Agenda item

The Standards Committee’s functions include considering membership and recruitment of Independent Persons to the Committee and making recommendations for appointments to Full Council.

Independent Persons (IPs) are appointed for a fixed period of time, and all three of the Council’s IPs’ terms of appointment will expire in July 2024. A recruitment process will need to be commenced ahead of that date in order to have in place suitably qualified IPs for the next period.

[20 Minutes]

Upon the invitation of the Chair, the Monitoring Officer introduced the report, explaining the Council were statutorily obliged to appoint at least one Independent Person (IP). IPs’ views were sought and taken into account by the Monitoring Officer and/or Standards Committee when a decision was taken on an allegation under the Members’ Code of Conduct. Their views may also be sought by the Monitoring Officer and/or Standards Committee at any other stage in the procedure when a complaint of a breach of the Code was considered, or by the Councillor facing the allegation. IPs could not be employees of the Council or Councillors. They were invited to attend meetings of the Standards Committee in an advisory, non-voting capacity. The Council appointed its IPs for a maximum of four years and currently had three IPs. John Thompson was appointed in July 2019 and Sandra Prail and John Cooke were appointed in July 2020, with their terms all ending on 14 July 2024. The process by which the Council appointed IPs was much like recruiting for jobs.

The Monitoring Officer explained he wished to run the recruitment process from January to recruit IPs for a 4 year term. He highlighted paragraph 4.6 of the report. On the last occasion recruitment took place, the interview panel consisted of two Members of the Committee, an existing IP and the Monitoring Officer. Following the interviews carried out by the panel, the Committee then made a recommendation to Full Council. It was recommended that the same approach was to be taken on this occasion but with one additional Committee Member added to the panel – making five members of the interview panel in total. This process would be undertaken in other districts and boroughs, as all of the West Sussex districts and boroughs were required to appoint IPs. The Monitoring Officer recommended exploring a joint recruitment process alongside any other willing districts and boroughs with a view to widening the pool of potential applications and sharing the cost. The report requested authorisation for the Monitoring Officer to prepare an application pack to be brought back to Committee 18 January 2024, and also to explore the recruiting jointly with other West Sussex district and borough councils.

The Chair then invited questions from Members. One Member raised a discussion that had taken place at Full Council regarding recruiting all three IPs at the same time, during which it was suggested the consequence of this was that all experience and knowledge was lost in one go, and it had been suggested at Full Council consideration should be given to this being staggered. The Monitoring Officer explained that staggering recruitment in such a way would mean they were almost always going through the detailed recruitment process, which would be at additional cost, however it was for the Committee to decide on the process. Another Member asked whether the existing IPs could reapply, which the Monitoring Officer confirmed they could.

          The recommendations were proposed by Councillor Purser and seconded by Councillor Turner.

          The Committee

RESOLVED that

1      having considered the report, the recruitment process that it wants the Council to undertake in relation to its three Independent Persons, as presented in the report, be agreed;

2      the Group Head of Law & Governance be authorised to prepare the application pack detailed within the report and bring documentation to the 18 January 2024 meeting of the Committee for approval;

3      the Group Head of Law & Governance be authorised to explore recruiting jointly with other West Sussex district and borough councils.