Issue - meetings

The Monitoring Officer presented the report as detailed in the agenda, and referred to the recommendations at the start of the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL). She felt it was a good report and noted many of the CSPL recommendations would require legislative changes. One of the recommendations detailed in the CSPL report was to raise the value of hospitality required to be declared to £50, however in the interests of transparency, she recommended retaining the current value of £25, but this was at the discretion of the Standards Committee.

She highlighted the list of best practice recommendations in the CSPL report, and commented many of the suggestions were aspects that the Standards Committee may wish to pick up on. During discussion several comments were raised including:

·         The need for clerks to be properly trained is important

·         Best Practice recommendation 14 would also be important as SSDC were in the process of setting up a trading company.

·         Many parish conflicts are often between the Chairpersons and clerk.

·         Parishes seem to be reluctant to spend resource on training clerks.

·         Clerks and parish / town councillors change frequently. Often training is provided at the start of a four year term, but it may need to be repeated each year due to new members.

·         Chairpersons should be encouraged to remain unbiased and impartial.

·         All members need to be reminded about the use of social media.

At the end of discussion the Monitoring Officer suggested a report be compiled for the next meeting of the Standards Committee, detailing possible changes to the Code of Conduct for consideration, and this was agreed by members.