The Standards Advisory Committee agreed its proposed work programme for 2024/25, reviewed the council's response to the Local Government Association's (LGA) Corporate Peer Challenge of the council, and noted the declarations of interest made by Councillors in meetings. No decision was made about the appointment of a new independent person for the committee.

LGA Corporate Peer Challenge

The committee discussed the LGA's Corporate Peer Challenge of the council which took place in November 2023. This was the first peer review of Newham Council in 10 years. The review made 11 recommendations to the council and these are listed in the report which has been published on the council's website. The council subsequently produced a detailed action plan in response to the review's recommendations.

Councillor Easter was pleased to see that the report recommended that the council improve its training for Councillors. She pointed out that the report highlighted deficiencies in training as a recurring issue in other parts of the report.

there is an argument to be said that actually this council has badly let us down in terms of training, very badly

The committee discussed the report's recommendation that there should be a 'relationship reset' at the council. Councillor Easter felt that the relationship between the executive and scrutiny functions in the council was adversarial, and that this needed to change.

My essence of reading this is the relationship is adversarial rather than constructive challenge. And that's a cultural thing and that's personalities as well. We can't shy away from that.

Councillor Easter felt that the standards committee should have a greater role in improving the council's conduct.

And now that we've got this updated list, we now empower the standards committee, the independent members, to help members to demonstrate the best conduct and behavior possible. If we're not empowered... - We're sitting duck

The committee agreed that it would be useful to work with the council's performance team to identify ways to measure positive behaviours.

Proposed Work Programme

The committee agreed its proposed work programme for 2024/25. The programme includes provision for the committee to receive updates on the implementation of the LGA Corporate Peer Challenge action plan.

Ethical Framework Update

The committee received a report (Ethicalframeworkreport Sept 2024) detailing the declarations of interest made by Councillors during the period 9th April 2024 to 27th August 2024. The committee noted that there were no declarations of gifts and hospitality made during this period.

The committee questioned whether the report contained all of the declarations of interest that had been made in the period. The meeting transcript lists a declaration of interest relating to the Victoria Road Bridge that does not appear in the report, and the committee also questioned whether a declaration made at a cabinet meeting on the 24th of July 2024 was in the report. The committee agreed to request that officers update the report to include these declarations and to investigate the possibility that other declarations have been missed.

Appointment of Independent Person

The committee discussed the vacant position of independent person on the committee.

Just to update the committee on the recruitment of the independent person, members will recall that just before the summer break, we shared a draft advert with members, and thank you to those members who provided their comments on that.

The meeting was informed that there had been a number of delays to the recruitment of a new independent person. It is anticipated that the advert for the post will be placed this month.

So it is anticipated that the advert will go out this month. And we just wanted to record our thanks to Christina for being so patient as well, given the difficulties that we've had with recruitment and hopefully we'll be able to update members at the next meeting.

The committee noted the update, and Councillor Choudhury expressed his wish for the role to be filled quickly.

This has been rumbling on for quite a while, hasn't it? And no disrespect to all of the efforts being put into it. But I think we've been quite frankly, we've been hearing this line that we need to get to it as quickly as possible.

The committee discussed whether it would be possible to appoint a new independent person before its next meeting on 11th December. It was agreed that this may be difficult, given that any appointment would need to be confirmed at a meeting of full council.

Obviously, once an equipment process done and the candidate is chosen, it does actually have to go to full council for approval. So once that's achieved, hopefully, we should have enough council meetings between now and your next meeting.

It was agreed that the committee would contact Christina Asare, who has been acting as independent person, to advise her of the outcome of the discussion.