Agenda and minutes

To confirm the minutes from the previous meeting

The minutes of the meeting held on 8 December 2016 were confirmed by the Members present and were then signed by the Chairman.

To receive any apologies for absence

Apologies received from Cllr Tindall and independent person Rachel Keil.

M Brookes informed that the committee that there were no formal complaints to report, but there had been six Councillors from Tring which had resigned. There had been no formal standard complaints, but complaints from the public about the meetings.

They are currently working with the two Councillors in post to address this.

Following this there is likely to be an election.

The training session was introduced by Mark Brookes. It was based around a completely fictitious complaint made by an officer against a member of Dacorum Borough Council.  Members were asked to consider how they would approach conducting a hearing into the complaint. Christopher Gaunt, the Deputy Monitoring Officer, spoke about his finding in the investigating report and was happy to take questions from Members. M Brookes introduced several discussion points as the hearing progressed and Members were invited to give their views on a number of procedural aspects.

Members were asked, in consultation with the Independent Persons, to arrive at a decision as to whether or not the Councillor involved had failed to follow the Code of Conduct and, if so, the reasons for their decision and what action, if any, should be taken against the Councillor.

The Corporate Objective of the session was as follows:

The promotion and maintenance of high standards of conduct by Members of the Council will assist the Council in achieving its priorities of performance excellence, reputation and profile delivery.

Action:  None

Outcome: Report was noted.

The Chairman thanked all those in attendance for their contribution to the exercise hoping all had learned from the experience and particularly for the effort and input from the officers in compiling the case. He felt we all learned from the evening, not least himself, and hoped everybody else did too. In reality, the recommendations would be forwarded to the next full Council meeting for ratification or otherwise.

Thursday 21^st September 2017

The committee agreed that the next meeting will take place on Thursday 22 June 2017

None.