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City of York Council |
Committee Minutes |
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Meeting |
Joint Standards Committee - Assessments Sub-Committee |
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Date |
30 January 2024 |
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Present |
Cllrs Fisher and Rowley (City Council Members) Cllr Chambers (Parish Council Member) Joe Leigh (Independent Member). |
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Officers in Attendance: |
Lindsay Tomlinson (Deputy Monitoring Officer) |
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16. Appointment of Chair (2:05 pm)
Resolved: That Councillor Fisher be elected as Chair of the meeting.
17. Declarations of Interest (2:05 pm)
Members were asked to declare at this point in the meeting any disclosable pecuniary interests or other registerable interests they might have in respect of business on the agenda, if they had not already done so in advance on the Register of Interests.
No interests were declared, but for the sake of transparency, Cllr Rowley noted that he was a school governor for an unrelated Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) within the city.
18. Exclusion of Press and Public (2:06 pm)
Resolved: That the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the private reports at Agenda Item 4 (Code of Conduct Complaint received in respect of City of York Councillors), on the grounds that they contain information relating to individuals and information likely to reveal the identity of individuals, which is classed as exempt under paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 12A to Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended by the Local Government (Access to Information) (Variation) Order 2006.
[Note: following the above resolution, the Deputy Monitoring Officer confirmed that she had nothing further to add in respect of the public reports in the agenda papers, and the remainder of the meeting took place in private session.]
19. Code of Conduct Complaint received in respect of City of York Councillors (2:06 pm)
Members considered a report which set out three complaints alleging breach of the Code of Conduct received in respect of three City of York councillors. Details of the complaints were presented in the private report referred to in Minute 18 above.
Members were asked to decide whether to:
A. rule that one or more complaints are out of scope.
B. rule that one or more complaints are in scope and choose to:
(i) take no further action
(ii) seek to resolve the matter(s) informally, or
(iii) refer the matter(s) for investigation.
Having considered all the information provided, and the advice of the Independent Person at the meeting, it was
Resolved: That Option B (iii) was recommended in respect of all complaints.
Reason: The Sub-Committee considers that this matter is capable of being a breach of the Code of Conduct and that an investigation is required.
Cllr Tony Fisher, Chair
[The meeting started at 2.05 pm and finished at 2.40 pm].