A bizarre evening tonight.
The Standards Committee of the District Council consists of 4 Tory District Councillors, 1 Lib Dem District Councillor, plus a number of parish councillors and independent members.
Chris Black was there for the Lib Dems but none of the Tories turned up!
For the first time in ten years our party outnumbered the Conservatives in an official council committee (albeit by one to nil).
Everything went very smoothly and we made some useful decisions.
Poor attendance by the Conservatives is becoming a trend.
Was there enough there to pass anything? Are any decisions made reversable by another group?
The Standards Committee is special because it has members who are parish councillors or independent non-councillors. becaue most of those attended, the meeting was quorate.
The committee made a couple of reasonable recommendations to council, which may or may not be accepted.
The main part of the evening was spent discussing what happens when the Coalition does away with the whole national atsnards structure for councillors in about a years time.
When that happens, any serious cases of not declaring interests will be a police matter. Also, parish councils won’t have to be involved with their district council over standards if the don’t want to be. And if a council doesn’t want to have a code of conduct, it doesn’t have to have one.
But it may still be useful for a council to adopt its own local code of conduct (maybe less heavy-handed than the existing one). If the district council still wants to have some kind of committee to adjudicate on breaches of that code, it will have to decide whether to have parish councillors and independents as members. (otherwise, could it be seen as too nakedly political?) Would a committee like this be a gentler way of dealing with silly failures to declare interests rather than just leaving it to the police? By the way, when things change councils will no longer be able to impose suspensions on councillors who breach the code, just censure them or impose extra training.
Interesting stuff and it was a pity that no Conservative District Councillors were present.