The Standards Committee is a statutory body
responsible for promoting and maintaining high standards of conduct
in the authority. The main responsibilities of the Committee are to
help district, town and parish Councillors follow the code of
conduct, give advice on the code and assess and review complaints
about elected Members.
The Committee is attended by 8 Councillors, 3
independent members and 2 parish council representatives.
For more information on the Councillor’s
code of conduct, please click
here.
The current Standards regime will cease to
exist on 30 June 2012. As part of the new arrangements, which come
into effect on 1 July 2012, local authorities are required to
appoint Independent Persons.
Independent
Persons
Appointment of Independent Persons to assist
the Council in Handling Complaints against Councillors.
Local authorities have a new duty to promote
and maintain high standards of conduct amongst their councillors
and co-opted members. We will need 2 persons who are independent of
the Council who can bring a measure of experience and common sense
to handling complex and sometimes contentious issues. The Council
has adopted a new Code of Conduct and is in the process of
introducing new arrangements for handling complaints. The
Independent Person will play an important role in this and you will
be working closely with the Council’s Monitoring Officer who
will need to consult you formally with regard to how matters should
be handled. This process will extent to complaints against Town and
Parish Councillors in the Cherwell area as well as Cherwell
District Councillors.
We will be looking to recruit our Independent
Persons during the course of July. If you would like to express an
interest in this forthcoming process then please contact Natasha Clark, Team Leader
– Democratic and Elections at
natasha.clark@cherwellandsouthnorthants.gov.uk
or telephone to discuss on Tel 01295 221589 and we will make sure
that you are sent the necessary details at the appropriate
time.