Standards Advisory Committee - Thursday 12 March 2026, 4:00pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Standards Advisory Committee
Thursday, 12th March 2026 at 4:00pm 

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Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our 12th of March 26th advisory, standards advisory
commission meeting. And in particular, welcome to Anne Burnett -Bernard, who is our newly
appointed independent person. You're there. You can hear us, I presume. Excellent. Thank
Thank you. Apologies for absence.
Yes, Chair. Councillor Souders, Islam has sent his apologies.
Thank you. Declarations of interest, anybody?
No? Thank you. Let's move to minutes of the previous meeting.
Any comments, corrections? Well, I'll jump in immediately. The co -optees were not there
in person, not with us in person. Oh, yes, sorry. Apologies. Right. Apologies,
Chair. But that's the only thing I could see was
anyone else picking anything else up? With that correction, can we agree that we're a
to an accurate record.
Thank you everybody.
Moving on.
I've got a couple of matters arising from the minutes,
but we'll do them in any of the business.
Member induction programme.
Is Matthew going to do this online and are you there?
So this is a report on the member induction programme 2020.
The final members induction plan is being presented for any additional comments and
sign off by the committee.
The plan covers all aspects of induction, the administrative, the training sessions
and a welcome evening giving returning and new councillors an opportunity to meet the
and to be introduced to the directorates and the work that they each do.
Sorry, can I just...
You say that it's returning councillors as well as new councillors.
Mmm.
Because that was one thing that wasn't very clear to me,
because the induction programme is suitable for new councillors who'd never been in the council,
but all existing returning members expected to do the same there'll be
mandatory sessions for all councillors regardless of whether they knew or
returning but there will be invitations sent to all members but returning
councillors if it's something that they've done or they don't feel they
need they won't have to attend
It's good for a refresher.
The report outlines the criteria used to develop the plan and areas of best practise which
have been included.
There are several examples, one being early communication with new candidates and outgoing
members and also the welcome evening was something that came out of that. We did it once before
and it was very popular. So we're going to rerun that updated for how things are in 2026.
Feedback also resulted in some areas being reviewed. For example, the training is going
to be more skills based and less information overload.
And we've moved from primarily using officers and having
the training run internally to moving completely
to external training providers.
And feedback has also been noted from other committees
and officers and has been taken into account.
and the induction plan has been basically drafted around that feedback to include the
suggestions and changes from officers and committees. The report goes on to set out
in more detail the different elements of the induction plan later on. I won't go through
all of them. But that's the 2026 proposed induction plan for members.
If there are any questions, I'm happy to try and answer them for you.
Matthew's absence.
Thank you.
I'll open it up.
Comments, questions?
I thought it was good, and I'm particularly pleased to see the budget's been increased
to allow external trainers, which I think could be very helpful indeed.
When does the Welcome and the first week, is that the week after the 7th of May?
The Welcome evening, Monday is more of a transitional day where members who either have chosen not
to stand again or haven't been elected can come in, return laptops and basically sort
out anything they need to.
The Welcome evening is then on the Tuesday and throughout the day on the Tuesday we'll
rearranging drop -in sessions for new cancer to pick up laptops get IDs all of that kind of stuff so it's
practically a whole day and then the evening session will kind of finish the day off with
No generally, I'm
Sorry, I
Just wanted to say that generally I think it's comprehensive and
Well organised.
Thank you.
Please.
I'm glad to see that we've taken on the whole interactive training sessions.
I think that was particularly enjoyed.
And I want to do, I'll just confirm.
Can you speak up?
Sorry, and I also wanted to confirm,
you mentioned on the Tuesday,
is that the following Tuesday after election?
Okay, so the seventh is the election, which is a Thursday.
Then the count will finish.
The seventh is elections.
then there'll be, I think it's the count, the mayoral count on the Friday, and the ward counts on the Saturday.
So Monday will be the first day after the elections when things will start to be done, and the Tuesday, the 12th, is the welcome.
There's a timetable on page 25 onwards.
We are just discussing item 3 .1, the induction programme.
Councillor, have you covered your point? Mike? Anything?
Well, I'll take over while Councillor Choudry finds his path.
papers, going to that first day of picking up the induction
and subsequent days of picking up the laptops.
I hope that the script that whoever is handing them over
includes an offer without embarrassment to all members,
new and old.
that we know that handling email is not an easy task.
If you're not experienced at setting up folders
with various headings, we're not gonna do it now,
but we'd be very keen to help you
because one of the biggest problems we face
is members not being able to respond to emails.
That's because it's difficult if you're not,
you know, I'm doing the script,
But it seems to me a very soft and easy way to introduce the subject without pressing
people.
But that can be done at a later stage.
Just introduce the idea that, you know, if you're organised in your email, oh, and we've
updated our email system, so you might need some training anyway, a point being made earlier.
I think that would be helpful.
There's a session early on, on political culture.
I think given that myself and Fiona, as Vice Chair, have been involved in the development of the Pledge and associated discussions,
I'd certainly find it useful to be at least an observer to what's being said at that meeting.
So can you take that away and consider?
I've also suggested to Matthew that Antoinette is invited to the ethics and probity training,
Given that you answered to that are going to be handling things that come out of failures of ethics of property code of conduct
it might be interesting for you to
Go through the training even though it's probably old hat stuck to you
But nevertheless in terms of how it's handled in this borough
and you meeting some
of the members I
I think it would be of interest, but again, I've left that with Matthew.
Somebody needs to decide so that Antoinette can put it into her diary.
Moving...
John, I did want to actually pick up that about political culture,
because I'm not clear to what extent the new council will be involved in what we've been doing
and what's been happening over the last few months in terms of development and the best value inspection
Yes, that's one of the reasons I want to attend
But have you got any
input on that
My understanding is it's going to be not as in -depth as you're thinking
It's probably an overview of the work that's been done on the members pledge the political culture because in the same session
and we're looking at member learning development,
personal development plans, mentoring, coaching.
So I think it's all of those things.
So if it's two hours, it's not going to be going in detail.
It's probably just giving an update or an overview
of the work that everybody's been doing in that area.
And maybe what's expected of members in terms of the pledge.
I think my interest was raised because I saw reference,
I think to the envoys being present.
So anyway, I'll pick that up with Matthew and you can feed it into him.
And I, well I see that political culture and personal development isn't a three line or three asterisk item.
Or even the two are.
Should it be?
Do you mean for mandatory or to be included in the...
We've got seven sessions marked with the three estimates, which are core mandatory training
for ward council and role profile.
But I would have thought the political culture and personal development is pretty much core
mandatory training, whether it's for the role profile or not.
These are all induction sessions.
So following induction, there will be the usual annual member learning development plan,
and that is when those sessions will come into play.
The induction sessions are not included,
apart from Ethics and Probity, which is run every year.
Going on to the mandatory sessions,
induction is not part of that programme.
The main mandatory sessions that are asterisked
will be the annual learning development plan sessions,
as opposed to induction.
OK.
Moving on to paragraph 320 on page 22, there's a reference to—look in more detail at useful
skills for members, including around the use of AI, et cetera.
I've had a conversation with Matthew because, as you may be aware, in Westminster, the parliamentary
digital service are developing tools to help MPs, and I quote because I wrote it down,
to manage their administrative tasks, draught correspondence, and take notes.
And the point I made to Matthew is that won't be exactly right for elected local authority
members, but maybe the LGA should take a lead and develop something suitable for elected
members.
Why don't we, Tower Hamlets, the pioneering council, volunteer to pilot that kind of thing?
So, Matthew's aware of the thought, but I'd like it ministered.
I'll just throw in some personal experience as well.
There are concerns about using AI systems for taking notes,
and I know there have been problems in the area of social services.
I don't know if they have occurred in this borough, but they have in other boroughs.
And some of the problems are churning out inappropriate stuff
because the system's been allowed just to do it.
But my experience of using AI for note -taking
has been reasonably positive.
I don't know whether Teams has it,
but Zoom has a facility to record a meeting
and produce an action list and some basic minutes.
Maybe you have that here.
But again, that might be something internally for officers to look at whether that kind of facility is available on Teams.
It certainly is on Zoom and seems to work reasonably well, even with some contentious stuff that you might not imagine livery companies get up to.
But it is. I think you were raising your hand there.
Yeah, thank you, Chair. In TAHAMAS as a local authority, we do have access to AI. We use Co -Pilot.
So we cannot generally use other AI platforms that's been blocked. But in terms of Co -Pilot, it's a safer, secure way of using AI, and it keeps data within the Council servers or wherever it is. So it's pretty cool.
Good because I mean that's what Westminster are using the parliamentary digital service
Everyone's on Microsoft
So they use co -pilots in theirs. I've not seen it work. I know just that they're working on it, but it
Seems an obvious
Thing that if it helps MPs with those tasks members our members are much the same
and sometimes well
I only one of the thing is I think the brochure is a very good idea
And it would be good if we could all have copies of the brochure as well. Even if we don't attend all the meetings
any other
comments
Very quickly chair first and foremost apologies for joining slightly later did join online
So what I did here before turned up
Secondly in terms on the induction programme. I think I've spoken on this item and I think myself Shubham and councillor said probably
For the third time now at the fourth time because we've been in so many other forums where this are discussed
So I was nice to see that all our comments have been incorporated. So we did have a difference of opinion around a certificate
so whether councillors would welcome and
and appreciate a certificate based on training.
So we had a difference of opinion.
There was a few other stuff,
but ultimately what we see on here,
I'm quite comfortable with,
and I think would help new councillors,
but also returning councillors fulfilling our roles.
I think one thing I did want to just stress again,
I think just from personal experience,
being a first -time councillor,
then being thrusted into cabinet,
and then also having another job on the side,
I think the whole point around personal energy management and mental health, I think, is
definitely a big thing because most members would have something else they do on the site.
This wouldn't be the only thing they do.
And something that we factor in quite early on in the induction should be around coping
with stress, coping with all the different demands on councillors, and also the 21st
century councillors.
They're stuff that the LGA are doing and working on and I think could be incorporated in future.
but
The stuff there on social media. I see that in the report
Obviously previous counsellors probably didn't have to deal with that
But all the stuff that comes on social media not just the demands but the hate and everything else that comes on
People may not be ready for that
You know someone that hasn't been used to that level of scrutiny in their life and now suddenly being thrown into this. I
Don't know what to call it this I've got a number of words in my head, but they all strong. Yes
It may not be, individuals may not be strong enough to deal with that or may not be aware
of the tools and what safety mechanisms they can fall back on to help them.
So I think the stuff there on social media will be good.
But if we can tie that in with all the other stuff I said around managing stress and just
emotional wellbeing, all of that other stuff, I think it's quite important.
I think that's an excellent point and it makes me think that I can't remember where
Social media training is in the timetable, but I have a feeling it's a bit down the track
I wonder whether it ought to come up as
You know, I'm not saying where precisely but bring it as forward as it's possible to do without ruining the time table
I do recall from a previous administration
Sorry, I've been around that long.
But it sometimes helps.
That a newly elected member suddenly found himself in the eye of a storm
because a like to a tweet in the past to do with, something to do with ,Semitism
and anti -Semitism, suddenly appeared in the Sunday Times and all hell broke loose.
Now, there wasn't much you could do about that because it happened prior to him being a member,
but the sooner new members are given warnings and advice, the more you're making the better.
It's now scheduled for the 19th of May, the first session, and the second one is the 18th of June,
so it is quite early on now.
Patricia, I want to ask, do we factor in how to run surgery properly and stuff?
Because I'll be honest with you, when I got elected, I don't know if we had that training,
it was just, where are you guys doing your surgery?
What is a surgery? Do you know what I mean?
It was one of those ones that have been daunting for someone who just got elected and don't know what I'm doing.
That has been feedback that we've taken note of and we have an external trainer coming in.
It's actually called handling casework, but it's about your surgeries and how to deal with
expectations and managing casework and things like that
Why did it call I case work I
Think a look is just the system that's used
So it's easy enough just to call it after the system
Welcome Matthew
You can hear us?
Good afternoon, yes I can. Sorry I was late.
Conference session finished a bit later than I thought it was going to.
But we did get an interesting little game we've just done which I might bring into the member induction.
So the members listening have been warned.
Well I think we've got to the point, I'm not closing the discussion, but I think we've got to the point.
You've missed Elizabeth welcoming it and how it's structured and the fact that it's
evolved over time from previous generations and Council Charity made the point and has
been made again that you've listened to the suggestions that are being made through
the various forums that it's been through.
And so I think we're in a position where we can endorse it.
Great, thank you.
Do you have anything to add, Matthew?
I suppose just one update quickly on the, there are questions about whether we could have a formal qualification.
And so I've identified a couple of potential places, particularly one university that might be able to do something for us.
They won't be able to do it straight away, but I'm hopeful it's something we can incorporate at some point.
take a bit of time to set up though.
Trying to work out what the initials behind the name would then become but let's leave them.
Moving on then to 32 Register of Interest etc.
Tricia, sorry of course.
We've got a question.
Thank you, Chair.
Yes, this is the regular update report to the committee on members' registers of interests
and declarations of gifts and hospitality.
Members were reminded in January to make sure that their registers are up to date, and we
didn't do the detailed review we usually do because we knew that elections were coming
up so everybody's going to do a new declaration, new councillors, returning councillors, everyone
will be required to do a new declaration which will be reviewed by the monitoring officer
after the elections. We received two declarations of gifts and hospitality and both were received
on time. Thank you.
Could I just make a comment? Do you compare and contrast periods of the year compared to others?
It seems, I mean it's a three month period, is that usual just to have two declarations of people in an office of hospitality?
Usually we keep an eye out for summer holidays when there's festivals and sort of Christmas time,
any time there might be gifts and reminders generally.
One is in July and one's January,
so usually they are round about that time.
But if we do hear, I mean, some of the festivals
that are run in the borough, the invitation to members
and the booking of tickets is done through us,
so we know who's got manoeuvres.
But yeah, we generally have timed the reminders
around those times.
You see a few more like when political conferences come up because people get invited to parties
You
Any other comments on the report
Thank you everyone, let's move on then to code of conduct matter free cheese job
Thank you, Chair. So this is the normal update on the Code of Conduct matters. We have the
main change in the world of Code of Conduct is that Rachel Tiffin has retired because
she'd completed her second four -year term of office. So I'm very grateful to her for
all her help while she's been an independent person here.
And we now have Amanda Orchard,
who's on her second term of office as independent person.
And we have Antoinette Bernard, who is here online.
So I'm very grateful to both of those.
In fact, Antoinette Bernard did her first discussion
with me on a case this morning.
So, was it yesterday? Anyway, I've had a lot of cases which I've been discussing
and it was really good to work with her, so I'm very grateful to her.
We are now up to 21 complaints this municipal year.
And since I wrote the report, I have closed two.
And we've got four more.
So they keep on coming in.
It's obviously going to be busy because it's coming up to an election,
and there's always things happening.
and I keep seeing emails going past going monitoring officer. There's another complaint
form. There are a lot of things going on. But the basic themes which I'm seeing are
a lot about people not responding, people being a bit, counsellors being a bit disorganised.
There's some stuff about social media. There's always, there's obviously there's always things
about bins and then there's people complaining about the way that people
behave or speak during meetings. Those are the sorts of things that we've had
coming through. I don't know if anyone wants to ask me any questions but
obviously I'm very happy to answer. I think I received a complaint as well
because I raised for example members inquiry but some of their it's election
time I understand and everyone's putting a lot of inquiry so responses to
inquiries are taking a long time and the automatic automated email that goes out
to residents saying we should aim to respond to you within ten days
residents think that's us and now that we're waiting for responses I had a
resident saying put a complaint in him saying saying he told me he's gonna
responding ten days and he hasn't. So you know and it's gonna happen a lot more I
think with the election time coming up with all 45 other councillors. That's a
problem yes the members inquiry system is extremely busy and it does cause
members of the public a loss of stress because obviously they're very concerned
about the matter because if they weren't concerned about it they wouldn't be
going to a counsellor and they can't understand
why they're not getting a response back as quickly
as they would like and they do, quite often it does lead
to that kind of thing leads to a complaint
and sometimes it's not the counselor's issue.
It's other things.
I do try to be fair to people and not blame them
for things which are not their fault
but I am aware that that's a problem
And in fact, the council as a whole is aware that the members' inquiry system is under considerable strain at the moment.
May I say, allowing for the fact that social media has developed a lot over recent years,
the pattern doesn't seem to have changed very much in terms of the kind of complaints
and the fact that you're closing you're able to close most of them after a consultation
But I do think it's important that in the training sessions we've been talking about
The issue of complaints and and
What you were just saying about being deleterious and replying and things like that
I think it's very important that counsellors should be more made aware
I agree, I think managing people's inboxes is a really, really important skill.
And I think that all councillors new and returning would probably benefit from some training and refresher training on how to manage their inbox.
Because it's not easy and councillors have a lot of things to do.
Well, I mean, even as we all know, even the silliest complaints can blow up into complaints
about the complaint about complaint, even if the basic complaint was not really a valid
one.
Yes, absolutely.
It's important to keep track of complaints and make sure that we deal with them as effectively
and efficiently as we can, because we don't want to give people calls for concern which
is not necessary. I presume the complaint procedure is highlighted
in the training, is it, in the induction? I think you'll need to cheque with Matthew
and Patricia about exactly what's said about complaints in that. But it's definitely included
in the ethics and probity because it's really important that councillors are aware of that.
In fact I made a point saying that when I delivered the annual report to the council
it's important that you respond to the public and it would be something again repeated in
our annual report and which I'll highlight when I actually speak within a minute, to
limit what you could say in three minutes. So you've got to pick a few punchy messages.
One thing I was slightly concerned about is I'm sure you used to give us dates, but I
can't now, because you haven't put dates in on the actions, I can't track whether its
members' delays that are causing you the problem.
So can we go back to putting dates in against the actions?
And I need to read out comments made by Fiona.
I apologise to Fiona, though she's not here.
I should have made a couple of points on member induction.
I won't go through that again,
but I'll send them to Justina and Matthew,
and you can choose A, whether you incorporate some of them,
and B, what you choose to put in the minutes.
But on the code of conduct, she says,
with regard to the complaint about anti -Semitism
and the complaint about harassment and intimidation
related to religious institutions,
were any extra steps taken to assure
or appropriate investigation and avoiding bias
of the perception of bias.
For example, in the investigation of complaints
in general, where there is an issue of discrimination
or racism, for example, in any case involving Islamophobia,
antisemitism, are any extra steps taken to ensure
cultural aspects of the complaint are fully heard
and fully investigated and bias eliminated
and seem to be eliminated.
What learning took place?
Are there any implications for being anti -racist?
See, for example, and she gives a link to a NHS resource,
which you will see because I'm going to send you this.
I also made a number of points in the last meeting
about how we might reflect on learning from these cases
to implement meaningful change for residents,
councils and staff.
Would any of the member complaints
have been better resolved under the informal system that we've been discussing.
I'll stop at that point. She makes something for the annual report, but I'll come back to that.
So the complaint about the mosque, we haven't, I didn't seek advice about the mosque as such,
but what I did do was I had quite a long meeting with various people in property services,
which was really very interesting and produced quite, made it much clearer about what was
going on. And it was actually clear that this was not so much an issue which was really
about, it was two groups that didn't get on rather than being a religious matter as such.
There was a religious aspect to it, but it was not really, it was about just about two
groups of people who clashed over some specific items, matters in the community. The anti -Semitism
one, I, again, I didn't seek specific advice on that one. I was not able to get into the
That one was quite closely connected to all the flags complaints that we've had.
So some of that was not really, I saw as not really being a sort of code of conduct thing
because the flags issue was a big problem 18 months, two years ago. And I thought, no,
maybe I should have sought some advice from somebody I'm not quite sure where I
could have got it but no I didn't seek some specific cultural advice on that
and maybe I should have done any other questions or comments there's just one
other trivial point which I can't and I can't find it now but somewhere there's
reference to anonymity enabling transparency which on the face of it
might seem a bit confusing but I mean I understand what it means but
anonymity on the report I mean enables enables you to include more include
detail about the complaint in the way you couldn't otherwise so it just by not
using sounds as though not using somebody's name is less transparent than
although I understand what you mean so just I can't find the wording I always
try to make sure that we that I don't think I try really hard I don't always
manage it but I do try really hard to make sure that it's not possible to
identify who the complainant or the complainee is,
because I don't think it's fair.
Obviously if it's something which has gone through
the full process and it's been publicised,
that's a different matter.
But those cases, fortunately, are very, very rare.
And I don't think that it's fair to either the complainant
or the person complained about to have their dirty linen washed in public. So I do try
really really hard and I think it is possible to give more information. I think you're right
if you make it clear that this is actually about a learning experience rather than about
dishing the dirt on somebody.
Okay. And there's else on that? No? Thank you, Jo.
There, Paul.
Just one other point, John. Do we know how we compare with other local authorities?
I did get some information about six months ago and we seem to have a bit more than most
other local authorities, but not, you know, not outrageously. I think most local authorities
are sort of bumbling about the 10 per year mark and we seem to be, well, you know, we
vary between about 11 and about 25. So we are a bit higher than most, but not outrageously.
So there's not necessarily any learning points from that?
Like none spring to my mind, but you may be able to draw some out of that.
Only insofar as the work that's already going on I think
And what as you were saying that the need to organise inboxes and and not not be dilatory. I think I
suspect that's
less so in other places
General problem of people have just not
had any training or thought about how they manage their email systems.
And I've seen it elsewhere, not in local authorities, but in other areas.
Okay, let's move to the annual report, where again Jill is to the floor.
Thank you. I have drafted an annual report on John's behalf.
I have gone through it, so it's very much a sort of an updated version of the one that
we had last year and the year before that. But basically this committee is, the aim of
it is to keep track on things and to report back, and most of the things that we report
back on are the same things from year to year.
So the report, it is only a draught.
It is clearly going to need some updating.
I've highlighted the bits in, there's some bits in yellow, with yellow highlights, which
are the things which will definitely need to be updated because those figures, they're
figures which are not going to be correct at the end of the year.
And so I will obviously update that when we get to the end of the year.
And I've tried to give information about common themes and complaints and I don't actually think that that's really changed very much.
Information about the dispensations.
And basically, if anybody would like anything else to be considered in next year, want to
include that in the work plan or want to pass any comments or get me to make some changes,
I'm very happy to listen.
And Fiona says, on page 76, is there an opportunity to report my feedback from the last meeting
as outlined in the minutes that it would be helpful to see more detail from the concerns
and feedback on reflections from those involved, especially members of the public, about learning
from those complaints. Do you want to say anything about our extra meeting to draught
response to said LGA consultation but she meant MH CLG consultation and our
working participation in the workshop on the pledge so I got them in mind and I've
been in correspondence with you so at some point when we've got a near an
draught I'll make my suggestions. So you've no need to respond at the moment.
Unless you want to. Any other points on the annual report?
I think it's very good if I may say.
I don't really have any comments so thank you very much.
Thank you for making that point. I'm sure Jill appreciates it. Good.
Five, member learning and development strategy review. Who?
Matthew. You are aware, presumably, Matthew, of the formatting problems on page 92, 93, 94, etc.
Was that the track changes? Yeah, it's the way the system handle them, not handle them.
Okay, there are, I mean there are. Let's talk about the comp change.
Okay, thank you. Thank you chair, hi everyone. So the member development strategy, you may remember this was something we put together
of three years ago, I think it was now,
when we went for the LGA charter mark on member development.
And this was one of the requirements.
So we built it then and based it on how we did things,
but also what we hope was best practise.
And certainly the LGA were very complimentary.
So I think we did a good job.
It's now appropriate as we're coming to the end
of an electoral cycle to have a look.
In the report, it lists, I think,
four minor changes we're proposing.
for example we now have a bigger budget so we're looking to use external
trainers more which I think members are welcome actually the feedback seems to
be quite positive from that as there it's nice to have somebody who's actually a
trained trainer as it were rather than just an officer trying to give give a
training session and there's a couple other little bits and pieces in there
this went to the member development steering group and they had a better
discussion so we took into account their comments and now we present it to you
guys for your comments as well. The appendix should be showing the bits that
we tried to tweak so it should have some track changes in it that show the bits
we were looking to amend. Hopefully that is what it does but I can circulate
another version people would like to sit. I think that's all I've got for intro.
Thank you. Comments, questions? Are we the sponsoring committee?
Effectively, yes, you are. As it's an advisory committee, the MO will have to take the decision
decision but yes, you're the committee that this goes to.
Sorry, who takes the decision? The monitoring officer would have to take
the final decision because we're only advisory but obviously she would listen to you guys.
Okay. Thanks. I actually think it's influenced by what we
were discussing in the induction programme, and I would like to know more about the success
of the training element of the induction programme and whether anything can ‑‑ whether we
learn anything which might help develop this. But not that I think there's anything lacking,
but seeing as we've done a production programme and the training elements there, I hope we
can read across to the long -term strategy. Matthew?
Yeah, absolutely. So what we will be looking to do after the induction programme is run sort of feedback and probably a feedback session as well with members.
I mean we will report that back to the committee as well as anything else and if we need to adjust the strategy from that then we can bring that back too.
Happy to bundle it all together.
Good. Join up, Dots.
Page 97, Matthew, 415, co -opted members.
Co -opted members will provide with regular opportunities
usually once or twice a year to gather as a group
to discuss relevant issues.
I can't recall that happening, unless I missed it.
We did have one a few months ago.
I can cheque to see.
I mean, it's also possible we just messed up
and didn't include you on the invite, but there was one.
be the first time. Wasn't the training allowance part of that?
I wasn't there but yeah, the training allowance bit which I was just, I don't recall having
an opportunity to do that. No, yeah, okay, yes, I'll take your point.
But I think that members were given some guidance on how to make use of the training allowance
I think yes certainly certainly the council as well yes slightly different
for coptees but yeah and in terms of co -optee catch -ups as well just go back
onto that we will look to run one it'll probably be in the autumn once as at the
start of an electoral cycle Ovi and Sreeni elect all of their coptees or
select all of their co -optees so once we've got them in post we will look
through something with all co -opties. There's not much point at this moment because they're
all standing down in the next few weeks for scrutiny. Great, thank you.
I've got a number of, as you'd imagine from me, pedantic punctuation and caps and lowercase
points and the odd word change suggestion, but I struggled with the pages. I couldn't really
Work through the format. So what I'll do is I'll rip my pages out give them to
And I'd be happy to go through the next version of it and give you anything else
Fear no doesn't make any comments
Okay, sounds good, thank you. Yeah
When when is the next version because I was I was going to ask if we could see her
I'm finding it. I found it particularly online so difficult to follow
So well what I'll do from this is I'll send you around a version without all the track changes in this hopefully to be clearer
And if you got any comments just send them in because their monitoring officers got the final say
we don't need to come back to the committee for a formal view unless you
guys decide that you'd like to. I'd suggest that we do it offline until we
get to the point where we review the induction programme in sort of the autumn
or whenever the meeting cycle exactly says the meeting is.
Okay, but wait for my typo corrections before you send the truck at the new version.
Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Good and any other comments, I mean, I think what we're saying is we we welcome it in as far as we could
Just a question really for the training budget do we track who takes up the training and how much they spend
We do. We don't report that level up to committee normally as it can be quite personal, particularly if it's, so for example, if a member was taking a lot of training on basic IT, that might be a bit beyond what we'd want to put into a public document.
but we do monitor it all and we do present budget reports to the steering group as well
and we can look at things in more detail at that level should they wish to.
And if you're looking that people aren't taking up any training, is there something that will
be offered to them or is that an indication of anything that they're sort of either they
don't need training or they just haven't got the time to do it or anything like that?
It can be a lot of different reasons, yes. And the member training budget is obviously
additional to the mandatory training and other things that we put on automatically. And so some
members will take a view that they're fine or you know some of them will be very experienced
and just won't feel that they want to take on even more training. Others will be prioritising
other ways of learning so that it's not necessarily a kind of a I don't know a rating of
members how much training they do or anything like that.
It wasn't intended to be so.
OK, thanks very much Mike. Shall we move on then to the work plan, which didn't get printed if it was reduced?
Shall I come in on that one, Christina?
So I think probably I'm trying to think what we actually said about the work
plan so just need to correct me if I'm wrong but this is the end of the
electoral cycle so we're kind of done with what we would have been planning to
do up until now. What we will have for the first meeting in the new electoral
cycle is our proposals for the work plan for the next year or so.
If any members have got anything they'd like to see in that then either now or
in the interim let us know. We can put them in and try and space things out through the year so that
it fits a nice pattern. And again perhaps that could be informed by the lessons from the
induction programme that we've been talking about. Yeah good idea. I was just going to say could you
let me know just forward to myself or Matthew and I'll make sure that they are included in the
We will of course still have the report on Code of Conduct matters that will be on the
agenda as usual. We could also include the then version of the report to Council because
It won't have been I imagine I won't be invited to the early council meetings. It's probably gonna be
I'm not determining that
And
Trucks now moving to matters arising I'll mention
for the minutes
that the co -opting members received an email from Joel West following up on the pledge
and enquiring of our willingness to be involved in the process, so -called informal process,
which I prefer to call something like...
Well, we won't determine that now, but we'll come back to that.
So, we wrote a collective response, and Joel's written back to us.
I don't think that covers our...
I don't think his response covers our desire for a meeting
to have a proper discussion about how we would be involved
to be clear about what roles we would undertake.
But having said that, I understand from the word
on the street, so to speak, that the two parties
are not yet agreed anyway on where it's got to.
And so we may be some way off.
But that would be interesting to know from officers
where you think it's got to and for members present to comment.
Has it got to?
Shall I come in on this one? I'm not sure any of the officers in the room are
fully qualified to talk about this one but my understanding is it's not as
maybe not as far away from being agreed as you suggested chair so I think there
might have been some progress on that,
but I don't know enough of the details
to be able to go beyond that.
I would like to echo what Matthew has said.
What was that?
It's not that far off.
Just the finishing touches.
Right.
Interesting.
Good.
We, you could pass on,
we've minute, you can pass on to Joel.
would still like to have a face -to -face meeting with him on the extent of how we would be
involved in our particular roles.
I have another matter arising – well, not so much matters arising, but AOB.
We're aware of the secretary of state proposing that the envoys be given new powers.
and the consultation period is finished.
So has the Secretary of State decided yet
what's, whether that's going to take place?
I understand that we're still waiting
for the final decision.
Thank you.
We're in the picture, in Sporros,
the same picture, nothing for the moment.
any other business?
Well, in that case, thank you, Edward.
Ah, Elizabeth.
My term ends next, after the next meeting?
Yeah.
After you.
Yes, so I think if memory serves in September, Mike and Elizabeth's terms end, so we'll need to look up what we do at that point.
I think when we originally set the most of mics, it was only renewed for a short period.
I think Elizabeth's possibly was the same because we thought the government would have
proposed their new Code of Conduct regime by then and we'd need to be able to react
to what they wanted us to do.
But that hasn't happened yet, so we now may need to take another view as to what we want
to do, but we'll worry about that in a couple of months.
Thank you.
In that case, if there's nothing else, I'll declare the meeting has closed and just ask
Justina to say again to Councillor Choudry what he missed earlier possibly.
As sunset's ending, well, going to begin 6 .03, there's some samosas over there for you.
Please.
Please.