Agenda item

To agree the public minutes of the meeting held on 2 October 2015.

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 2 October 2015 were considered and approved as a correct record.

MATTERS ARISING

Complaints Procedure and Form (page 3) – The Comptroller and City Solicitor informed the Committee that a written report summarising Complaints dealt with informally by the Chief Commoner would be submitted to their next meeting.

Revised Guidance to Members re: Code of Conduct (page 3) – The Town Clerk reported that, at the Committee’s request, relevant Committee Chairmen had been contacted to request that they remind their Co-opted Members of the need to submit responses to the Town Clerk at their next scheduled meetings. This had resulted in a further 12 responses meaning that there had now been 87 responses in total and 83 responses still outstanding from Co-opted Members from across the organisation.

The Committee requested that the Town Clerk provide a breakdown of responses by Committee for their next meeting so that they were able to identify if there were issues of compliance in particular areas.

The Chairman highlighted that he had particular concerns around the lack of responses received from those co-opted Members who sat on the City Corporation’s statutory consultative committees.

The Comptroller and City Solicitor informed the Committee that he would be producing a report on the legal status/constitution of the various Sub, Consultative and Grand Committees for whom responses were still outstanding to the next meeting of the Standards Committee with advice on how best to proceed in each case.

The Committee agreed that this would be helpful and would enable them to re-think their policy on this matter so that if a body were purely advisory and the City Corporation were keen to encourage participation, it might not be necessary for all members of that body to submit a response.

The Chairman reported that the City’s Property Investment Board had recently taken the decision to co-opt an additional 3 Members who would also be required to return the necessary forms.