Before the report was introduced, a Member raised a point of order in respect of any background papers to support the report.  The Monitoring Officer advised no further documents were relied upon to write to the report.

The Monitoring Officer introduced the report, advising the policy had already been considered by the previous Standards Committee, the Executive Management Team (EMT), the Corporate Leadership Team (CLT), the Union and via a consultation with all staff. The response to the proposed policy was positive.

Members were invited to make comments which included:

·      Was there broad agreement that the policy should be accepted?;

·      the report was last considered by Committee in September 2022;

·      the report was one-sided, there was no mention of officers bullying Members and it was not ready;

·      the protocol was biased against Members and not officers; and

·      the policy had been discussed at length and should be in place now.

A Member said the outcome of the Peer Review had recommended improvements in officer/Member relationships and it was better to have the policy in place without further delays.

In response, the Monitoring Officer said there had been a level of feedback and there had been few suggested changes to the original policy agreed by the previous Standards Committee. This was not surprising as feedback is more commonly given on a policy already working in practice. He explained that under employment law, Members had a duty of care to officers. The Monitoring Officer added that Members were in the position of power over officers.  A Member said there was no position of power from Members over officers and there was equal respect between officers and Members. He suggested the policy needed looking at again. In response, a Member reminded the Committee that all Members, EMT, CLT and staff had been consulted and there had been no major disagreement. Another Member said that there were already consequences for officers as part of their contract.  The Monitoring Officer drew attention to paragraphs 2.11 and 2.12 which referred to the Member Code of Conduct and the Officer Code of Conduct.

A Member said Chairs and Vice-Chairs should be referred to as such and not Chairmen as stated in some pages of the policy. The same Member requested that ‘confidential’ be added in front of ‘…..information provided…’ on the first line of paragraph 5.8 of the policy.  The Monitoring Officer agreed to update the document with the suggested changes.

A Member considered that recommendation 2 was too broad and suggested including links to the LGA website to the policy.  He said that when the policy went to Full Council for adoption, more information on when, how and where the policy was discussed and the feedback received should be included.  In response to the comment in respect of recommendation 2, the Monitoring Officer said that purpose was in relation to what was discussed and agreed at this Standards Committee meeting. The Chair suggested a briefing be held before the policy was considered by Full Council.

There was a discussion around the difficulties of finding up to date policies and other important correspondence on line.  A Member requested that all Members should be given hard copies of the Constitution. The Democratic and Electoral Services Manager explained that it was a live document, continually updated, and this prohibited paper copies.  A Member suggested that Members could access the modern.gov app and annotate documents.  The Democratic and Electoral Services Manager agreed to confirm that the Constitution could be accessed via the modern.gov app.

A Member suggested that the final amended document with background information be circulated before being considered by Full Council.

Councillor Harrison proposed and Councillor Charlie Miller seconded the recommendations and on being put to the vote Members voted in favour.

Resolved:

(1)  That the draft protocol at Appendix I was fit for purpose and the suggested minor amendments be included in the final policy.

(2)  That delegated authority be granted to the Monitoring Officer to make any final amendments to the text.

(3)  That the final Member/Officer Protocol be recommended to Council for adoption.