Local handling of complaints against members

Report: 4
Date: 10 April 2008
By: the Chief Executive

Summary

This report provides an update on the implementation of the new ethical standards regime under which local standards committees will be responsible for receiving and determining allegations that members have breached the authority’s code of conduct.

A. Recommendation

Members of the Committee are asked

1. to note the present position with regard to the introduction of the new ethical standards regime;

2. to consider the issues and how they would wish to proceed in developing the necessary procedures and practices; and

3. to consider if a third independent member should be recruited to the committee.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill 2006 received Royal Assent on 30 October 2007 and is now an Act of Parliament. Sections 183 - 200 of that Act introduce significant changes to the ethical standards regime. In summary these are:

• Local assessment: standards committees will be responsible for receiving allegations of misconduct against members and for deciding whether any action needs to be taken.
• Standards committees must be chaired by one of its independent members.
• Standards committees will be allowed to enter into joint working arrangements with other standards committees.
• Standards committees will be required to report periodically to the Standards Board for England.
• The Standards Board will be responsible for monitoring and ensuring the effectiveness of local arrangements, including support foe authorities experiencing difficulties.

2. Regulations are required to establish the detail and bring these provisions into force. The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) consulted on detailed arrangements earlier this year and it was widely expected that regulations would be produced to come into force on 1 April 2008. This has not happened but it is reasonable to expect the operative date to be within the next month or so.

3. In the absence of these regulations and consequential guidance from the Standards Board for England, it is difficult to move forward in preparing for the new regime. An oral update will be given at the meeting. However, these are some of the main known or anticipated issues for the MPA’s Standards Committee:

4. Membership Issues

4.1 Standards committees will have to perform three separate functions with regard to handling allegations of misconduct:

1. The initial assessment of a misconduct allegation.
2. Any request the standards committee receives from a complainant to review its decision, should that be to take no action in relation to the misconduct allegation.
3. Any subsequent hearing of a standards committee to determine whether a member has breached the code, and where appropriate to impose a sanction on that member.

4.2. To ensure fairness for all parties the DCLG is likely to require as a minimum that no member who has taken part in stage 1 above should take part in stage 2 (i.e. in reviewing their original assessment). The DCLG may be minded to allow a member who participated in stage 1 (initial assessment) or stage 2 (review of decision to take no action) to take part in any subsequent hearing at stage 3.

4.3. Carrying out these three separate functions will require the Standards Committee to set up three sub-committees. This will have implications for the size of the committee’s membership, depending on the extent to which the regulations require discrete membership of each sub-committee. The MPA’s Annual Meeting takes place on 29 May, when MPA member appointments to the Standards Committee will be made.

4.4. When the regulations come into force the chair of the standards committee must be one of the independent members. Therefore, at its next meeting the committee should make this appointment. The DCLG are also likely to require that the chairs of the three sub-committees should also be taken by independent members. The MPA may, therefore, need to recruit a third independent member. This may in any event be advisable to ensure that the committee can continue to function should there be a situation where MPA members of the Standards Committee were unable to take part in a hearing.

Procedures

5. Once the content of the regulations are known the Standards Committee will need to consider and approve the framework and detailed procedures for how it is going to handle complaints. The Standards Board for England will be issuing guidance and it will clearly be sensible to follow this as far as possible. At the same time, building on the joint working that has already taken place within the Greater London Authority family, an aim should be for each standards committee to have the same or similar procedures. This work will be a priority for MPA officers once the content of the regulations and Standards Board guidance is known.

Joint working

6. There are two aspects to this:

• The regulations will address the situation where an individual is a member of more than one authority (e.g. the MPA and the GLA) and as such may have failed to comply with more than one code of conduct. The issue here is whether the standards committees concerned should be free to decide how best to deal with such a situation.
• The regulations will also set out the ability of authorities to establish joint standards committees should they so choose.

7. Publicising the new arrangements

7.1 The MPA will need to publicise the Standards Committee’s new responsibilities. It will also need to revise its complaints procedure, which at present excludes complaints against MPA members. An Equalities Impact Assessment is currently being carried out in respect of the complaints procedure, which includes reviewing how best to publicise it. This can be extended to include complaints against members.

Next steps

8. Committee members are invited to discuss how they want to proceed in preparing for their new responsibilities. It is suggested that as procedures are developed it would be helpful if members could meet informally with officers to discuss how these will operate in practice. These sessions are likely to be needed towards the end of April and during May. There may also be scope for further joint sessions with the GLA and other functional bodies.

9. The Committee is also asked to consider whether a third independent member is needed. If so the officers will need to start the recruitment process as soon as practicable. However, as the MPA is about to advertise for nine of its Independent Member positions it may be best to wait for a couple of months or so to avoid confusion.

10. There will be changes of MPA membership on the Standards Committee at the May Annual Meeting, not least because there is currently a vacancy on the committee and, ideally, there should be a larger membership (with two independent members on the committee, the MPA membership can, by law, comprise up to six members).

C. Race and equality impact

As the framework and procedures for handling complaints are developed they will need to take full account of equality considerations (within the legislative requirements). It is to be expected that in producing guidance the Standards Board for England will have carried out an impact assessment, but the likelihood is that the MPA should also carry out its own assessment.

D. Financial implications

If the committee decide to recruit a third independent member there will be advertising costs, possibly in the order of £15,000. These are unbudgeted but the intention would be to meet them from the overall Members Services budget.

D. Background papers

None

E. Contact details

Report author: Simon Vile, Head of Corporate Secretariat, MPA

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback