Agenda item

The Assistant Director (Governance & Performance Management) reported that four issues had arisen since the last meeting of the Committee in July 2014, of which one was currently active:

(i)         complaints about four Members of a Parish Council following an altercation at a meeting, which resulted in two of the Members resigning;

(ii)        a complaint against a District Councillor for a failure to respond to correspondence, which was rejected on the grounds that an investigation would serve no useful purpose;

(iii)       a complaint against a District Councillor for harassment and bullying at a visit to a site for a planning application, which was rejected as the District Councillor was accompanied by a Senior Officer whose recollection of the incident differed to the complainant’s; and

(iv)       a complaint against a Parish Councillor and an alleged company partnership with an applicant of a planning application, which was currently under investigation and the draft report from the Investigator was awaited.

The Committee noted that the Monitoring Officer had more discretion to proactively deal with complaints, and Officers had dealt with a number of low level issues during the year. These had included a District Councillor who had not been identified as an applicant for a planning application, thus their application had been dealt with under delegated authority instead of by the District Development Management Committee; a letter had been sent to the Member concerned. A second incident had involved a Planning Officer being sworn at at a Planning Sub-Committee meeting by a Parish Councillor; this had been resolved with an apology from the Parish Councillor to the Planning Officer concerned.

The Assistant Director added that support had been extended to one particular Parish Council during the year, and the Independent Persons were thanked for their help to the Officers with the issues that had arisen since the last meeting. The Committee was informed that a number of the standards issues raised had related been to planning matters, and this was the main cause of complaint. Member training on Standards issues had been undertaken in June 2015, and the next course was scheduled for September; the Planning Protocol was included in this training.

The Chairman thanked the Officers for the update and stated that the prevalence of complaints in relation to planning matters highlighted the importance for Members to undertake training in the Planning Protocol. The Committee offered their thanks to the Officers for their work in resolving the reported incidents over the previous year.

The Committee expressed some concern over the incident concerning the planning application made by the District Councillor, and that the Declaration of Accuracy had not been signed by the District Councillor. The Assistant Director speculated that the Declaration had probably been signed by the Agent on behalf of the Councillor, but it was still the responsibility of the Councillor to ensure accuracy with the application. In the event, there had been no objections raised to the application so it would have been granted by the District Development Management Committee in all likelihood, but it was important that the proper process was followed. The Committee concurred that such cases were being dealt with in a much better way now than previously.

Resolved:

(1)        That the allegations made about the conduct of District and Parish/Town Councillors and the steps taken in resolving the issues raised be noted.