Agenda item

Annual Standards Report

Report of the Director of Legal & Governance

 

Minutes:

6.1

The Committee received a report of the Director of Legal and Governance.

 

6.2

The report highlighted details of the outcomes of the Standards complaints received from January to December 2021. This was reported to the Committee on an annual basis.

 

6.3

The report also mentioned that the 4-year term of independent persons was due to expire in September 2022. Therefore, an advert on becoming an independent person for the Audit & Standards Committee would soon be advertised.

 

6.4

It was mentioned that Parish and Town Councils operated under the same code as Sheffield City Council.

 

6.5

The report outlined what training and development had been carried out by members and what was still to be offered. This was subject to the free training package provided by the Local Government Association (LGA) following the Councils transition to a Committee System. It was added that additional resource had been put into Democratic Services to support with training and development for members.

 

6.6

The Committee were informed that training and development would be monitored within the Governance Committees remit, post May 2022 although the Audit and Standards Committee will continue to monitor training and development around the code of conduct.

 

6.7

The Director of Legal and Governance hoped to receive support from each political group, if a member did not carry out mandatory training courses.

 

6.8

A Member of the Committee raised whether the report should specify whether a complaint was made against a Parish Council or Sheffield City Council, and whether it should be broken down into percentages of which political parties the complaints were made against. The Director of Legal and Governance explained that it was reported that way to protect individual councillors under the Data Protection Act. The Committee agreed to carry out a Workshop that looked into this further.

 

6.9

RESOLVED: That the Committee:-

 

(a)  Comments on the Annual Report; and

(b)  Approves the report for submission to Full Council.

 

 

Supporting documents: