England expects every man to do his duty…

Over the weekend, I realised that my reading of the Standards Board code of conduct had a hole in it, so I asked them for an opinion.

Here is my email to them on Monday:

Seeking informal clarification on whether a complaint is necessary

I am contacting you about an issue that happened recently regarding conduct of a meeting Chairman.(Town Mayor) of my Town (Parish) Council.

To distill events to their simplest without layering in the politics and individuals concerned,

* An Agenda Motion was proposed for debate at full council
* The Motion was proposed and a proposal speech was made
* It received a formal second
* A procedural motion to debate the Motion in parts was lost after
being seconded
* The motion was briefly debated by two Councillors, the first of
which objected to the second ‘s choice of words and a third
interjected that it was true
* A move to the vote was proposed
* One Member protested that he still wished to speak on the Motion
* The Chairman asked for a seconder, clarified the consequences of
such procedure then allowed the move to the vote to be voted on

The concern here was threefold:

* A Council Standing Order states that the Chairman must only accept
a move to the vote “only if he is of the opinion that the question
before the Council has been sufficiently debated”.
* A Councillor still wished to speak
* Debate had only been for One minute eleven seconds.

I looked very closely at the Code of Conduct rules over the weekend as I am aware that I am obliged to bring any breach before the Standards Board. My initial view was that this was not a Standards Board Issue, particularly when I saw the phrase “complaints about the way in which the authority
conducts and records its meetings” as a topic you cannot investigate.

However, on reflection and after further discussion with others, there is a view that the Chairman was not impartial on this occasion, albeit possibly with the best of intentions. On the basis of lack of impartiality, this is potentially a contravention “damaging the reputation of their office or authority.”

There is a conflict here, hence my need to seek informal guidance.

If I am obliged to make a complaint, I would not expect it to be referred for subsequent investigation by yourselves, but that isn’t up to me of course!

Thank you in advance in this matter.

Ian Grey

Today, I received this useful reply.

Dear Councillor Grey,

Thank you for your email of 12 March 2007 regarding events at a recent town council meeting you attended.

Although the Standards Board for England (the Standards Board) cannot give definitive advice in relation to specific factual situations, the following general guidance is intended to be of some assistance. It should be noted that the Standards Board’s Ethical Standards Officers who are responsible for the investigation of allegations of misconduct made to the Standards Board are operationally independent. Whilst Ethical Standards Officers will be guided by the views of the Standards Board nothing contained in this email should be taken as binding on them.

Based on the information provided in your correspondence I would suggest that it’s unlikely that an allegation submitted to the Standards Board against the chairman, on the basis of the conduct you describe, would be referred for investigation. The reasons for this are twofold; firstly, whilst I acknowledge the views expressed in your email, I feel that the complaint really concerns the actions of the council as opposed to the conduct of the chairman. Secondly I think it unlikely that that the complaint would be considered sufficiently serious to warrant a publicly-funded investigation.

I appreciate your concerns that a failure to report the conduct of the chairman to the Standards Board could result in a potential breach of the Code of Conduct and leaves you open to allegation yourself. However, whilst a technical breach of the Code of Conduct, the Standards Board only refers allegations concerning the ‘whistleblowing’ provision of the Code of Conduct for investigation in exceptional circumstances. As you may be aware, the Code of Conduct is being reviewed and a new Code of Conduct should be released in time for the May elections this year. One of the recommendations made by the Standards Board to Communities and Local Government (CLG) was that the duty to report breaches should be abolished. For further details of the Code of Conduct review you may wish to visit our website at http://www.standardsboard.co.uk/TheCodeofConduct/ReviewingtheCode/

I hope this information is of assistance to you.

Yours sincerely,

Natalie Ainscough
Policy Adviser
The Standards Board for England

The phrase “whilst a technical breach of the Code of Conduct” could apply to me or the Chairman, I imagine.