Agenda item - Public Involvement

To consider the following matters raised by members of the public:

(a)         Petitions: to receive any petitions presented to the full council or at the meeting itself;

(b)        Written Questions: to receive any questions submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the 14 January 2014;

(i)Mr Roy Pennington

(c)    Deputations: to receive any deputations submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the 14 January 2014.

59.1         That Chair noted that one written question had been received from a Mr Roy Pennington, unfortunately Mr Pennington was unable to attend the meeting, but the Committee agreed to hear the response and have this formally recorded.

Mr Roy Pennington

“Given the public concerns on the secrecy surrounding the Standards Panel of 19 Dec and its subsequent banning of the press and public from that meeting, will this committee conduct a self-scrutiny of: (a) the circumstances that allowed for a previously public hearing with full disclosure of all documents to become completely restricted, and (b) the voting procedure on this panel which seems to prevent any minority decision or formal dissent?”

Response

“I was not present at the Panel hearing, but have made enquiries and been briefed on the situation.

Under schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, a committee or sub-committee is entitled to go into closed session if the information being considered includes exempt information and if it thinks it is in the public interest to do so. The normal practice of the Standards Panel has been to hold its hearings in public. In this particular case, consideration was given to all the circumstances and, on balance, it was decided to hold the meeting in private.

There is no official requirement for decisions of the Panel to be unanimous. But, it has been the practice of standards panels to reach a decision by consensus where possible.

As you may be aware, one of the recommendations before this committee today, under agenda item 61, is the proposal to set up a cross-party Member working group to consider the procedure for dealing with Member complaints.

I refer you to paragraphs 3.9 and 3.10 of the report for item 61 from which you will see that the working group, which will include at least one Independent Person, will look at all aspects of the complaints process. This will include the issue of whether proceedings are held in open or closed session. In anticipation of the Committee agreeing the recommendations, the working group has already started its review.

It is proposed that the recommendations from the working group be referred to this committee for consideration at its meeting on 25^th March, which, of course, you are welcome to attend.”

59.2         There were no other public questions, petitions or deputations.