Agenda and minutes

To note the attendance at this meeting of any duly appointed Reserve Members.

Reserve Members may attend meetings:-

(i)                 to take the place of an ordinary Member for whom they are a reserve;

(ii)               where the ordinary Member will be absent for the whole of the meeting; and

(iii)             the meeting notes at the start of the meeting at the item ‘Reserves’ that the Reserve Member is or will be attending as a reserve;

(iv)              if a Reserve Member whose intention to attend has been noted arrives after the commencement of the meeting, then that Reserve Member can only act as a Member from the start of the next item of business on the agenda after his/her arrival.

RESOLVED:  To note the attendance at this meeting of the following duly appointed Reserve Member:-

To receive declarations of disclosable pecuniary or non pecuniary interests, arising from business to be transacted at this meeting, from:

(a)               all Members of the Committee;

(b)               all other Members present.

RESOLVED:  To note that there were no declarations of interests made by Members.

To receive deputations (if any) under the provisions of Committee Procedure Rule 16 (Part 4B) of the Constitution.

RESOLVED:  To note that no deputations were received at this meeting.

Report of the Director of Legal and Governance Services

In accordance with the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985, this meeting was being called with less than 5 clear working days’ notice by virtue of the special circumstances and grounds for urgency stated below:-

The meeting considered applications received for dispensations in relation to staying, speaking and voting on decisions in relation to Council Tax Support if a Member is in receipt of Council Tax Benefit.

The reason for urgency was that an Extraordinary Council meeting was being held on Monday 21 January 2013 which related to Local Council Tax Support.  Decisions on whether or not to grant the dispensations were therefore required before this date.

The Committee received a report of the Director of Legal and Governance Services which set out the process to be followed for granting individual dispensations.  It also considered requests from two Councillors for such dispensations relating to their disclosable pecuniary interests in relation to the receipt of Council Tax benefit.

The Chairman thanked Committee Members for attending the Special Meeting of the Committee at short notice.  He advised that the reason for urgency in convening the Special meeting was due to the following reasons and requested Committee Members to agree these:

·                    an Extraordinary Council meeting was scheduled to take place on Monday 21 January 2013 at which Localisation of Council Tax Benefits would be considered.  Therefore the decision regarding whether or not to grant dispensations to the two Councillors in question would need to be taken before this date;

·                    the two requests for dispensations from Councillors had been received earlier that week.

A Member who objected to the meeting being called at short notice on a Friday, made the following points:

·                    Members had been informed of the date of Extraordinary Council in November 2012 and the two Members in question should have submitted their requests for dispensations sooner;

·                    not all Members were free to attend meetings on Fridays due to work commitments or religious reasons.

The Committee agreed the reasons for urgency for calling a special meeting of the Standards Committee.

The Head of Legal Practice tabled the two applications from Members seeking dispensations.  The Chairman proposed that the names of the two Members in question be considered exempt information.  Committee Members made the following points regarding the proposal to exclude the Councillors names from press and public:

·                    being granted a dispensation should not exempt Members from declaring all disclosable pecuniary interests at meetings and that this should be made clear to all Members;

·                    Members’ interests, particularly those of a financial nature, and how these impacted on their decision making at meetings should be open to public scrutiny, otherwise this may constitute a potential conflict of interest.  For example, if a Member were to vote to increase the amount of a particular grant that they were in receipt of, then this would clearly be a conflict of interest;

·                    at its meeting on 4 December 2012, the Committee had agreed to dispensations being granted in order to facilitate the democratic process by enabling  ...  view the full minutes text for item 102.