The Standards Committee discussed a number of changes to its procedures, a complaint made against a councillor, and the recruitment of an Independent Person. The committee decided to recommend that the council approve changes to its constitution, agreed to uphold a complaint against a councillor, and agreed to changes to the way Independent Persons are recruited.

Changes to the Constitution

The Committee reviewed proposed changes to East Hampshire District Council's constitution. The main changes were to the following areas:

• Interests of Members The new wording in the proposed new constitution states that:

  Where a Member has a disclosable pecuniary interest in any matter under discussion at a meeting and the matter is not a sensitive interest, they may remain in the meeting room, make representations and answer questions on the matter.

  This differs from the previous version of the constitution, in which Councillors with Disclosable Pecuniary Interests were required to leave the meeting for the relevant items. This wording brings East Hampshire District Council's constitution in line with changes to the Localism Act 2011¹ made in 2012. The change was supported unanimously by the committee, who resolved to recommend that full council approve the changes to the constitution.

• Use of Social Media The Council considered adopting a specific section of the code of conduct relating to the use of social media by Councillors. The existing Code of Conduct for Councillors does not include specific guidance about the use of social media. Instead, the guidance states that Councillors:

  must treat others with respect... even where political disagreements exist

  Councillor Liz Jones argued against the inclusion of a specific social media section of the Code of Conduct, stating that:

  The code of conduct should reflect the members' code, not what individual members want it to be

  Councillor Jones' position was that the existing guidance in the code was sufficient and appropriate to cover the use of social media, and that it did not require any further details. She went on to argue that:

  I think the more we try to put detail in, the more difficult it becomes

  The committee agreed to her suggestion and resolved to recommend to full council that the new social media section is removed from the code.

• Complaints Process A number of changes were proposed to the way complaints against councillors are handled. These were largely procedural changes intended to clarify some of the steps involved in the process. These were not considered controversial by the committee, and so were not discussed in detail. However, the committee agreed to change the name of the Initial Assessment of a complaint to Informal Assessment. They resolved to recommend to full council that all the proposed changes to the complaints process are approved.

Complaint Against a Councillor

A complaint was made against an unnamed councillor. It was alleged that they had breached Paragraph 4(a) of the Code of Conduct for Councillors. This paragraph states that councillors must:

carry out their duties and responsibilities with due regard to the need to act in accordance with the following principles – (a) selflessness

The committee agreed that the councillor had breached this part of the code, and resolved to issue a formal censure of the councillor. They further resolved to publish the details of the councillor and the complaint. However, the report detailing this decision was not published with the minutes of the meeting because the councillor in question has a right to appeal the decision. The outcome of the complaint will be included in the minutes of a future meeting.

Recruitment of Independent Person

The Committee considered a report on the recruitment of Independent Persons. Independent Persons are appointed by local authorities as part of their arrangements for dealing with complaints made against councillors. They are independent of the council and their role is to advise the council on whether a complaint against a councillor should be investigated.

The existing Independent Persons had recently been re-appointed for a further year, because the council had been unable to recruit new Independent Persons. This was because of a national shortage of people applying for the role.

The committee discussed a number of options for changing the way the council recruits Independent Persons, with the aim of making the role more attractive. The main change agreed by the committee was to increase the daily rate offered to Independent Persons to £350 per day. This is the maximum daily rate that the council is permitted to pay. The committee also agreed to a number of other measures, including:

• Approaching the Local Government Association to see if they could help with recruitment.
• Advertising the role more widely.
• Making the application process simpler.
• Offering more flexible working arrangements.