Agenda item

Discussion on the future role of the Standards Committee in Complaints against Councillors.  (Remit of Committee from Scheme of Administration attached)

The Chief Legal Officer, Mrs McKinlay, explained that as Members were aware, the current Scottish Borders Council complaints process for Councillors did contain provision to allow the Monitoring Officer to refer matters to this Standards Committee to make a decision on whether there had been a breach of Code and to impose sanctions.  Mrs McKinlay was keen to hear views of Members whether this should continue or not or for something in between.  Cllr Robson’s view was that the Committee should adopt a learning role rather than a disciplinary role.  Mistakes could be made by anyone at any time and the consequence of this was that there would always be a learning opportunity.  Where we had an issue arising we needed to look to see if we could resolve this but also identify what we could take from the situation to improve what we would do in the future.  Things should only be passed into the disciplinary process if there was no other way forward and should only be passed out-with the Council as a last resort.  In general, rather than honing in on an individual misdemeanour, we should learn from them as a collective.  Cllr Greenwell commented that he came from a military background so started from a different base with discipline and was a big believer that the Monitoring Officer had the training and understanding to decide whether something had to go to a higher level.  This had worked well in the past and he queried the need for the Standards Committee.  Cllr Aitchison advised that he had had a conversation with Mrs McKinlay about this and he had always struggled with the idea of politicians monitoring other politicians.  Mrs McKinlay confirmed that having spoken with other Monitoring Officers and Scottish Borders Council was in the minority where Members were dealing with complaints internally.   Only one incident had been dealt with by the Standards Committee since 2006.  Cllr Hamilton commented that for many Members what was needed was just a little nudge, chat and realising where the boundaries were and that was really important.  We should not frighten other people off and the quiet word was a really good starting point.  Cllr Scott concurred with the light touch approach with most Councillors sensitive to that, although there was sometimes a generational issue with language.  Mrs McKinlay added that on occasions when things were a little more difficult, there was also the opportunity to involve the Leader or Group leader or Convener for mediation.  There was the potential to have a Members who could be trained in mediation to deal with that.  All this could be brought to Members at a briefing.  Any changes to the Standards Committee or the complaints process for Councillors would require approval from full Council. 

DECISION

AGREED:

(a)        to brief all Members on the role of the Standards Committee in the Complaints process for Councillors and ask for comments to come back to the Standards Committee for further consideration; and

(b)        that a meeting of the Standards Committee would be set up towards the end of February 2022 to consider the matter further.