 Good morning and welcome to the first meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Are members agreed? We're agreed. We're now turned to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the Standards Commission for Scotland annual report 2021 to 2022. We're joined by Lorna Johnston, who's the Executive Director of Standards Commission for Scotland, and Sarah Nicholson, who's the Office Manager of Standards Commission for Scotland. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and I invite Lorna to make a short opening statement. As the committee will be aware, the Standards Commission was established by the Ethical Standards in Public Life Scotland Act 2000, in which an independent public body is responsible for encouraging high standards of conduct in public life in Scotland. The 2000 act provides a framework under which ministers issue codes of conduct for councillors and members of public bodies. The role of the Standards Commission is to promote those codes, to issue guidance on how the code should be interpreted and to adjudicate and allege breaches of the codes and where breaches find to apply a sanction. The Ethical Standards Commissioner is a separate and distinct office holder whose responsibilities include investigating complaints that councillors and members have reached their respective codes. The commissioner sends a report to the Standards Commission on the conclusion of his investigation into complaints about councillors and members. On receipt of a report from the commissioner, the Standards Commission has three options under the 2000 act, which are either to hold a hearing, to direct the commissioner to carry out further investigation, or to do neither, which essentially means that no further action will be taken on the complaint. Hearings conducted by a hearing panel comprising of three Standards Commission members are held, usually in public, to determine whether the councillor or member concerned has breached their respective code. If a breach is found, then the panel is obliged to impose a sanction, which can either be a censure, suspension or, in the most serious cases, a disqualification. If the Standards Commission having considered a referral report from the commissioner does not consider it is in the public interest and proportionate to hold a hearing, it will take no further action on the case. The parties to the complaint are advised, and a relatively short, anonymised written decision is published on the Standards Commission's website, outlining the reasoning and any learning points. The Standards Commission has one full-time member of staff, which is me. As the executive director, I am the accountable officer. I am assisted by a case manager, an office manager and an administrative assistant, all of whom are part-time, with the overall staffing compliment being equivalent to 3.1 full-time members of staff. The Standards Commission has five part-time members appointed by the parliamentary corporation with the agreement of the Parliament. One of those, the convener, is contracted to work the equivalent of three days a month, while the remaining members work two days. As previously noted, members also sit on hearing panels as a winner required. As the committee will have noted from our annual report for last year, the Standards Commission's strategic aims are to have a positive impact on ethical standards in public life, to pursue continuous improvement in the ethical standards framework and the way that we do our work, to pursue and develop strong relationships with our stakeholders, and to ensure that all stakeholders have easy access to high-quality information about the organisation, its work and any initiatives. The work undertaken last year to meet those aims included participating in a working group established by the Government to review and revise the codes of conduct. That included analysing responses to the Government's consultation on the proposed revised codes and amending their provisions in light of feedback and suggestions. Then, following the consultation and issuing of the codes in December 2021, the Standards Commission produced, issued and published revised guidance and advice notes. We also produced and published standard training presentations and videos on the main changes to the code and on their key codes and on their key provisions. In addition, we ran various training events and workshops to help promote awareness and understanding of the revised codes. The Standards Commission established a good working relationship with the acting commissioner and worked with him to improve the processes for investigation and adjudication of complaints, with a view to trying to ensure consistency in the interpretation of the codes. We also undertook a review of lessons learned from the Covid pandemic and made various improvements to our governance and adjudication processes and arrangements. Despite an increase in the number of reports received from the commissioner, the Standards Commission processed them all timeously. Decisions were made, issued and published on all no-action cases within seven days receipt of a report from the commissioner. This year to date, we have continued to undertake outreach work to promote the codes. This is included presenting at the solar annual conference and providing tailored training sessions to the boards of several public bodies. We held our annual monitoring officer's workshop in October, which was attended by monitoring officers from councils all over Scotland. We look forward to our annual standards officer workshop in March. The Standards Commission has continued to update the case examples and illustrations in its guidance, advice notes and standard presentations in light of feedback and inquiries received and in light of decisions made. We have also developed and published interactive e-learning modules and animated videos on specific aspects of the code in the ethical standards framework. I hope that that has been a helpful introduction and summary of our remit and work, and I am happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thanks very much, Lorna. That is very helpful to have. It is so clearly laid out and to hear. Something that comes across to me from your statement is the level of participation, engagement and feedback that you seek in the work that you are doing. I will open up to questions. I am interested in the commission strategic plan. One of the key objectives is to have a positive impact on ethical standards in public life. I would be interested to understand how that is measured. Can it be measured? If so, do you have a sense that standards in public life are improving? What could you say about the levels of public trust in local politicians? Has trust improved in recent years? The way in which we measure our impact is that we did surveys in 2022 of councillors and monitoring officers. The reason why we picked 2022 was that we wanted to get the views of outgoing councillors on what they saw as the standards that deteriorated were improving, whether their colleagues had a good understanding of the requirements of the code, whether they had experienced or witnessed bullying and harassment, and the same with monitoring officers to try to get the views of council officers. We did similar surveys of members who have devolved public bodies and public body standards officers. We analysed the inquiries that we received. We get a lot of inquiries about how the codes should be interpreted and inquiries about how complaints should be made, because quite often people confuse us with the ethical standards submission. We analysed those. We always seek feedback from our hearings. We have various sources of information. The responses to the surveys were a bit mixed in terms of whether people feel that standards have improved or not. The general view was that the vast majority of councillors want to comply with the codes and are doing their best to do that. It is sometimes the issues that crop up the most, the respect and bullying and harassment, especially respect. It can sometimes just be perhaps someone losing their temper or not thinking things through. We have noticed in the past five years or so that we are having far less inadvertent breaches of the codes of conduct, ones where it is a failure to register an interest within the time limit, the month that you get to register and you are interested in whatever it is. That demonstrates that perhaps there is a greater understanding of the codes and that the breaches that we are seeing now tend to be much more about behaviour like bullying and harassment rather than a failure to declare interests or trying to seek advantage of your position or anything to do with gifs and hospitality. Following on from that, you talked about how you did the outgoing survey in 2022 with outgoing councillors. I would be interested to hear what work you have done since May since the local elections to ensure that the new councillors are familiar with their code of conduct. You also mentioned in your opening statement that you have been doing quite a bit of work around training and creating e-learning modules. We were keen to get our updated guidance and advice out at the same time as the codes when they were issued in 2021. That meant that they were all in place in time for the new councillor to come in after the election. We also put in place the standard training presentations. We knew that we would not be able to get around all 32 councils, but it meant that monitoring officers and other council staff could use our—we did videos, we did standard PowerPoint presentations on the code and the revised code and also on the key changes to the code, so we were trying to put in place materials that they could use. Obviously, new councillors get a lot of information thrown at them at the beginning, so we thought that putting those in place would give councils the chance to decide when the best time to do that induction was. Since then, we have been—we update—we see our guidance and advice notes as moving documents because we want them to be as fit for purpose as possible. We update them in light of—we get told about scenarios, maybe by officers or by councillors when we get inquiries and we update our case examples and scenarios in those documents to try to make sure that they are as relevant as possible. Like I said, we have been working on e-learning modules, so we have two in place and we are hoping to publish another two by the end of this financial year. One is on the applicability of the code when it applies and the other one is on identifying managing conflicts of interests. We think that it would help for councillors to work their way through that, hopefully, the interactive e-learning module helps them to do that. That is brilliant. It is also good to hear the awareness that you have that when councils are first elected they are overwhelmed by information, so you are giving that flexibility as to when councils can share that information and say that this is something that is important for you to pay attention to. It is also where some of the feedback that we got in surveys was that some of our advice notes and guidance in the past have been a bit unwieldy, a bit the word documents that—some people just do not—that is not their best way of learning, so we are trying to improve that and trying to make all our guidance and advice notes more accessible, have them in different formats and just make them as fit for purpose as we can. That is also—we have been doing quite a bit of work around removing barriers to elected office, so, obviously, this is once somebody is elected, but that could be another barrier that the word document written text can be a limitation for some people to bring on more diverse people. Especially if they have lots of jargon in them and they are perhaps not as plain English as possible, so that is something that we are working on. Indeed. I am going to bring Willie Coffey in. He has got some questions. Thanks very much. Good morning to you, Lorna and Sarah. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the sanctions and sanctions process. You have partly answered one of my questions and you have said that the sanctions available are suspension, censure and disqualification. Could you just tell us a wee bit more about how it works and whether there is a process through which a councillor might find themselves travelling through, if there is repeat offences being found by the commission? How does it work? We have a policy on the application of sanctions and that outlines all the factors that a hearing panel will take into consideration when deciding the sanction to be imposed. That has aggravating and mitigating factors in it. For example, an aggravating factor would be if a councillor has perhaps been before us and a breach has been found about a similar issue in the past five years. If it was a one-off incident and they had apologised straight afterwards or if it appeared that it was inadvertent, again, an aggravating factor might be if it was deliberate, if it was very serious and if it was over a long period of time. The hearing panel should have said that they are obliged under the act to impose a sanction if they find a breach. They will look at all those factors. The respondent councillor member has an opportunity at a hearing. Once a breach is found, the panel will come back and announce that breach decision and give brief reasons as to why they found a breach. They will then invite that respondent councillor member to make comments in terms of mitigation. Quite often, they will explain what other work they do and their commitment to public life. That will be taken into consideration. They will maybe use that as a chance to apologise. They will maybe use it as a chance to explain that the impact was fairly limited. That will be taken into consideration by the panel before it makes the decision on sanction. There is no sense of the degree of sanction that, for example, the first time that an offence is recorded, it is that type of sanction. It could be any of those three, could it not? Immediately, depending on the nature of it? I do not think that it would be very unlikely to be something like a disqualification unless it was very, very serious and prolonged if it was just a first time offence. If it was maybe bullying and harassment over a really, really long period and the person shown no insight or whatever it is, it is a possibility, but it would just depend on the facts and circumstances of each case. Is there a process where a councillor can appeal against your decision and what should experience and how successful or otherwise those appeals may have been in the past? The act gives them an opportunity to appeal against the decision of breach. They can also appeal against the sanction if it is suspension or disqualification. In the whole existence of the Standards Commission, there has only been one successful appeal. An appeal on the same case ended up at the court of session. The sheriff principal found in our favour that the court of session overturned that appeal, and that was a councillor from Renfrewshire who had been disqualified for a period of, I think, 16 months. He had been before the Standards Commission twice before for similar breaches. The court of session basically upheld the disqualification and agreed with the Standards Commission that it should not have been a brief disqualification, but the reason that it shortened the disqualification period was that it felt that the Standards Commission had not taken sufficient account of the timing of the election in its written decision. That has been the only one. Do you find that those functions that are available to you are pretty much adequate to cover the kind of behaviours that you have perhaps observed over the years? I think so. The Standards Commission members have certainly had discussions in the past couple of years, and we are hoping that this is something that is in our business plan for next year. What we are going to put in our business plan for next year is to have a discussion with the commissioner about this as well, about the possibility of seeing if the legislation could be amended to have the opportunity to maybe issue warning letters in cases where it is maybe slightly less serious and the breach has been admitted. The evidence is not in dispute. Rather than going to a hearing, it is to accept the breach by letter or correspondence or whatever and then, if so, to have some kind of warning going out that would maybe go on their record. It is not something that we have looked at in any great detail. I think that that would be the only one that we have felt that, sometimes, a hearing is not perhaps the best approach, but, on the other hand, you do not necessarily want to take no action. It might be just having something slightly in between those two options. Lastly, do you get many repeats in your experience? What are the numbers like in terms of repeat? Actually, no. We really do not. It is very few. We have had a couple of repeat respondents before us, certainly in the time that I have been in post, but it has actually been about different aspects of the code, as it might be about a failure to register and then the second time might be a respect or something like that. It is actually quite rare. I am not going to bring in Marie McNair, who is joining us online. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel, and happy year. I would like to ask how the standards and complaint systems in Scotland compare to those in other parts of the UK in other countries across the world. In which systems are examples of best practices and what can Scotland learn from them? Certainly, there is not a comparable system in England. Local authorities very much take charge of their own disciplinary issues, but we have analogous bodies in Wales and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and we are in contact with Northern Ireland. We have quite a lot of contact with, in terms of just sharing experiences, discussing matters like the extent to which freedom of expression might apply in certain cases. We had a lot of contact with them during the pandemic when we were holding online hearings to learn about their experiences and to share our experiences as well. Why do we do that across the world? I am not so sure. I do not really know what systems there are in place. Thank you for that. What impact has the growth of social media had on the standards of public life? The committee has heard the toxic online behaviour from a barrier to people considering standing for local elections. What are the commission's insight in this area? Did the move to online council and committee meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic have any impact on conduct and behaviour? That was one of the questions that we asked in our survey about whether behaviours had improved or deteriorated during the Covid pandemic, particularly in relation to online meetings. To be honest, the responses were mixed. Some councillors and monitoring officers felt that they had improved. Some felt that they had deteriorated. That is probably on a council-by-council basis. We produced an advice note on online hearings to try to improve behaviours. We saw that that was a gap. On social media, it is problematic. I am sure that the commissioner will say more about that, but there are more and more complaints about behaviours on social media. It is a barrier to representation. A lot of the times, councillors and other people in public life are facing abuse on social media, and that is really difficult. It is completely unacceptable, but it is really difficult. Sometimes it causes them to react, and they might do something that is completely disrespectful, offensive or could be bullying and harassment. In other times, it is a case of political points scoring. Sometimes it just goes beyond what might be considered acceptable and into the realms of a breach of the code. That is what we have been doing a lot of work to try to educate on that and to try to show where the line is. I am trying to explain to councillors and members of the public bodies that we really want people to lead by example. If you do not want to face abuse, you need to lead by example in what you are posting. I think that that is a barrier to representation. We hear anecdotally in terms of our inquiries but also from our surveys that sometimes women councillors in particular face bullying and harassment on social media and also from colleagues. It is really just trying to improve that standard. That is what we are trying to aim at. It is really just to move on to the directions that were issued to the ethical standards commissioner during 2021. I suppose that it is just really looking for a bit of context in that regard and in what the impacts have been since then. We understand that the directions are there to be in place for another two years. I suppose that it is really just can you explain why there needs to be a need for these directions, whether he envisages ending these at the end of that period? In terms of context, there was a direction on the progress of investigations that was initially issued. I think that it was July 2020 to the then commissioner. It was really because the standards commissioner was not getting any information so we did not know whether how quickly cases were being progressed, whether there were any delays. We did not know whether parties to the complaints were being updated. That direction was issued to give us the comfort that that was happening, that they were being progressed without any undue delays and that parties were being updated. We then issued the outcome direction in November 2020. That was the direction that required the commissioner to send all reports and all investigations to us for us to make the final decision. That was issued because again there was a lack of engagement with the former commissioner. We were being told by a number of parties that a vast majority of complaints were being rejected at admissibility without even an investigation being undertaken or a very limited investigation being undertaken. We wanted to make sure that complaints were being investigated and that they were coming to us to make the final decision on them. We consulted with the commissioner. Both those directions expired last year. We consulted with the commissioner and decided to extend the progress of investigations one for another two years. At the moment, we have extended the outcome direction for three months. I think that we are waiting to see whether the committee also had— Just to collect, what dates will these be? You said two years and three months. What exact dates will that be then? I think that the outcome one is the end of February. I think that it expires. But we are looking to then extend that again. The reasons that we are looking to extend it is not because we have any concerns about the acting commissioner in his office. It is because we feel that it has been good to have a really clear separation of functions between the two organisations with one doing investigation and one doing adjudication. We feel that essentially having a body, the standards commission, doing a review of all cases means that there is an independent review going on of decisions made. It also means that because we can hold hearings on cases, we are taking evidence under oath or on affirmation. It means that there is a public hearing. If there is evidence in dispute or, for example, there are complicated issues about the application of the right freedom of expression, those can be really discussed fully out in the open-it hearing. We publish our decisions. Again, councillors and officers and members of the public can see what the threshold for potential breaches is. For a number of reasons, we think it is the right thing for us to carry on doing that. Obviously, we are interested to hear the committee's views on that. The next question is really just an extension of that. It talks about the governance and accountability between yourselves, and it talks about ethical standards, but also the parliamentary corporate body. Are they adequate, given the issues that have faced over the past two years? Are there any lessons to learn on that going forward in terms of the broader wider relationships, if you like? We have certainly not had any difficulties with the parliamentary corporate body. They have been very supportive of us, and we have quite a lot of contact with them. Since issues that arose in the section 22 report on the Ethical Standards Commission that was issued by Audit Scotland, we have now put more formal arrangement in place with office holder services to have governance-related updates. I think that it is every twice a year that we are doing that now, but it is certainly a standard commission that we have not experienced any difficulties. My question is really just about the sort of... You mentioned at the beginning that you have 3.1ft of staff to help in the role, and we know that there is a significant backlog with the Ethical Standards Commissioner in the commission. Do you believe that you have adequate budget and resources to do your role in all of this? Just to be clear, we do not have a backlog. No, I am saying that the Ethical Standards Commission do, but do you believe that you have the right budget in that to add a clear resource? Yes, we do. We got a fourth member of staff. We changed our structure a couple of years ago when the previous business manager retired. We had another look at all that and looked at our resources a couple of years ago and brought in a case manager at that stage, a part-time case manager, to help with the cases. We have also rejigged a lot of the way that we work so that members' time were able to absorb those cases, looking at those decisions when they come in the extra reports that are coming in from the Ethical Standards Commission's throw. We are confident that we have enough resources at the moment. Just to continue on that kind of budget question, do you think that the Ethical Standards Commission has enough budget and resourcing? My understanding is that they are recruiting for staff at the moment. I think that those staff will be in place and will hopefully clear the backlog that they have at the investigation stage. I know that the acting commissioner did a lot of work in putting together a business case, so I am sure that they will get those resources in place. I think that with the best will in the world, it takes a while for staff to be trained and inducted. I think that with investigations, the more experience you have, the more understanding you get if certain cases get faster and faster. I do not think that it is going to be an instant solution, but I am confident that it will work. I wanted to ask two questions, but first I want to go back to some of the conversations that I have had with councillors on planning applications, and their lack of ability to talk about them with members of the public. I think that that is one of the things that councillors find incredibly challenging, and members of the public also do not like. I just wondered what your view was on that and the potential reform around that. How many complaints relate to that kind of conversation and a breach of that? We have not had that many referrals on that topic, to be honest. When the codes were revised, that was a really important factor to try to make the code a lot clearer in that regard, because councillors can have those conversations. They just cannot prejudge and they cannot show beforehand that they are going to support an application or an objection beforehand. They can absolutely have those conversations and hear what people have to say, to hear their views, to hear. They just have to be very careful about not prejudging the application in advance, because the code once, what the legislation, everything that it is expected to do, is to look at the merits of the application on the day and to consider it on the day. The revised code makes it all a lot clearer. I do not think that the previous version of the code was that clear, so hopefully that will not be as much of an issue going forward. That is helpful, because it is something that has been raised with me, other members as well. For many councillors, they feel that they cannot have those conversations. I am concerned that, even with the revisions, that might generate more complaints about them if they do try to engage with members of the public. In the past, we have produced an assisting constituents card that they can hand out to their constituents to help manage expectations about what they can do. It says, for example, that I can listen to you and I can listen to your views. I just cannot express any view ahead of time. We have recently produced one for councillors who attend community council meetings, because I think that that can be an issue that they go along to community council meetings. Maybe the expectations of community councillors is that they will almost make a decision on the spot that they will agree to support the community council's view on a planning application. I hope that the card that they can hand out and explain to community councillors that I cannot do this. I hope that that will help. That is helpful. I have not seen those, so I do not know whether you can share those with the committee at some point. What lessons has the commission learned through the Covid-19 pandemic and how you have changed your working? The first thing was that we found that holding online hearings was fairly successful. We are not going to go back to holding them in all cases, because we think that it is important that we get out there. We hold our hearings—sorry, I should have said—in the location of where the councillor or a member is based. We think that it is quite important for us to go out there for members of the public to be able to come along and watch our hearings. We are going to carry on doing that, but in terms of online hearings, if it is a case that the evidence really is not in dispute and no witnesses are going to be called, we will look to see whether it is more efficient to hold it online. When we hold it online, we livestream them on our websites so that people can still watch. That is something that we are looking at to try to improve our processes. In terms of governance arrangements, we have gone paperless. We have learned better communication sometimes between the office and members. We have a hybrid working system and flexible working arrangements—all that kind of stuff, as a result. I think that that question was interesting to hear about the cards that you gave. I think that we would like to pick that up and promote it more. I think that it is an important tool. That brings us to the end of our questions. I do not think that anyone has got any more. I thank you very much for coming in and giving evidence. It has been very useful to hear it and your opening statement was helpful in terms of clarification between the Standards Commission and the Ethical Standards Commissioners' work. That was great. I now suspend the meeting briefly while our witnesses leave the room. The third item on our agenda today is to take evidence on the Ethical Standards Commissioners' annual report for 2021 to 2022 from Ian Bruce, who is the Acting Ethical Standards Commissioner. Ian is accompanied today by Angela Glyn, who is the Senior Investigating Officer, Karen Elder, who is the Head of Corporate Services and Accountable Officer at the Ethical Standards Commission. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite Ian to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener, and members of the committee, for the invitation and the opportunity to talk to you about the work of our office. I will keep that brief, because I have no doubt that the committee will have a number of questions for myself and my colleagues. We are going to provide more detail on our work and on complaint handling and on our governance arrangements, and my colleagues will be able to assist with some of the detail in respect of both those issues. We are very keen to ensure that the committee is fully informed about our performance, and we are happy to answer questions today as well as provide supplementary information by way of follow-up, whatever the committee would find helpful. I trust that you have reviewed the last two annual reports and that they will give you a flavour of the challenges that our organisation has faced since I took up office as Acting Commissioner, which is almost two years ago now. I do not plan to rehearse all of those challenges here, although we will be happy to respond to any questions that you may have in them. I felt that it may instead be more helpful at this point in time to bring the committee briefly up to speed on the current circumstances and our plans for the future. I should let you know that Audit Scotland will be laying another section 22 report during the course of January, and that is to follow up on the progress that we have made. In the usual way, we anticipate that it will reflect positively on the work that we have done to rebuild our office and the services that we provide and to restore confidence in the ethical standards framework. However, we also expect it to reflect the fact that more work has still to be done to embed the good practices that we have adopted since the last section 22 report was led by the Auditor General. In terms of the progress that we have made, we have included all the details on our website and, in summary, in our annual report. In brief, we have fully implemented 11 of our auditors' recommendations and passively implemented the remainder of those that we are able to. We can provide more detail during the course of this session on all of that. We have concentrated on re-establishing our governance, our systems of assurance, our relationships with stakeholders and our staffing levels, so that gives us a firm footing, I think, for the future. In terms of my plans for the immediate future, and as Lorna the Executive Director of the Standards Commission mentioned, I intend to complete some additional recruitment, followed by induction, in order to clear our investigations backlog, and, just as importantly, in order to process complaints much more quickly than the office ever has in the past in our future. I am also planning to introduce a communications strategy, develop and measure progress against key performance indicators for our office, all of which we will be publishing further to our commitment to openness and transparency. I trust that that is of interest to the committee, and I and my colleagues are now happy to answer any questions that members may have. Thank you very much, Ian. That was a very useful opening statement. I will start with a few questions, and then I will open it up to colleagues. It was interesting to note the increasing complaints about councillors since 2015. I would be interested to hear if you are satisfied that the current standard system is doing enough to ensure ethical standards in public office and to deter bad behaviour. It is a very mixed picture, I think. It would be fair to say, and I will perhaps bring Ms Glen in for some of the detail. But in general terms, what we have seen a rise and it is a steady rise has been complaints about conduct. The conduct that I am referring to is specifically courtesy and respect. Having said that, we have seen a decrease in the number of complaints received in this financial year, and we can give you some of the figures for that. We are not entirely clear whether or not that is a blip or if we are now looking at a downward trend. What we have undertaken to do is conduct some research into this area once we have the capacity for that. We would like to have a deep dive into our statistics going back several years to try and gain a proper understanding, not just for ourselves, but for the committee and for the Standards Commission, for councils for others and with an interest in the topic and what is causing complete numbers to rise or to fall. Good morning, committee members. Just to add on from what the acting commissioner has already laid out, taking all of our councillors and members' cases together, they form the bulk of the day-to-day work and the number of complaints that we get. Most of them relate to councillors and members. Just for a snapshot of the most recent trends, there were 130 cases in the 21 to 22 year. In the context of the financial year to date from 2022, we are looking at about 79 cases, but we have been here before. In 2017 and 2018 financial year, there were 80 cases in total for that year. Having a lower number of cases has occurred before, but in terms of the reasons for the current downward trend, we plan to conduct the research into understanding why the complaint volumes could fluctuate. As Ms Johnson referred to earlier, a high proportion of the complaints that we do get relate to conduct and, in particular, a conduct of councillors in social media, which is very visible. The framework in terms of additional training for councillors to make them aware that they can be readily perceived to be councillors even when using social media would always be beneficial. That point that you just brought up, the need for additional training, is that something that is in the works that you are considering for making it clear to councillors that, when they are on social media, they are still perceived in that role as being councillors, no matter what the conversation is? Llaner a'r team has already rolled out training of that nature, but it is a revised code, and I think that it is much clearer than the previous version about that. It is a difficult area, to be honest with you. Social media being what it is, people have a mix of private and public accounts, and sometimes the lines between those become very blurred. It is something that I think that we will need to continue a dialogue with councils about alongside the Standards Commission just to help people to understand that there are occasions when they may think that they are operating an account that has nothing to do with their political activities, whereas, because they are making comment on political matters, etc., that is how they are perceived, being perceived as a councillor. In fairness, that is probably going to be a work in progress. Just to broaden that out a bit, it is interesting to hear that it is going down, the complaints are going down, and that is obvious that we have just had an election in 2022, so we brought in a lot of new councillors. I would be interested to hear what the Ethical Standards Commission has done with new councillors to ensure that they understand what is acceptable and or unacceptable bad behaviour in public office. To reiterate the point that Ms Johnson made, there is a separation of roles in the Standards Commission's role, and we happily assist them with that. We go to the same workshops that they have set up or that others, such as Solar, have set up to demonstrate that we have a united front and a shared understanding of what the codes require, but it is the role of the Standards Commission to provide guidance, training and support, and our primary role is to investigate complaints. Because we report on the outcomes of all of our investigations to the Standards Commission, it is at that point in time that people will gain an understanding of whether or not the conduct that we have investigated does or does not represent a breach of the code, which is a decision for the Standards Commission to make. So, in effect, your work can become a case study that I have read in. Exactly, that is a very good point. Great, thank you. I am now going to bring in Willie Coffey for some questions. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you. There are still large numbers of complaints that you get that are either not pursued or investigated and are not upheld. Could you just give us a flavour of why you deal with so many complaints but you do not take them further forward? Is there a lack of understanding in the public's part about what they can and can't or should not complain about the behaviours of local members? That is a very interesting question and a good one. Far and away, the majority of the complaints that we get in are deemed to be inadmissible at stage one. We have what we call a stage two process to be simplistic about it. Stage one is admissibility. We have a look at the conduct that has been complained of and we take a view on whether or not the code applies to it. I will give you a couple of simple examples. We may have constituents who are unhappy that a councillor either is not responding to emails or responding to emails as quickly as they would like them to, or they may have a particular local issue that they would like a councillor to take, a particular approach to, but the councillor does not take that approach. They cast around for someone to complain to. We have a website and we have a complaint form that is easy for people to complete. They land on us and we receive complaints of that nature. Those are inadmissible. The code of conduct is about the ethical conduct. Again, being simplistic about it of councillors, it is not about whether or not they are fulfilling their role in the way that one or other disgruntial constituents feel that they should. A lot of complaints get ruled out on that basis simply because the code does not apply to them. When we get into more nuanced cases, we investigate those cases. As we have already said, a lot of those relate to discartacy and disrespect. We get quite a lot of those because people are saying things online that one or other members of the public find objectionable. The fact that that particular member of the public finds it objectionable does not necessarily mean that it has been disrespectful. To give you a concrete example, there are debates going on in the country that are quite polarised political debates. The fact that I, as a constituent, disagree with your position on the side of a particular political debate does not necessarily mean that what that councillor has said online is inherently disrespectful. However, we would need to investigate that, just to establish whether or not that is the case. Some can be a wee bit borderline. The other thing that we need to take account of—again, as Johnston mentioned, it is not in the face of the code, but we need to take account of people's right to freedom of political expression. Article 10, 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, so sometimes people will say something that people find objectionable, and on its face it could appear to be discourteous or disrespectful. However, there is enhanced protection for politicians by virtue of that convention right. There are occasions where we determine that that is applicable and that a breach of the code cannot be found as a consequence. Closing down a complaint to inform the complainer about the decision that you have taken and why you have reached that decision, perhaps the issue that they are complaining about is not really within the scope of the work that you do. Do you close that loop? Yes, indeed. We are planning to go further, in fact, than we have done previously, by providing full reports. They do receive written decisions and I provide reasons for my decisions that are arms in relation to all my work, but we are planning to go further on that. I can ask Angela to give a bit more detail. Yes, certainly. At the end of the stage 1 process, once we have considered the assessment of the complaint against all of our admissibility criteria, which is informed by the 2000 act, but also by the eligibility direction of the Standards Commission, once that process is done and we consider that this complaint cannot proceed to stage 2 investigation, then we would draft a decision letter that is shared with the complainer. In the very near future, we will be sharing a copy of that letter with the respondent to inform them that we had received the complaint and that this is the reason why it was not taken forward to stage 2 investigation. That is good. Great. I really have to ask you about the 2019-20 and 2021 period where the number of complaints not taken forward was excessively high. It was over 80 per cent and that possibly gave rise to the Audit Scotland section 22 that we all know about. Can you tell us insofar as you can in and about why that was so high at that period? Can you also give the committee some kind of sense about why that cannot, those complaints that came at that period of time can't be re-investigated? A challenging question to be honest with you. The decisions that were being taken at the time were being taken by my immediate predecessor and I think that's also relevant to your follow-up question. She was the commissioner, she was exercising her judgment as she saw it at the time and what that meant was that a number of complaints were dismissed. A number of complaints were investigated but no breach found and that's just the reality. We've seen a return and again Ms Glenn will be able to give you the figures so we are now at a stage where investigation rates and admissibility rates are pretty much comparable with the 10 years of prior commissioners but you get a new commissioner in post, they're a statutory office holder and they will conduct the role in the way in which they see fit. That's just the reality once someone is appointed to a post of that nature. I do understand that some people are disgruntled, that there wasn't perhaps an investigation in their case or that there was an investigation and a breach of the code was not found. They've been in touch with the office to discuss those things with me and I've been very open with them about what I am and I'm not able to do. The committee will be aware from the section 22 report there was a recommendation that we should have complaints from the period from August prior to my immediate predecessor departing up to March when she went on leave that all the complaints looked at during that period should be independently looked at again. We felt that we needed to take legal advice on that recommendation and we did and we've been happy to share that legal advice with the SPCB and with our auditors just to explain why we felt that we couldn't take it forward and I'd be happy to share it with the committee in confidence as well. I've been very open about this. The legal advice was unequivocal and it was to the effect that it's not possible that it would be unlawful for me except in very narrow circumstances to reinvestigate complaints where another commissioner had already reached a decision on them. The legal principle involved is called functis officio. I don't want to get into that in here but perhaps an equivalent term might be helpful to the committee. You'll be familiar with the concept of double jeopardy which is where you basically can't be brought before the court for potential conviction for the same crime twice except in very again narrow circumstances. The narrow circumstances in which I could revisit complaints would be if there's been a fundamental mistake of fact, if there's been fraud or if the public authority as in this case the commissioner had not completed her investigation. If those circumstances don't apply I fundamentally cannot reopen closed cases and there is a natural justice aspect to this because looking at it from the other side for those who complained against them weren't upheld I suppose that they would now be in the position of feeling I've been exonerated. How on earth can another commissioner two years down the line come in and then reinvestigate me for something when from my perspective I've been cleared. I don't know if that helps or explains fully what the situation is. It helps a great deal in it and thank you so much for taking the time to give us that detail. Maybe just a final question from me is what recourse is there for a person making a complaint who perhaps feels that their complaint has been inappropriately dismissed at the initial stages? Where did they turn to? Yes judicial review is the option open to them but again just to be clear I am very receptive as a commissioner as are all the staff in the office to discussions with people you know that to gain a proper understanding about why they feel that the decision I may have made initially is a wrong one and there are several junctures during the investigation process where they have an opportunity to make their views clear to me and I am more than happy to listen to them and there are occasions on which something that they say to me will lead me to draw a different conclusion. Okay right thank you so much for that thanks very much. Thanks for the yes that those were very helpful responses. I'm now going to bring in Marie McNair who is joining us online. Thank you Carina and good morning panel. The committee is keen to continue to explore the optimal barriers to local elected office. Is there any evidence that the complaint system in Scotland may be deterring people from standing or re-standing? For example from local elected office what impact does the process have on those councillors being investigated and is there support in place to help councillors during the process? Is there evidence of excess complaints being made and if so what more can be done to discourage these? Okay so I think we have three questions which I'll try to address in turn. I think the first one you'd asked was whether or not the framework in Scotland potentially represents a barrier. I am not sure that the framework does. I think the framework if operated properly by all participants should be something that would encourage people into public life because it does encourage good conduct on the part of councillors, board members. So to that extent I think it's something that should encourage people as opposed to put them off. I think the thing that does put people off is conduct. I've already mentioned that there are some quite polarised debates going on in Scotland and there's no issue with that. That's one of the hallmarks of a well-operating democracy but the way in which people express themselves sometimes is that it's even gotten to levels where some of the debates have been described as toxic. Now that certainly can be off-putting to people. I don't know if the committee is aware that the local government association did some research just recently so over 20-21 and produced a report in June of last year and it was about the impact. I think it was entitled debate not hate, the impact of conduct on democracy and some very interesting findings in it applied to England and Wales and not Scotland but some of the findings for example people were targeted because of their particular characteristics on line. Misogyny was a feature, homophobia was a feature, racism was a feature and if you're concerned about the under reflection of people with protected characteristics in public life then that's certainly something that we should all be live to. It was also clear from what respondents were saying that those activities were putting people off from either standing for election, considering standing for election, anecdotally in Scotland because I receive complaints from councillors who are subject to some of this conduct. I do know that these things happen and I also know anecdotally that councillors have said to me that I don't plan to stand again, I won't be encouraging others to do so because of the treatment that I have had. Now again that is something that should be of concern to all of us particularly if we are concerned about the diversification of local authorities. It's one of the things I'm very passionate about with my public appointments hat. It's very important that boards are diverse and I'm sure the same thing holds true of councils in order to fulfil their roles as well as they possibly can. So yes there are issues there. You had asked about vexatious complaints and they do come up as well and again you know I do see the personal impact of those on councillors. Perhaps again another concrete example so I have seen a neighbour of a councillor submit a complaint to us alleging a contravention of the code and it was fundamentally about weaponising the code for one of a better expression because of a neighbourhood dispute and you know nothing to do with the councillor acting in that capacity. I'm not going to say that happens particularly frequently but it does happen and of course occasionally complaints are politically motivated so we do see tit-for-tat complaints sometimes where political parties are in dispute locally and use the code in order to gain some sort of leverage over others. Thank you. I can tell you how toxic the council chamber can be at times. It's appalling the behaviour of some folk. Of the 330 complaints received by councillors and board members in 2021-22, 99 were complaints about disrespect towards employees or the public. Could you provide more information on that figure and the definition of disrespect and also what percentage of complaints relates to interactions on social media? I don't know if Angela was able to help with the breakdown. It may be that we don't have a full breakdown for you today but we can certainly get one for you. So to answer your question what constitutes disrespect we always refer to the standards commission's guidance note on this and it's particularly helpful but it varies significantly and perhaps it's the reason that people come forward more frequently with complaints of that nature than any other because it is quite a broad concept in comparison with declaration of interests. Whether or not it's treated me with courtesy and respect people can much more readily understand what that means that a member of the public can which is possibly one of the reasons that we get more complaints of that nature but it can mean a number of different things and we always look at the particular circumstances. We look at the advice notes and we make a determination thereafter about whether or not the code is engaged. Bullying and harassment is probably easier to define but again there's a very fulsome advice note on what constitutes bullying and harassment and we also use all the standards commission's decisions about whether or not a breach has been found as precedence for our own decision making when we review cases and our reports refer to prior decisions so that people are helped to understand why we've reached the conclusion that we have. I am particularly concerned by the number of complaints made by staff although it's much lower than the number of complaints to be honest with you made by members of the public and by councillors so that you know that's that's kind of the pecking or there's members of the public first then councillors staff members are much lower but I do I am very open to have discussions with council officers they do get in touch with the office and I have made it absolutely clear that you know if they want to make a complaint and and they don't take that lightly because that can be a career damaging thing to do is is to make a complaint as a council officer a senior council officer but I do make it clear that if they come to us with a complaint of that nature it will be properly investigated and I've absolutely committed to doing that. Thank you obviously I'd asked about what percentage of complaints relate to interaction social media if you don't have that hand can we forward that on to the committee just to be helpful thank you. By all means yeah we'll do that analysis for you. Thanks very much for that I think that that would also be useful social media seems to be an area that is causing problems. Now I'm going to bring in Annie Wells. Thank you convener and good morning panel it seems as if it's been a long day first day back after the new year. The ESC website currently states the initial review time is nine months I know you said in your opening statement that you are in the process of doing recruitment and induction but I was just wondering if you could give us a bit more information on why we're at this stage whether things are improving now or when I will likely to see an improvement in the in the sort of a wait times and also are these wait times causing complaints to sort of a not pursue the complaints that's the sort of a first part and obviously given this backlog has been going on for several years I know you're only in the role two years yourself but do you believe that the commissioner's office does have enough budget and staff to do the job properly thank you so I'll talk in general terms about this and I'll bring Angela and so you've got some facts and figures where do I start maybe let's go back to the past why do we have a backlog we had significant staff turnover during the tenure of my immediate predecessor I'll tell you how stark it is none of the investigative staff who were in post during Bill Thompson's time so that was you know the commissioner prior to my immediate predecessor none of the investigatory staff are in post anymore none of them so that's an entire investigatory team replaced the commissioner did go out and recruit but lost those staff also so turnover was a perpetual problem for us you know like sort of 70 80 percent so one of the first things I had to do was recruit into vacant posts and I started work on that as soon as I came into post and that's happened and we've basically done away with staff turnover you know we have a steady happy and effective workforce the new investigator team members had completed their first year by October of last year I've been monitoring the situation constantly you know turnover was the reason the backlog built up because it was nobody to investigate complaints it's you know it's sadly that straightforward so I could see that we were getting through them but equally it didn't look as though we were having any impact on the backlog so notwithstanding all the other staff pressures that the staff were under I said we need to bring forward a workforce planning exercise we need to establish how many people we need in order to fulfil all our roles as effectively as we would like to and that includes not just clearing the backlog but getting better at what we do for the future so that people don't have long waiting types yeah so we did all that we completed that workforce planning exercise last May and it was really comprehensive we put a business bid into the SPCB straight away you'll know what it's like recess and the rest but eventually I managed to get some time in front of the SPCB in October the case was really quickly granted thereafter and we started recruitment at the end of last year so prior to going on the Christmas break when people have a think about their future we think we've made a good offer you know come and work for a really significant public sector organisation that values people that values the people that work with it and closing dates are towards the end of this month so we'll have people in post they'll need to be inducted and once they're up to speeds then we'll get them on clearly onto the backlog we've put lots of other measures in place so you're asking about the impact in the interim so again we've been monitoring this situation really really constantly we decided as a senior management team it was only fair to let people know we've said on our website you know there is currently a backlog we've seen no of it no evidence since we put that by their up that complaint volumes have fallen so that would suggest to me that it's not putting people off necessarily but there were lots of other things that we felt that we could do in order to bring the backlog down and and to investigate more effectively even though we had it in place I'll maybe get Angela talked to the detail of some of the things that she and our team have put in place yeah certainly um I think Ian has already covered um the majority of the actions that we are taking it may be helpful for me to kind of give you a breakdown of how our year is progressing so we began the current financial year in March 20 April 22 with around 60 cases sitting at at missibility stage and throughout the year between 50 to 60 cases were at assessment stage throughout that period from April to October of 22 at the same time the number of active ongoing investigations per month remains at very high levels compared to similar periods from the last five years and the number of reports that we've issued to the standards commission per the outcome direction which miss Johnson referred to earlier that also represents the highest number of reports ever sent through currently we are looking at 33 cases at assessment stage for councillors complaints we are assessing cases dated up to June of 22 and this you would note that this is a significant step forward in terms of bringing down those numbers from starting at 60 cases at beginning of the year down to 33 now um the reasons for this is due to various measures that we have put in place some of which Ian has already mentioned but just to go into some of the detail on that um the team has actively committed to allocating themselves to that number of backlog cases up to June 22 we are now moving beyond that um they are doing this despite having a heavy investigation workload and it is a huge um I cannot thank the team enough and I want to go on public record to say just how proud I am of the struggle that we have gone through to reach the stage that we are at now we are actively keeping to a triage system where cases that are not within our remit that does not match the eligibility direction these are dismissed first and these are part of the letters that I referred to um when answering Mr Coffey's question with these we continue to um see that our triage cases now are up to date we do not require to inform complainers um sorry that we have not been able to reach back to you because we do and we have already um seen the the numbers go down in terms of cases that can be triaged and we will keep that going we also preserve evidence we have a very extensive plan to preserve as much evidence as possible to prevent loss through the passage of time as we work through this backlog these includes um requesting and saving webcast meetings social media screenshots which we will save to the file online articles and and this all saves time once we have allocated an uh investigating officer to the case so that they can help up all the material to hand to complete assessment as Ian mentioned we have also completed workforce planning and this planning took into consideration as a priority the resources that we would need to get through the complaints as quickly as we can um and as he's mentioned recruitment was already underway throughout this we also have very open and transparent communication the backlog banner indicates nine months but that's because it is taking into account the worst case scenario which is an odd liar case from january that we have not yet been able to close but in reality the amount of time that it takes for an assessment to take place is approximately 13 weeks so if we are looking at a number of cases now and the progress that we have already made in bringing the backlog numbers down we should be looking at being able to clear the backlog within four to six months excellent thank you very much and thanks for everything all the hard work you're doing to to bring this process back to to the sort of a time frame that we would require thank you yeah thanks very much uh paul you want to come in thank you uh convenient and good morning panel you know what to bring you back to the section 22 report which was issued and you kind of touched on this there was two key things i think came out one was the key relationships with other public bodies have broken down and you touched a little bit on that the other one was mentioned and about the other generals also concluded that the ethical stance commissioner of us was neither open nor transparent i just wonder if you want to talk just a little bit more in these two issues and what's going on you've kind of touched on it but just a little bit more detail if that's okay yes i might briefly talk about stakeholder engagement but caron is wholly across corporate services as well as governance so i might bring her in because caron's the one who keeps our website regularly up to date um this probably is relevant openness and transparency but how we're doing against the recommendations that's that's all online and published so you know everyone's aware of precisely where we are um i'll cover stakeholder engagement briefly and then then i'll turn to caron but it was one of the first things i did um was was trying to rebuild bridges with all of our stakeholder organisations as soon as i took up post i was in touch with um the standards commission which was clearly a key stakeholder and we are the relationship had broken down i think completely um and but also the likes of cosla solar solace scottish ministers you name it we we have a very long list of very important stakeholders and it was important that um i was in touch with them quickly um and it wasn't just to say how you doing and you know let i'm now in post it was to say i understand that our office has some significant issues that you will have had concerns about it um this is an opportunity for you to articulate those for you to help me to understand what we need to do to improve for me to give you commitments to improving in all of those areas um and trust doesn't come automatically you know again i made it clear you know i don't expect you to trust me from day one you will need to see actions on top of words so i'll maintain regular contact with you but you're always pushing on an open door you know everyone i think from all our stakeholder groups knows all they need to do is pick up the phone if they've got any concerns or questions about the way in which we're operating and and i will have a chat with them about how we're getting on and what we can do to fix any concerns that they may have so so you know that that's in very general terms but but i'll maybe turn to Karen now for some specifics on our transparency yeah good morning morning everyone um when releasing section 22 report um on our 2021 audit the auditor general noted that there was an absence of openness and transparency in the organisation and um since then we have undertaken a range of activities to become a more open and transparent organization foremost uh was the development of a new strategic plan uh that began in april 2021 when the acting commissioner was appointed that clearly sets out our values um that we will work to and it was the subject of a full public consultation and then was laid before parliament october um 2021 uh we carried out a full review of our complaint handling statistics and published the results um in our annual repulsion accounts for 2020-21 um we have formal and detailed minutes of our monthly senior management team meetings those are published um we publish our business plans and our progress against our business plan as ian's already mentioned we publish the um progress against the auditor's recommendations um we've consulted both formally and informally on the investigations manual with the pool the full public consultation recently closing in future um as already mentioned we are planning to publish our reports and decision letters relating to conduct complaints um the commissioner is open to meeting and indeed has met um with those who have complained about us um in fact we have published the outcome of an external investigation into a significant complaint about us um the commissioner is open to meeting and has met um with any council officer who wishes to talk about the work of the office um on an internal basis um staff input is sought when developing our business plans and we have also brought them into identifying risks to the business um and we keep up to date with them with regular team individual meetings that's a flavor of where we've got to on transparency just to reiterate um the point i made during my opening statement and i say this to every parliamentary committee that i appear before um engagement with you is important um we have few opportunities to talk publicly about our work so you know we genuinely appreciate this opportunity but the committee shouldn't hesitate to ask at any time for any information that it feels it would find helpful and if we don't have it to hand and it requires a bit of research we're more than happy to do that i was also previously on the standard committee where you've presented as well and that came across quickly good that's thanks for that yeah thank you i'm going to bring in miles with a question good morning thank you for joining us today i wanted to ask a question with regards to the directions to the ethical standards commissioner which were issued during 2020-21 and could you explain to the committee in more detail about the impact of these directions and and also their ongoing application as well sure um so you've already heard from ms johnson from the standards commission and as i said myself i think it was wholly understandable that those directions came in and and they came in for a very good reason there is a separation of functions between the two offices and i think having those directions in place um so it makes it clear what those different functions are i think potentially we could make it clearer to the public what those are and i have plans for that as well um so yes they do have an impact but but i think um their operation does provide a great deal of public assurance um that you know what happened previously perhaps couldn't happen again um there are three sets of directions and and you know their their impact varies um we uh have to keep everyone up to date being simplistic about this but you know the first one is about keeping everyone up to date that's something we'd commit to anyway it's it's written into our manual it's the right thing to do is to keep everyone up to date with the progress of an investigation so um it wouldn't matter whether the direction was in place or not that you know that that's something that we commit to continuing um the second direction is to do with reporting and yes you know it has meant that we are reporting more frequently than perhaps prior commissioners to the commission but as ms johnson explains final decisions on whether or not a beach have a cup statutory is for the commission to make and you know they can't make those decisions without um a well set out report um probably worth saying as well the template letters the template reports the fact sheets that go to members of the public we've agreed all these things with the standards commission to ensure that we are on the same page and that everyone knows what to expect from the process um the last one was the one that was issued just prior to my immediate predecessors departure and that's the eligibility direction and that's perhaps the one that gives um me least leeway in terms of you know like determining whether or not an investigation should be taken forward because because basically what it requires is if on its face there could be a breach of the code except in very you know um narrow circumstances um then we do have to investigate it and then clearly on the back of that we need to report um so so it does mean that live investigations the levels are higher i think than they've been historically we're probably again you know we monitoring what we're up to but um we think probably this year average of 22 live investigations um per month which is quite a record level um so so yes they do have an impact um but it'll be for the committee in the public to decide whether or not you know it's it's worth it in order to ensure that we have that level of assurance yeah that's helpful and i think for you know the oversight role we have um it'd be helpful with the plans you're you're saying being taken forward maybe to provide some updates on when they're being implemented and things i think that'd be helpful yes to see thank you camina thanks myles ian in the in your opening statement you talked about a calm strategy you may have covered some of that in our question in your response to our questions but i just wanted to give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about about that and also you mentioned kpi's um key performance indicators for the office so it'd be interesting to hear both a bit about both of those yes of course um so uh members will be aware that one of the recommendations of our auditors was that we should um obtain internal audit services so you know we did tender for and obtain internal audit services and and one of their recommendations was you know having looked at all the work that we do and and i'll maybe ask actually ask currently to give you some detail on how we've done in terms of our first internal audit because we had them have a look at three three topics this year which which hopefully will provide you with a bit more assurance about our work because it's not me marking my own home markets someone who we've commissioned to have a look at how we're getting on but they said as well as your overall strategy you should have a think about a communication strategy and having reflected on it we felt that that's a recommendation that we'd certainly like to take forward um so we're aware of the work that we do you're aware of the work that we do i am not sure that the general public necessarily is or what the difference between our office is in that the standards commission i'd said earlier i think proper operation of the ethical standards framework should actually encourage more people into public life be that you know as a board member or or standing for elected office um so i think that we have a role to educate the public about the framework where we sit in it um and and my initial plans um i was having a look at this yesterday is we do have that strategic plan and and i think the things that are important that the public need to know is what's our purpose um what are our objectives and what are our values um and so communicating all of that to the public and to our stakeholders and and making it clear where they can come and you know how they can make complaints making that whole process more accessible so that's certainly what i'm thinking about in that particular area kpi's we've got two sets i'm not going to say they're entirely distinct but but they are um a bit dissimilar the first set of kpi's and possibly the ones that are most important to people who are going through the process be that as a complainer or a respondent is how quickly we can get through the process and they were all included in the manual for consultation but the other set of kpi's i'd mentioned earlier um you know what i'm planning to say in terms of our communication strategy because we have values and because we have objectives i mean basically we've set out our stall it's not just about this is what we'll do but it's also a bit how we'll go about it um and that's a bit softer um i've been used to running applicant surveys on an anonymous basis for the public appointments process for years and years i'm going to adopt something similar so when we write at the end of the process to complainers and respondents they'll get a link to an anonymous survey and they'll be asked to tell us what their experience of the process was for them and and they'll not be identifiable unless they choose to give us information that would that would identify them um the other thing that i'm planning to do um and perhaps the committee may have a view on this so we currently gather demographic data on applicant surveys i'd like to do the same thing um for complainers and respondents and it's simply because i don't think we have a handle in scotland on what the demographics of local authorities are but equally whether or not um so we can use the census data for comparison but um but also to get a sense of whether or not for example you know more complaints are made about women councillors that type of thing i think it would be helpful to have data in that area and it's about informing future policy and procedures for ourselves but also for the standards commission and for others with an interest i'll maybe ask cam very briefly just to talk about internal audit results yes as ian said we um appointed an internal audit function back in spring of 2022 um their first audit that they carried out for us was in the summer last year and that was looking at our governance arrangements as they stood at that time um we were pleased that they reported we had substantial controls in place and identified seven good practice points they did have nine recommendations for us which is above the industry benchmark but they were three medium ones and six low level recommendations all of which were tied to the administrative implementation of those recommendations already set out by our external auditor they also looked at our risk management procedures and concluded there was strong controls in place again with seven good practice points and four low level recommendations which again were administrative in nature how we set out a risk register they also we took the opportunity for them to look at the investigation manual that we were developing while it was still in the consultation phase and again they noted there was substantial controls in place in coming through the investigation manual and there was 10 good practice points against industry so we're really pleased to see that and congratulations to Ms Glenn and her team on that and there was one major recommendation and a low priority one as well so we were very pleased to see the progress that was being examined and validated externally through those reports thank you very much for that Karen yeah that's great to hear the the positive direction with your internal audits and i'm sure you are very pleased about that and that's come to the end of our questions i think nobody else looking to ask anything more so i wanted to thank you for coming to give evidence today and i think from certainly what i've heard it seems to me that you are modelling a good leadership in connection with the nine key principles the underpin the standard expected in public life and i think that that's something that we all need to do isn't it it's modelling it modeling the direction of travel that we need to be going in and that's certainly what i've heard from what you've been sharing with the committee today so i'd also like to wish you well with your recruitment process and we will be seeing you i hear you we can contact you anytime but we will be seeing you probably around this time next year thank you thank you very much the opportunity thank you okay we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the remainder of our agenda items in private so as we have no more public business today i now close the public part of the meeting