Agenda item

As requested by the Standards Committee the Member Services Manager set out the action agreed by the Committee at its previous meeting regarding the recording of Members’ attendance at meetings and training sessions which were:-

• That in respect of the annual monitoring attendance report, Members who, during the year under review, had experienced exceptional circumstances which accounted for a significant number of absences, should be invited to explain the reason for their attendance record and a footnote to that effect should be added to the report.  On practical grounds, explanatory notes would only be allowed in exceptional circumstances as the reporting of reasons for individual absences would be impracticable.

• To improve Members’ attendance at compulsory training sessions, the compulsory training for 2010/2011 had been incorporated into the Council’s Calendar of Meetings.  This would give Members advance warning of all training dates and hopefully outside bodies, particularly local ones, would have some regard to the Calendar of Meetings when fixing their meetings. 

• Compulsory member training / development sessions would not be added to the Member Development Programme without the prior approval of the Council’s Corporate Management Team.  If any additional compulsory training sessions were approved two alternative dates for the same training session would be offered in the expectation that Members would be able to attend one of them. 

At the Committee’s last meeting, it was suggested that in addition to the current annual monitoring reports, each committee, sub-committee or panel should receive a report on the attendance of its Members during the current year.  The rationale behind these additional reports was that Members who failed to attend meetings could be held to account by their peers.  There was some discussion on how this suggestion would work in practice and the Officers were asked to report back to the Committee with possible proposals.

As the purpose of the individual reports was to influence and change Members’ behaviour it was suggested that rather than submitting reports at the end of the municipal year a rolling attendance report should be submitted to each meeting.  This currently happened in respect of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee and seemed to work well.  An example of how this report would look was attached for consideration.

Resolved –

(a)  That the report now submitted be noted.

(b)  That that action now proposed in respect of future reporting on Members’ attendance at individual committee/sub-committee and panel meetings be approved and adopted with effect from the start of the municipal year 2010/2011.