Agenda and minutes

Fiona Barber was confirmed as Chair for the meeting.

There were no apologies for absence.

Members are asked to declare any interests they may have in the business on the agenda.

Members were asked to declare any interests they may have in the business on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest.

The Monitoring Officer submits the procedure to be followed during hearings of an investigator’s report regarding complaints against Councillors. The Sub-Committee is asked to note the procedure.

The Deputy Monitoring Officer circulated an amended hearing procedure which sought to condense the procedure taking into account that facts had already been established in this case due to the publicly available evidence.

RESOLVED:

                        That the amended hearing procedure be approved.

There were no items of urgent business.

AGENDA

MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC TO NOTE

Under the law, the Sub-Committee is entitled to consider certain items in private.  Members of the public will be asked to leave the meeting when such items are discussed.

The Sub-Committee is recommended to consider the following reports in private on the grounds that they contain ‘exempt’ information as defined by the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985, and consequently that the Sub-Committee makes the following resolution:-

“that the press and public be excluded during consideration of the following reports in accordance with the provisions of Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended, because they involve the likely disclosure of 'exempt' information, as defined in the Paragraphs detailed below of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act and taking all the circumstances into account, it is considered that the public interest in maintaining the information as exempt outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Paragraph 1

Information relating to any individual

Paragraph 2

Information which is likely to reveal the identity of an individual

Paragraph 7A

Information which is subject to any obligation of confidentiality.

Paragraph 7C

The deliberations of a standards committee or of a sub-committee of a standards committee established under the provisions of Part 3 of the Local Government Act 2000 in reaching any finding on a matter referred under the provisions of section 60(2) or (3), 64(2), 70(4) or (5) or 71(2) of that Act.

The Deputy Monitoring Officer outlined the reasons for proposing that the meeting be considered in private, as outlined on the agenda papers: (i) information relating to any individual; (ii) information which is likely to reveal the identity of an individual; (iii) information which is subject to any obligation of confidentiality and the (iv) deliberations of a Standards Committee. She also, however, noted that there had been significant coverage of the incident in the media and there was wider public interest more generally in demonstrating that elected representatives are held to account for their behaviour. The Sub-Committee were recommended that it was in the public interest to hold the Sub-Committee in public, but the choice remained their own.

It was further noted that there were elements of the agenda papers which contained personal correspondence for which there would be a reasonable expectation of confidentiality. Therefore it was recommended that it was not in the public interest for these to be made public, but some elements of the papers, such as the investigator’s report could be made public following the meeting.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the press and public be allowed to remain in the meeting for consideration of the complaint against a councillor.

2)    That the papers for the meeting remain private as they are deemed to contain ‘exempt’ information as defined in the provisions of Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended. Specifically:

Paragraph 7

Information which is subject to any obligation of confidentiality.

The appellant, Councillor Nigel Porter entered the meeting at this point.

He raised a number of points in relation to the convening and structure of the meeting:

·      The membership of the Sub-Committee was queried, in particular why there were only three members, only one of whom was an elected Member.

·      The appointment of the Chair was queried.

·      The role and legitimacy of independent members was queried, as it was felt that the Localism Act 2011 had meant that Standards Committees should be elected Member led.

·      The Localism Act 2011 Standards regime was meant to avoid considering low level complaints in order to avoid the over bureaucratic nature of the previous regime.

·      Hearings Committees should be convened as full Standards Committees.

·      It was alleged that Councillor Shelton was biased against Councillor Porter as he had previously heckled Councillor Porter at Council meetings and had, whilst Chair of the Planning and Development Control Committee, delayed consideration of an item which Councillor Porter had attended the meeting to speak on.

The Chair clarified that Councillor Shelton was an elected member of the Council and sitting as part of the panel and that she had been confirmed as chair by both of her fellow panel members.

The Deputy Monitoring Officer confirmed that the Standards regime did change in 2011 to abolish the previous arrangements from the Local Government Act 2000. However, local authorities were given freedoms to develop their own systems and there was no specific prohibition on the appointment of Independent Members. She also noted that the Sub-Committee’s role would be to make recommendations to the Standards Committee, not take any decisions themselves.

The Monitoring Officer commented further, as he oversaw the transition to the new Standards regime. He disputed the assertions made by Councillor Porter regarding the lack of legitimacy of the Sub-Committee. To get into the level of detail required to discuss the matters he raised would be time consuming and be overly detailed. It was noted that Councillor Porter had not given any prior indication of wishing to make fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of proceedings. He confirmed that the full Council had approved the standards arrangements regarding complaints and he assured the meeting that an Independent Member led Hearing Sub-Committee was lawful. Any jurisdictional points should properly be considered out of the meeting but would nonetheless be dealt with when Councillor Porter was written to after the Sub-Committee hearing.

The Sub-Committee, taking into account the points raised by Councillor Porter and the responses by the Deputy Monitoring Officer and the Monitoring Officer were assured that the process to be followed was set up correctly according to the law and Council policy.

The Chair went through the procedure for the remainder of the hearing again for the benefit of Councillor Porter.

Councillor Porter was granted some time to familiarise himself with the amended meeting procedure.

The Monitoring Officer submits a report to enable the Hearing Panel (a Sub-Committee of the Standards Committee) to consider a complaint against a Councillor following a decision of the Standards Advisory Board on 22 November 2016 to refer the complaint to the Hearing Panel.

The Deputy Monitoring Officer presented the report outlining details of the incident which led to the complaint and gave details of the Standards process so far which lead to a Hearing Sub-Committee to take place.

Councillor Porter made some challenges to points in the report:-

At 3.2 of the report, he felt that this indicates a hasty decision on the part of the Monitoring Officer and the Independent person to determine the process for the complaint.

He felt that the rationale for not undertaking a formal investigation was not explained in the initial letter sent to him by the Monitoring Officer.

He noted that he was in ongoing correspondence with the Monitoring Officer but felt that he had received criticism for delaying the process.

The Chair interjected at this point and requested that the Sub-Committee view the webcast film of the incident which the complaint related to. This was done.

The Sub-Committee were invited to raise any questions on the facts of the case as outlined in the report, associated documents and the webcast. There were no questions.

Councillor Porter raised further points:

The normal process for a Standards investigation wasn’t followed because an investigation wasn’t commissioned.

The biased view of newspaper reporters was incorrectly taken as fact in the meeting’s papers.

No independent view was sought in relation to the interpretation of the comments that he had made.

Councillor Porter did not consider the comment he made to Councillor Thomas to be offensive, as it was innuendo and a joke.

Another issue in relation to a far more offensive comment about mental health made at the same council meeting was treated as being less severe and similar processes were not followed.

It was felt that Councillor Thomas must have a ‘thin skin’ if he was offended by the comment.

Councillor Thomas was a regular heckler of Councillor Porter and this was a humorous response to one of his heckles.

The Chair thanked Councillor Porter for his views.

The Sub-Committee were asked if they had any questions for Councillor Porter. There were no questions at this point.

Councillor Porter raised a further point with regard to the meeting papers. He felt that the minutes of the Standards Advisory Board were misleading as it indicated that they were told that an informal resolution was not an option for them. He felt this was incorrect because no formal investigation had been commissioned.

The Monitoring Officer commented on the points which Councillor Porter had made.

In terms of the timeline for consideration of the complaint, he picked up the complaint following the 6^th October Council meeting on 10^th October. The Independent Person, Mr. Lindley was contacted and responded that day, both were in agreement that the incident wasn’t trivial and required more work.

The issue had been covered by local and national media and an opportunity to apologise to Councillor Thomas had not been taken.

The Monitoring Officer wrote to Councillor Porter and Thomas on 12/10/16 saying that the matter would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.