Issue - meetings

Review of the 2021 Member Code of Conduct

Meeting: 16/12/2021 - Standards Committee (Item 536)

536 Review of the 2021 Member Code of Conduct pdf icon PDF 229 KB

The Council adopted a new Members Code of Conduct in March 2021.  This report seeks the view of the Standards Committee as to whether a review of the Code should be undertaken.

[30 minutes]

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

            Upon invitation of the Chair, the Group Head of Law and Governance introduced the report. Page 54, paragraph 1.5 was highlighted, which confirmed that the previous Monitoring Officer had delivered some training to District Councillors, and external training was delivered to  Members on the 7 December, which was an extensive 2 hour session. This would be circulated to Parish Councillors.

 

            Members (and a non-Committee Member given permission to speak by the Committee) then took part in a full debate and the following points were raised:

·         No Members had been in contact to raise concerns about the Code.

·         The Declarations of Interest flowchart would be sufficient.

·         It would be helpful to have a definition of the Declarations on the back page of the flowchart.

·         The Committee should consider extending the scope over which an interest should be declared, and it was felt the wording on Paragraph 9 of Page 24 of the Bognor Regis Town Council Code of Conduct, should be added to Arun’s Code.

·         As the Code was agreed by Committee in March 2021, it was too early for a review, however any changes felt necessary should be made now.

 

It was agreed that the Code of Conduct would be placed onto the Work Programme and brought back to the Committee with the requested alterations.

 

Following discussion, Recommendation 1 was Proposed by Councillor Edwards and Seconded by Councillor Bicknell.

 

The Committee

 

            RESOLVED

 

That the 2021 Code of Conduct is effective and appropriate and needs no review at this time