Agenda item

Section 618

A Member questioned what progress had been made since the last meeting around repealling section 618 of the Housing Act 1985. The Comptroller and City Solicitor reported that the Remembrancer had been tasked with progressing this on behalf of the City Corporation given that it was a parliamentary matter.

The Policy and Resources Committee had received a report on the matter and were also supportive of the repeal of section 618.

The Chair added that she felt it was highly unlikely, in the current climate, that this matter would be given parliamentary attention any time soon but asked that Officers seek to update Members on progress if there were any between now and the next meeting of this Committee.

Member v. Member Complaints

The Chief Commoner remarked that the number of Members involved in some way in internal complaints would appear to be a fairly significant proportion of the Court based on the summary table within the draft Annual Court Report. He asked whether any comparative data was available from other similar legislative bodies as he would be interested to know if this was an anomaly.

The Chair reported that this information could be provided to all outside of the meeting but added that it would always be difficult to compare the City Corporation with other organisations for a number of reasons. She also highlighted that some Members were involved in more than one complaint detailed within the Annual Report.

The Comptroller and City Solicitor undertook to gather the relevant information from colleagues working in other boroughs. He underlined that, in his experience both at the City Corporation and elsewhere, the majority of complaints tended to be Member v. Member.

Another Member added that direct comparison would be difficult, not least because the City Corporation had no party political system and therefore matters that might be dealt with a party level elsewhere were emerging as formal complaints here.