Agenda item

Steve Baker introduced the report advising that the purpose of the report was to advise Members of the need to amend the Council’s standing orders insofar as they relate to taking disciplinary action including dismissal against the Head of Paid Services, Chief Finance Officer and Monitoring Officer (collectively referred to as the statutory officers). He went on to advise that new regulations came into force in May of this year which amend the process for disciplining or dismissing a statutory officer. Under the previous regulations the Council could not take disciplinary action against a statutory officer except in accordance with the recommendation in a report prepared by a designated independent person (commonly referred to as a DIP). Also, under the previous regulations the dismissal of the HOPS had to have the final approval of Council, whereas the dismissal of the CFO or MO could be delegated to a committee or sub-committee. The new regulations firstly remove the requirement to appoint a DIP and replace the DIP process with a new procedure and secondly the decision to dismiss a statutory officer, including the CFO and MO can only be taken by full Council.

Under the new procedure, the Council must appoint at least two independent persons to the committee which is advising the Council on matters relating to the dismissal of one of it’s statutory officers. These must be the independent person or persons appointed by the Council under the Localism Act for the purposes of dealing with standards complaints against members. Where the Council has only appointed one IP under the Localism Act it must appoint an IP from another authority to the committee.

Before Council can take a vote on whether to approve the dismissal of a statutory officer it must first take into account (but not necessarily follow) the advice, views or recommendations of the committee together with the conclusions of any investigation and any representations made by the statutory officer concerned.

The new regulations require Council’s standing orders to be amended so as to incorporate these new provisions as set out in the schedule to the regulations.

He concluded by adding that he would like to add a second recommendation, as the whole of the Constitution has not yet been reviewed in detail to see whether any other changes are necessary as a result of these new regulations. He suggested that  the additional recommendation should read – “That the Monitoring Officer be authorised by the Council to make any consequential amendments to the Constitution as may be necessary to give effect to the regulations referred to in recommendation 1 above”.

Councillor Elliot asked if other Council’s have similar Standing orders

Steve Baker advised that the previous regulations prescribed the DIP process and  all local authorities had to incorporate that DIP process in their Standing Orders, so every local authority has to go through the same process and noted that the County Council were currently receiving a similar report. He went on to advise that the regulations go on to say that the changes have to be adopted at the first ordinary meeting of the Council following the election, so they would need to go to Council in July for adoption.

Councillor Williams asked for confirmation that this is a statutory requirement and not discretionary.

Steve Baker confirmed this was the case and that we have to adopt the prescribed wording and went on to say that it is slightly controversial and has attracted some criticism from the LGA and also from ALACE as there are some gaps, for example it talks about inviting the independent person to be a member of the committee, but does not got on to say what happens if they refuse to take part. It also refers to the Council taking into account any investigation that has been carried out, but does not state that an investigation has to be carried out, just that if there has been one it has to be taken into consideration.

Councillor Griffiths enquired if Steve Baker would recommend that when we next go out for an independent person that we actually go out for independent persons, or if it would be good to go for the one from another local authority.

Steve Baker advised that when we go out again, that it would be prudent to appoint, if we can, 2 independent persons. He went on to say that the other criticism of the process that has been raised is that the independent person has been appointed to play a role in standards complaints against Councillors, under the Code of Conduct, so they have not necessarily got the expertise for this type of role. So in future when we are recruiting an independent  person we  would also need to take into account this new role.

The recommendation and the additional recommendation were agreed.