Agenda item

To receive a report from Simon Goacher, solicitor with Weightman's LLP, commissioned to undertake an external review of code of conduct complaints.

Members received a report presented by Simon Goacher, Weightman’s LLP, and Gillian Marshall from the LGA Advisory Challenge Board.

Mr. Goacher explained that he had been commissioned by the LGA Advisory Challenge Board to carry out a desktop review of the way in which a number of complaints about Councillors had been carried out by Northumberland County Council.  As part of the work, processes were reviewed and lessons to be learned identified.  The method of dealing with complaints was reviewed against the Council’s procedure and best practice.  10 reports of investigations carried out by Freeths LLP solicitors and three reports of assessments carried out by ch&i associations were reviewed.  It had been concluded that the length of time taken to complete the investigations/assessments was much longer than would be best practice or expected.  However, mitigating factors included the cultural issues at the Council, change of the Monitoring Officer and staff, the way in which complainants and subject members participated, the complexity of the complaints and the related process which delayed the investigations.  The Council’s arrangements for dealing with complaints could be improved and also a more pro-active approach to managing complaints and investigations which had been outsourced.

The report recommended that

•       The Council reviews its arrangements for dealing with code of conduct complaints against best practice and the LGA’s guidance on handling complaints;

•       The Council ensure that where any investigation or other action in respect of complaints is outsourced:

•       Clear deadlines are agreed at the outset;

•       There is a person in the Monitoring Officer’s team responsible for monitoring progress;

•       Monthly updates are requested form the external provider;

•       Any delay beyond six months in completion of an investigation from the time of instruction is reported to the Standards Committee, together with reasons.

•       The Standards Committee receive regular (at least quarterly) reports on the:

•       Number of complaints received;

•       Progress of any complaints made but not yet determined;

•       Outcome of complaints determined

•       Number of complaints outsourced and anticipated completion date;

•       The Council reviews the resources available to the Monitoring Officer to deal with complaints;

•       The Deputy Monitoring Officers are provided with training on the assessment of complaints and investigations;

•       Where a Deputy Monitoring Officer deals with a complaint as a result of the Monitoring Officer having a conflict, the Deputy Monitoring Officer will report directly to the Chief Executive in respect of that complaint; and

•       An annual report be prepared setting out the number of complaints received, the broad nature of the complaints, the outcomes and the timescales taken in respect of them.  This should be considered by the Standards Committee and reported to Full Council.  It should also be reflected in the Council’s process for preparing its Annual Governance Statement.

Members welcomed the report and the following responses to queries and comments were received:-

•       If no resolution to a complaint could be reached but there had been a breach of the code, then the matter should always come before the Standards Committee.  In a good procedure, the Monitoring Officer would weed out any pointless complaints.  A Monitoring Officer should always seek a local resolution where possible such as getting the parties together and helping them to understand each other’s position or by way of an apology.  The clarity of the wording in procedure could be improved for clarification.

•       The Chair of a Committee could not make decisions as these could only be delegated to a Committee if they were non executive decisions.  Pre hearing consultations could take place with meetings with the Chair and Monitoring Officer to set out the process.

•       It was noted that the procedures had been in place for many years and before the current Monitoring Officer staff, therefore, it was not known whether there were specific reasons for particular wording and its meaning was not clear.

•       There was a resource intensity involved in dealing with the complaints procedure.  This was reflected in the Committee’s decision to appoint two additional Independent Persons to assist the Monitoring Officer’s team with the assessment of complaints.

•       It was important that processes were in place to identify spurious complaints and finding an appropriate method of dealing with them.  If this was continually happening then there was a need to have a process for dealing with such vexatious complaints.  This review provided a way to move forward.

•       It was important to balance speed and fairness to all parties and to deal with complaints as quickly as possible.  With regard to vexatious complaints, filtering criteria could be put in place to assess if there were a number of similar complaints. 

RESOLVED that

(1)    the Independent Desktop Review appended to the report, be received.

(2)    the findings (lessons learnt) and recommendations of the Desktop Review as set out in paragraphs 42 to 56 of the report, be accepted.

(3)    a progress report be submitted to the next meeting of the Standards Committee.