Agenda item

The Lord Mayor noted that in advance of the meeting Members had been asked to indicate if they intended to make a declaration of interest at the meeting and had received advice regarding any requests for dispensations.

It was noted that Members had identified interests as below:

At the request of the Lord Mayor the Head of Law and Deputy Monitoring Officer addressed Council and gave the following advice regarding the declaration of interests at the meeting. Members did not need to declare interests that already appeared on their Register of Interests, which was a publically accessible and available document.  The Localism Act 2011 expressly excused a Member from having to re-declare interests that appeared on the Register.  Over and above interests declared on the Register, Members had, following the Monitoring Officer’s written invitation issued in January, given details of items they wished to declare at the meeting and these were appended to the Council script and would appear in the minutes when published. 

Therefore there was no need to verbally re-declare these at the meeting unless these were prejudicial Other Disclosable Interests or Disclosable Pecuniary Interests that would require the Member to leave the room and desist from voting. As always, the judgement remained one for the Member to make, with the Head of Law and Deputy Monitoring Officer only able to offer advice.

Head of Law and Deputy Monitoring Officer advised that under the provisions of section 106 Local Government Finance Act 1992 any Member who was in two or more months of arrears of Council Tax should not vote on the items for consideration at the meeting.  Criminal liability attached to such a Member who did so.

The Head of Law and Deputy Monitoring Officer stated that a request had been received to grant one category of dispensation, without which it could be necessary for those Members to leave the Chamber.  After consultation with the Standards Committee a dispensation had been granted to elected Members who were council tenants (or had family members or close associates who were council tenants) to enable them to remain and participate and vote on both the Budget proposals and, crucially, the Housing Revenue Account proposals that came before the meeting. 

It was noted that the names of those Members who sought this dispensation would appear in the minutes of the meeting.  Members who had not yet asked to be granted the benefit of the dispensation were asked to raise their hand and to declare why.  In response to the above statement the following Members sought and received dispensations:

Councillor Aldred – family member who is a Council tenant

Councillor Aqbany - family member who is a Council tenant

Councillor Byrne –self and family member Council tenants

Councillor Thalukdar – family member who is a Council tenant

Councillor Westley - family member who is a Council tenant

Councillor Newcombe - family member who is a Council tenant

The Lord Mayor invited Members to declare any further interests they might have in the business on the agenda and/or indicate if Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 applied to them.

No further declarations were made.