Agenda item

To consider a complaint of breach of the Code of Conduct received in respect of a City of York Councillor and determine next steps.

Members considered a report which set out a Code of Conduct complaint received in respect of a City Councillor.  This matter was returned to subcommittee for rehearing following a complaint that the case handling procedure had not been applied fairly in the complainant’s case by failing to make adjustments for their disability.

The subcommittee considered additional evidence in the form of a contemporaneous note containing details of the original complaint as verbally conveyed to the Deputy Monitoring Officer. The Committee was satisfied that this ensured the complainant suffered no disadvantage in the complaints handling process. The committee was further satisfied that hearing directly from the complainant in subcommittee was not an adjustment it was required to make where the case handling procedure did not ordinarily provide for oral submissions from complainants or subject members. Details of the complaint were presented in the private report.

Members were asked to decide whether to:

A.  Rule that the complaint was out of scope.

B.  Rule that the complaint was in scope and choose to (i) take no further action, (ii) seek to resolve the matter informally; or (iii) refer the matter for investigation.

Having considered all the information provided, and the advice of the Independent Person at the meeting, it was

Resolved:  That Option A be approved.

Reason:     The assessment sub-committee concluded that the matters complained of are not capable of constituting breaches of the Member Code of Conduct. There was no evidence of disrespect within the meaning of the Code and the complaint was consequently not in scope.

The complainant alleged that the Member had breached the Code of Conduct by failing to respond to them, failing to rectify the alleged disability discrimination they had suffered and that this equated to disrespect for the purposes of the Code.

The Committee, having considered all of the evidence afresh, found no evidence that the subject member had failed to deal appropriately with the complainant’s correspondence and had in no way failed to treat them with respect.

The Committee noted that the Deputy Monitoring Officer had made a reasonable adjustment to the Case Handling Procedure by receiving the complaint verbally.