Minutes:
The Director of Law and Corporate Governance reminded the Committee that under Part III of the Local Government Act 2000 local authorities had a duty to take a responsibility for, amongst other things, their own standards and promote and maintain high ethical standards across the Authority. With these requirements in mind he recommended that the Council should undertake the Ethical Governance Diagnostic which had been jointly developed by the Audit Commission, Standards Board for England and Improvement Development Agency (IDeA). The Diagnostic had been developed to assess an Authority’s arrangements for promoting positive ethical standards and behaviour, local protocols and procedure, Monitoring Officer arrangements, the role of the Chief Executive and the workings of the Standards Committee and identify areas for improvement.
The Diagnostic comprised three parts namely:-
(1) An audit of compliance with the Local Code of Conduct and how arrangements were developing.
(2) A survey of Members and Officers including awareness and understanding of ethical behaviour.
(3) Case studies for workshops with Members and Officers exploring dilemmas, conflicts of interest and equality issues delivered either by the Audit Commission or by the IDeA.
It was proposed that initially the Council would implement Parts (1 and 2) of the Diagnostic at a cost of no more than £5,000 which would be met from within current approved budgets.
The Committee was advised that should the Diagnostic go ahead the Council would seek amendments to the layout of the survey questionnaire, a copy of which was submitted, to differentiate more clearly those questions solely for Members from those intended for Officers. It was proposed that the survey would be carried out in January, 2006 with the Officer element of the survey being undertaken on-line and the Member survey would be conducted either by e-mail or hard copy as appropriate.
If the survey indicated that more training and development was required to promote higher ethical standards and awareness the Committee could at that time consider whether or not the third part of the Diagnostic should be implemented.
Resolved –
(a) That the Director of Law and Corporate Governance be authorised to implement Parts (I) and (2) of the Ethical Governance Diagnostic with the survey of Members and Officers taking place in January, 2006.
(b) That the Director of Law and Corporate Governance report back to the Committee on the outcome of the survey results together with any appropriate action plan to implement Part (3) of the Diagnostic.