 Thank you very much. Good morning, Members, officers and any members of the public who are viewing the live stream of this meeting. Welcome to this meeting of the Civic Affairs Committee on Thursday, 9 September 2021. My name is Councillor Anna Bradnam, I'm the Chair of the Civic Affairs Committee. For the information of members of the public, our Committee is responsible for reviewing the Constitution, Electoral arrangements a ddylch i'r cyflwyno a gweithio'r standydau ethigol. Rwyf wedi bod gennym ni'n gweithio'r cyfnodau o'r lleidio. Fy fyddwn i'n gweithio'n cyffredinol oherwydd y syniad ymlaen i'r cyffredinol yn ystod o'r cyfrannu a'r weddag, ond mae'n gweithio'n gweithio, ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio i'r cyfrannu, a dyna ni eisiau ydych chi, ond nid oedd yma yn ddifft y cyfrannu ac mae'n gwirionedd o'r cyfrannu a ddim ni'n gwirionedd. Felly mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio i'r cyfrannu. Fy fyddwn i'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, ond yw'n ddigwydd yn y cyfrannu, y lluniau yn y cwysig yn y lluniau'r cyfrannu yn ystod y bydd yma i ymgyrchu yng nghymdd, The camera follows the microphone being switched on, so councillors and officers are advised to wait a couple of seconds before speaking to allow the camera to catch up. Please, can those participating in the meeting via the live stream indicate that you wish to speak via the chat column? Please use the chat column for any other purpose. Please don't use the chat column for any other purpose because it's a live document. Please make sure that your device is fully charged and that you switch your microphone off unless you're invited to do otherwise. Please ensure that you've switched off or silenced any other devices you have so that they do not interrupt proceedings. And when you're invited to address the meeting, please make sure that your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting, please turn your microphone off straight away. And also please remember to speak slowly and clearly because of the internet not always being perfect. And please don't talk over or interrupt anyone. If we need to vote on an item, we'll use the microphones to vote. Only members in the chamber are allowed to vote. Those members who propose or second proposals must also be in the room. Committee members present, I'll now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Members, after I call your name, please turn on your camera and microphone. Wait a couple of seconds, say your name so that your presence may be noted. May I start by asking members in turn? Vice-chair, councillor Dr Clare Daunton. Thank you, Clare Daunton. I'm Clare Daunton, vice-chair of this committee. And I'm one of the members for the Fendit and Full-Born Ward. Thank you. Councillor Henry Batchelor. Good morning, Chair. Councillor Henry Batchelor, one of the members for the Linson Ward. Councillor Cathcart. Good morning. Nigel Cathcart, a member of the Bassing-Born Ward. Thank you. Councillor Howell. Good morning, Chairman. Vice-Chairman. My name is Mark Howell. I am the member for the Caxton and Paterson. Councillor Howell, you might need to have your microphone a little bit closer. Just so that we can hear you more clearly. Thank you. Great. I believe Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chairman. Slight and shock, because Councillor Howell has never been accused of not being heard before. But you might represent the Mordans ward. He was speaking with unusual gentleness today. Are there, we have no other members present in the room, but I know we have councillor Dr Martin Kahn present online. Councillor Martin Kahn. It's lovely to see you. Thank you. Are there any other members attending online who are unaware of? Thank you very much. And remember, members taking part online will not be able to vote. So, can I also introduce our officers, Rory McKenna, who is the monitoring officer and Deputy Head of Legal. Good morning, Chair and committee members. Thank you, Rory. And Patrick Adams from Democratic Services. Good morning, Chair. Patrick is taking the minutes of this meeting. So, item one on the agenda, apologies. Patrick, could you give us the apologies for the absence for today, please? Certainly, Chair. We've had apologies from Councillor Bridget Smith, Councillor Aidan van der Wy, and just to be clear that Councillor Martin Kahn is appearing virtually both as he isn't present. And is Councillor Richard Williams taking part as an observer, or as a member of this committee? Sorry, just a reminder. Councillor Richard Williams is not a member of the committee, so he's taken part as an observer. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right. So, declarations of interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting, please would you raise it at that point? Any members have any interest to declare? Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chairman. Just on the gender item five about the update on code of conduct complaints, my same declaration as previous. We don't know who the parish councillors at Basinbourne are, and as I know, some of them, I have to declare it in case it's one of them. Okay. Thank you very much. Sorry, Councillor Cathcart. Do you turn your microphone on, Councillor Cathcart? Yes, I know them as well, so I need to. So, you're making the same declaration. Thank you very much. So, item three is the minutes, but a number of us noted that the minutes were not appended to this agenda. So, rather than approve them today, I'm going to propose that we defer that to the next meeting of the Civic Affairs Committee. Is that agreeable? I agree. Okay, thank you very much. So, we come on to item four, code of conduct, which asks the committee to recommend to council the adoption of a new code of conduct to take effect from May 2021. I think that might mean... We can't do it retrospectively, can we? Should it be May 2022? It should be May 2022. I'm looking to Rory. Yeah, I think that's correct. If you notice at the committee report on page 1.5, it does actually say in the recommendation that the guidance is to take effect from May 2022, and that's the recommendation under which members will be voting. Great. Thank you very much indeed. So, can I ask Rory McHenner to introduce this item please? Thank you. Oh, sorry. Councillor Hull. Councillor Williams. Oh, Councillor Williams, Councillor Williams. Thank you, Chairman. I think I was going to introduce it as Chair of the Task and Finish Group. Okay, that's fine. So, yes. The Antibody and Task and Finish Group have looked at this in great detail. There's many, many pages of it. And we felt that it was a significant improvement, particularly around areas of harassment and others. So, we were content to recommend it without any alterations. The reason for suggesting it comes into force in May 2022 as per page 1 was mainly for an administrative point of view. There are significant changes into actually declarations of interest and how those are managed. And given that the parish councils will most likely follow our lead and there are district council elections in May 2022 and parish council elections then, it made sense to bring it all forward at that point rather than doing something now and having to repeat it at a later date. It was also raised that because it is significant changes that we will need to have training as well as members and others and any details of that, Mr McHenner, I'm sure can fill members in on. So, our understanding is that there will be a full training programme on it as well. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. As a relatively newbie to this subject because I have only been the chair of this committee for a short time, could I ask the vice-chair who was involved in the derivation of this before as well for any comment? Thank you, Chairman. Yes, I'd like to recommend this for adoption. The issue of discussing this model code of conduct goes back. I would have thought probably about a year now when there was discussion at full council and myself and the then Chairman of Council, Dr Delacy, recommended looking at what was then in draft, the LGA Model Code of Conduct in draft, and the LGA Working Party, Cross Party, Working Party of the LGA, had put on their website an early version of what you see here today and it did seem sensible to work on that, to work on the draft. And I'm glad to see that the final version has come to us here today. There are a couple of points of detail that I wanted to take up, but I'll come back to those later. Thank you. Mr McKenna, would you like to make any comment? Thank you, Chair. So through you, obviously the guidance which is now being produced by the Local Government Association isn't, in my opinion, very extensive. I think it will benefit members, it will benefit members of the public and it will also assist myself in having to deal with any code of conduct complaints which unfortunately do follow. The only other point that I would just like to make as well is that in having an implementation date of May 2022 that obviously facilitates the parish councils as well and would be the recommendation that they follow suit and adopted in May 2022 if that's their wish to do so because, as has been indicated, the member interest forms will need to be amended given that there will be changes in declarations of interest so members will know them now as disposable pecuniary interests and non-disclosable pecuniary interests, DPIs and MPIs for short. Obviously if this code is adopted, I would recommend the two-fold council and ultimately adopt it in September. The forms will have to change. Obviously DPIs will stay as they are but MPIs will be replaced by two other classifications of interest which are contained within the report. Chair, I don't have anything else that I wanted to say. I think it's been covered. It's certainly my recommendation that members do recommend a council the adoption of the new model code and the guidance. Thank you. Thank you. My own observation is that a previous code of conduct was nine pages and it's gone up to 16 but I think that's helpful in a way because I know that there are some very useful working examples in the guidance which are helpful for understanding so it's been good. Does anybody have any comments for the comments to make? I welcome this. It seems to be a useful strengthening in many ways based on the existing code. In particular things like bullying and disrespectful behaviour do seem to be strengthening more clearly defined here because it's quite a subjective area. I think members of the authority and the parish council need to be aware that it can actually cause difficulty it can cause distress in fact. I think that clarity is to be welcomed frankly and I think for instance the parish council needs to be aware that it has been strengthened so one would look forward to it being implemented. I mean it is subjective as I say so it's a tricky one, the line between having an opinion forcefully expressed which is fine but going beyond that and actually trying to coerce people to do it in a way that causes them to feel that they have been treated disrespectfully. It is an area where judgement is required there's no doubt about that and it can't be subject to exact definition but this does try to do that to an extent as possible so I think that's to be welcomed. The only other point I think I'd make is if complaints are made and a subsequently found not to have foundation I'm just wondering whether there's any scope for how can I put this the applicant you see in law if in fact for instance you take a case against someone and it's found not to be valid and that often costs what I'm really trying to say the code is it's too easy to make a complaint which doesn't have foundation only to find the applicant that the individual has spent a lot of time on it causes a distress and it's totally not a foundation and really a question for Rory I suppose is there anything for instance is there any mechanism for charging I mean in law if you lose a case you expect to pay the legal costs I don't really know it's just a quash query to wonder whether a failed complaint can attract any sort of a costly authority in dealing with it. Let's put that question to Mr McKenna. You probably can't. Thank you chair and through you I think Councillor Cathcart has actually just answered his own question there unfortunately the short answer is no there's no ability to recover costs in that event. Right I see, I just wonder that takes quite a lot of office of time to deal with and it would be a way of making people pause and think about whether a claim really is actually valid or not but as you say there's no mechanism for dealing with it. Yeah I absolutely take your point on board I suppose the counter to that argument is you wouldn't want to put people off making a complaint for fear that they make a cost to the world against them. Yeah it's a tricky one I agree because you don't want to discourage valid complaints that is what I'm really trying to say is it would be nice to feel in some way of discouraging frivolous or complaints that are made with that foundation but apparently there isn't any way to do that. Not that I'm aware of. Okay thanks very much. I'm aware that in the room we have requests to speak from councillor Henry Batchelor and councillor Heather Williams but first of all I'm going to take councillor Martin Kahn as he's remote. Councillor Kahn would you know it? Yes I think this is going to cause a problem. It's a problem. Did you agree on the participation of such a plan but it's almost something that is very... Thank you councillor Kahn it's a very good point. I don't know whether we... Mr McKenna. Thank you chair. So through you if members turn to page 2 of the report at point 14 one of the changes that is proposed is a new classification of interests known as other registrable interests and you can see there at A, B and C the different categories of interests that need to be registered and then within the guidance it does give further information as to the detail of what would need to be registered so for instance if you look over at page 4 there is detailed guidance I don't propose to go through it in the meeting here today but there is detailed guidance for instance about campaigning on Facebook groups and the need for those to be registered so what I can say to members is that there is a lot more detail certainly in the new proposed code and in the guidance to to deal with such matters. Thank you Mr McKenna. So councillor Henry Bachelor. Thank you chair. I'll be brief. Just say I will be supporting this I think anything that brings us in line with the LGA's recommendations I think can only be a positive thing specifically as councillor Kahn just mentioned the expansion on registered interests I think that is a positive change anything that clarifies that given it's quite a serious thing that councillors both districts and parish need to do I think can be a positive I mean if we look on the next item I think there are a couple of complaints against various people regarding not registering interests correctly so I think clarity around that will be a positive step and yeah so as I say fully supportive of this and I trust the work of the task and finish groups will be supporting. Thank you chair. Thank you very much councillor Bachelor, councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chairman and I would just say on the remarks from councillor Kahn on Facebook and campaigning and other things such as that not quite sure what's going on with the video scrolling up there and yeah so I think that's why when I introduced the item I said about the training I think that's going to be really really important and crucial to get that right just on the comments from councillor Cathcart I think what can be made clear is that about how we deal with a vexatious person for example so if somebody puts a complaint in against somebody time after time after time always being found without grounds and everything else on the same basis then I think we do have protocols in place for that and maybe it might be worth making sure that that's accessible alongside the code of conduct I mean Mr McKennaw I know more than myself because I think that's we don't want to discourage people from make a complaint but I see what you mean if one person is becoming sort of persecuted in some respect you want to give them some protection and I think the vexatious policies perhaps would do that that is my understanding too so Mr McKennaw would you like to respond on that yeah, chair of council Williams is absolutely correct, the council does have a vexus complainants policy that could be engaged if that scenario were to arise thank you and councillor doctor Claire Dalton I'm really pleased to see it's spelled out clearly on page 25 under respect respect means politeness and courtesy in behaviour speech and in the written word and I do think that's really important and I know that we have seen egregious examples of that's not being observed and I think having it spelled out here in our reiterating that is really very important and actually one would hope that there would be no dispute about the meaning and the exercise of politeness and courtesy and behaviour one would hope that thank you very much so doesn't sound as though anybody wishes to vote against this proposal sorry, councillor Howell yeah, I don't want to vote against it I want to ask a question sorry, no, I didn't seem forward to go through the paper just one thing I don't know if this can be answered but it would be a good one for Rory to have a ward anyway when is a counciller not a counciller so when does a counciller on a Friday night in a public house with a couple of drinks inside them not a counciller and if things get a bit heated then that can't be classified as being them acting in a disrespectful manner to somebody or whatever if I missed that is there a risk factor somewhere thank you councillor Howell for the question I have to say sometimes that can be quite a contentious point because obviously one of the first things that I need to consider along with the independent person and the investigation of any complaint is are they acting in their capacity as a counciller now on page 40 of the agenda pack there is actually very detailed guidance around that very scenario and as you will note at the bottom of page 41 they do go on to give specific examples of when a counciller is indeed acting in their capacity because obviously if you're acting in your capacity as a private individual the code of conduct is not engaged but sometimes it's not as clear cut and it's a matter of the facts of the individual circumstances but certainly the guidance in that respect is very very helpful I'm not going to go through the examples they're there for members to see I think one of them talks about situations about whether or not there is a relationship between a counciller and an employee for instance with the code being engaged in that circumstances and I think they go on to give more detail but it's certainly helpful from my point of view to have this guidance in assessing whether or not the code is engaged in any particular circumstance Chairman with your indulgence please the reason I'm asking that is that if for example and I'll stick to the example I just gave a counciller is out and they're having a night out with some friends and then somebody says to them something about I don't have a planning issue in the local area or for that matter a contentious issue what happens to be taking place is the counciller then when they give an information to a counciller or somebody in the public who's had several drinks and things get heated as long as that's taken into consideration I don't think we can legislate or define it one way or the other because the one swaps back and forth and as long as that's been taken into consideration I'm happy with that It would absolutely be taken into consideration and I think you would then get into the detail of the facts of the particular circumstance so a few for instance were out on a Friday night having a few drinks with your friends and your family and somebody decided that they wanted to engage you in your role as a counciller I'm off duty, I'm with my friends and family I would say in that instance that very clearly you're not acting in your capacity as a counciller albeit someone's trying to engage you I'd say if you were to then engage that person and say this is the person you need to speak to or you're engaged in the discussion then it might be that you are acting in your capacity as a counciller certainly if you're giving advice and you're clearly holding yourself out to be a counciller then arguably at that stage the code would be engaged but it's very much a matter of the circumstances that led to it If you've said, I'm off duty thanks very much, I'm not interested then know the code wouldn't apply in my opinion To be fair what I see is it can clearly be a very fine line and indeed in the example on page 42 it refers to a situation where you might be misusing or attempting to misuse your position as a counciller and that, and I'm reading from it would include if you threatened to use your position improperly to block someone's planning licence or grant application whereas if somebody said to you what do you think would be the best thing to do in this situation you know because you're on planning committee that might be a slightly trickier thing and I guess the situation depending on the situation you would decide whether to say actually I don't think I can advise you on that on a Friday evening in the pub or whether you say actually if you want to email me I'll deal with it through email at a later date, would that be a wise move I think it's reasonable probably to assume in that situation that you're not acting in your capacity as a counciller and therefore the code wouldn't be engaged Thank you Is that satisfactory councillor Hull I think it's one of those situations we'll have to see when it arises, but yes thank you very much indeed Thank you Oh and councillor Henry Bachelor Thank you, I won't delay proceedings but just a quick question we've mentioned parish councils a couple of times should this code be adopted starting May 2022 is there any obligation for parish councils to adopt this particular code as well given that again on the next item we have seven complaints against parish councils predominantly around the code of conduct so I just want to ask is it going to be uniform across districts in parish My understanding was that it's optional but Mr McKenna So the position regarding prize councils is similar to the district councils and as much as they must have adopted a code relevant to their parish council Now my understanding is that the majority of parish councils in South Cams have adopted the local authorities model code but there are some who have not followed the model and have got their own code relevant to their own circumstances I would imagine that the majority will follow the council's lead and will adopt the model code but they're not obliged to Thank you So it doesn't look to me as if anybody's minded to vote against this proposal so are we able to take that by affirmation Mr McKenna or do you want to take a vote? I would be happy for it to be taken by affirmation Chair I'll just read the recommendation just for a moment So the recommendation is that civic affairs committee recommends to full council the adoption of the model code and guidance to take effect from May 2022 So will all those in agreement raise your hands? So that's unanimous Thank you very much So that's carried So item 5 on our agenda is the update on the code of conduct complaints Can I ask Mr McKenna to introduce this item please? Thank you chair So through you this is the standard updating report there's no vote required that is taken at the end of each civic affairs committee and it updates members on progress of code of conduct complaints as you can see from the report there were a number of complaints which were ongoing since the last time committee met I'm pleased to say that the majority have now been dispensed with and decisions have been issued there are two complaints which are currently outstanding and chair that's my report Thank you very much Mr McKenna Would anybody like to ask any questions? No, okay So we're simply asked to recommend to note that report Civic affairs are asked to note the progress of any outstanding complaints and the conclusion of cases resolved since the last meeting and we've done that Members you'll see from your agenda that the next meeting is scheduled to be held on the 7th of December 2021 at 10am and with that I'd like to say thank you very much to those who took part online and thank you to those who attended here in the council chamber and I close the meeting at 10.34 Thank you Chairman