ST HELENS Borough Council will undertake a review into its procedure for dealing with complaints against councillors accused of breaking the code of conduct.

Every local authority is required to adopt a code of conduct that sets out rules governing the behaviour of its elected members.

To make a complaint against a councillor, members of the public must write to the council’s director of legal and HR, and monitoring officer, Jan Bakewell.

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This week, the council’s standards committee agreed to carry out a review of this procedure, in light of the best practice recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL).

The CSPL, an advisory non-departmental public body of the UK Government, undertook a review of the ethical standards in local government in 2018.

The Government Ethical Standards report was published in January 2019 and made a series of recommendations to central government in relation to primary legislation and to local authorities in relation to best practice.

St Helens Borough Council is required to update the CSPL on its progress to implement the best practice recommendations by November 30.

So far, eight of the recommendations have been implemented in full, while one has been partly implemented.

One of the best practice recommendations states that the local authority should have straightforward and accessible guidance on its website on how to make a complaint under the code of conduct, the process for handling complaints, and estimated timescales for investigations and outcomes.

Currently, the procedure for dealing with complaints is published on St Helens Borough Council’s website.

However, this does not include estimated timescales for investigations and outcomes. This will be considered as part of the review of the procedure.

“The procedure is published on the council’s website,” Ms Bakewell told the standards committee on Monday.

“So it’s intended to assist members of the public, signpost them how complaints are dealt with and what the process is for involving the independent person, Caroline Kelly in our case.”

Ms Bakewell proposed that a small cross-party working group be established, including officers, to carry out a review of the procedure for dealing with complaints, against the best practice recommendations.

The group will report back to the standards committee in January with any suggested amendments for members to consider.

One recommendation that will be included in the review relates to conflicts of interest.

The CSPL says local authorities should have procedures in place to address any conflicts of interest when undertaking a standards investigation.

Possible steps should include asking the monitoring officer from a different authority to undertake the investigation.

This is not currently documented in St Helens Borough Council’s procedure for dealing with complaints, although the council says it would happen in practice.

St Helens Star: The majority of complaints made about councillors relates to their conduct on social media The majority of complaints made about councillors relates to their conduct on social media

Another best practice recommendation that will be considered relates to complaints made about parish councillors by the clerk.

It recommends that formal standards complaints about the conduct of a parish councillor towards a clerk should be made by the chair or by the parish council as a whole, rather than the clerk in all but exceptional circumstances.

Cllr Martin Bond, chairman of the standards committee, said the “vast majority” of best practice recommendations have already been put into place.

The Labour councillor also praised officers for keeping the council’s policies on ethical matters up to date.

Cllr Bond, cabinet member for finance and governance, said: “These are quite significant matters that we deal with in terms of code of conduct and ethical behaviour.

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“And it’s a credit to our officers that our policies and the constitution is kept so up to date so that we don’t need to introduce massive changes.

“So it’s a credit to our officers that we as a standards committee, who are ultimately responsible for it, are able to come together and just put together proposals to make the bits of it that don’t quite fit, fit into it, rather than massively overhaul things.

“Because that can be really difficult to do.”