, in this respect, guidance from the Standards Board was awaited.
At this stage, the Standards Board were suggesting that sub-committees of the Committee, with a minimum of three Members, would need to be established, in order to implement the procedure for each of the local filtering stages. This would ensure that different Members were involved in different stages. These requirements would mean that the current Committee membership of 8 was unlikely to be sufficient.
A suggested membership model was submitted which indicated that the minimum recommended membership was 12 with a minimum of three Independent Members. There was a statutory requirement that at least 25 per cent of the Committee must be Independent Members and until new additional (independent) appointments were made it would not be possible to increase the current membership.
Nevertheless, a sub-committee structure was required to deal with local filtering as soon as it was introduced. It was therefore proposed that this be based on the model adopted for the Licensing Sub-Committees and to have the Chairman always appointed from the Independent Members. The remaining two Members would be chosen from the remainder of the Committee. A statutory requirement that the Chairman of the Standards Committee, or any sub-committee of it, should be an Independent Member was likely and, on this basis, the Council's Constitution would require amendment.
In relation to the new/additional Independent Members it was recommended that an appointments panel be established and the proposed composition was reported. A further report would be made to the Committee once the recruitment process was complete and to seek approval to a Committee of 12. The intention was to appoint up to four Independent Members.
The Committee noted that interim training would be put in place by the Monitoring Officer to enable the current Members of the Committee to fulfil the new role. Further training would then follow once the new and increased Committee had been appointed.
The report set out options, legal and financial implications, details of consultation undertaken and policy framework considerations.
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