Agenda item

7.1

The Monitoring Officer/Director of Legal and Governance submitted a report outlining revisions to the procedure for dealing with standards complaints. The latest version of the procedure had been approved by this Committee on 16 November 2017 and by Full Council on 6 December 2017. One of the revisions agreed was for the procedure to be reviewed on an annual basis by the Monitoring Officer in consultation with the Independent Persons. While the procedure had been a noticeable improvement on previous versions, some slight revisions were proposed in the light of the complaints considered this year.

7.2

Gillian Duckworth, Monitoring Officer/Director of Legal and Governance commented that the revisions included extending the timescales for consideration of complaints. This was to give complainants more realistic expectations of the timescale for their complaint to be considered. The other main revision regarded data protection and was designed to be more explicit about what the Council was doing with someone’s personal information.

7.3

Responding to a question from a Member, Gillian Duckworth commented that the revision in paragraph 11.2 of the procedure to state that personal information would be deleted after 7 years unless ‘we elect to retain it for a longer period in order to comply with our legal and regulatory regulations’ was included in case it was needed such as for an ongoing court case that may last longer than that period.

7.4

Resolved: That the Committee:-

(a)

recommends to Full Council the adoption of the revised Procedure and that the Constitution be amended accordingly; and

(b)

refers the revised Procedure to the Parish and Town Councils for consideration and adoption.