Agenda and minutes

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The parish representatives were welcomed to the meeting.  In particular, Councillor P Dolby was welcomed to his first meeting of the Standards Committee.

The Monitoring Officer confirmed that Councillor Rose was the voting member for this meeting.

An apology for absence was received from Councillor Lovelock.

Members are asked to declare interests in matters for consideration at the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

An application has been received from Baston Parish Council for a special dispensation for six months to enable a resolution on granting funds to the Baston Playing Fields Management Committee to be passed by four eligible members.

(Enclosure)

Decision:

(1)  To grant a dispensation for a period of six months to allow Baston Parish Council to consider items relative to the Baston Playing Fields Management Committee (BPFMC), the dispensation to allow the five parish councillors who do not have a prejudicial interest in this matter to pass resolutions as appropriate.

(2)  That Baston Parish Council be informed that the Standards Committee is of the opinion that the Parish Council should actively seek to co-opt additional members to the Parish Council to enable them to overcome this problem.

(3)  The Monitoring Officer advise the parish council representatives at the next meeting of the procedure whereby the number of parish councillors per parish council is determined by the District Council.

The Standards Committee considered a letter from Baston Parish Council which had been circulated by the Monitoring Officer.  The letter explained that they had only six councillors with five vacancies on the Parish Council.  In respect of the Baston Playing Fields Management Committee (BPFMC) two members had a prejudicial interest which left only five who were eligible to vote which was below the required quorum.  Having given this matter consideration the Standards Committee was unanimous in agreeing that, having considered this application on its individual merits, it was satisfied that it would be appropriate to grant the dispensation in this case.

The Committee noted that there were a number of parish councils in the district who were experiencing problems in recruiting members and questions were asked as to how the total number of councillors per parish council was arrived at.  The Monitoring Officer agreed to prepare a paper and report back to a future meeting.

It was also suggested that it was time consuming and cumbersome to call a full meeting of the Standards Committee in order to consider one dispensation and the Monitoring Officer agreed to investigate whether or not there could be ways of streamlining this process.

The meeting closed at 2.50p.m.