To receive and consider the report of the Director of Governance.

Chris Moister, Director of Governance, presented the report which shared a draft Model Code of Conduct prepared by the Local Government Association (LGA).

In 2019, the Office for Standards in Public Life published a report reviewing the current standards regime.  The report made a number of recommendations for changes.  The Committee considered this report and implemented the recommendations where appropriate.  One of the recommendations was a national review of the Code of Conduct for Members. 

The draft code departs little from the existing adopted document, however, it does incorporate changes proposed by the review into standards in public life.  The changes are beneficial providing greater clarity on how the code is to operate.  The principles remain the same and there are no changes which would prevent the adoption of this code.

The draft Model Code of Conduct is currently out for consultation and conversations have already taken place with the two Independent Persons for their views.  Committee members were requested to feed back any comments on the draft Code to the Monitoring Officer and a draft response will be prepared in consultation with the Chair and Vice-Chair.  This will be shared with the Group Leaders and submitted to the LGA. 

Members noted that there were no changes to the sanctions available following a breach of the Code.

Decision: That the Committee respond to the consultation accepting the new draft document.