Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Written Evidence


Memorandum by Surrey Heath Borough Council (STA 04)

  As an authority that has had considerable dealings with the Standards Board for England I would like to submit the following written evidence to the Parliamentary Inquiry:

1.  TIME TAKEN FOR INVESTIGATIONS

  Most of the investigations into Surrey Heath Borough Councillors have taken well in excess of one year for relatively straightforward matters of declaration of interest reviews. The SBE's own standard is five months and this is not being achieved: moreover, this should be seen as the longest and not the standard or average time taken. It is quite unacceptable to have investigations hanging over Members' heads for this length of time. The Board's claim that it was swamped with allegations when first it was set up does not hold water: its own business plan assumed a level slightly greater than those actually received. It would appear that it was mismanaged internally and that insufficient resources had been allocated to meet the demand.

2.  EXCESSIVE SECRECY

  All items to and from the Board are headed "Strictly Private and Confidential". This is quite unnecessary. There are very few items that need to be so confidential and it gives totally the wrong impression, namely that of being a closed and secret society. If confidence is to be gained in the ethical standards of public service then matters should be conducted openly and transparently.

3.  MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

  The Board claims that the Act means that when a case has been passed to an Ethical Standards Officer for investigation then no-one, including the Board's Chief Executive, has any control over the time taken, the standards worked to, or the style and content of an investigation. Whilst a degree of autonomy is necessary for conducting investigations it is wholly wrong for senior officers within the Board to have no reporting line and no accountability.

4.  COMPLAINTS PROCESS

  Following delays in receipt of final reports of some five months in the spring of 2003 I wished to make a formal complaint to the Board. An appointment was made with a senior Ethical Standards Officer, Lisa Klein, who clearly was ignorant of the fact that the Board should have a complaints process and admitted that no such process had been laid down. Clearly this should have been done in advance of setting up the Board, and, again, is yet more evidence of its poor management.

5.  INCONSISTENT DECISIONS

  During the course of investigation of various Surrey Heath Borough Councillors the Board concluded that, at a meeting of the Council's Planning Committee, certain members of that Committee had breached the Code of Conduct by overturning an officer's recommendation without sufficient planning reasons having been minuted. Other members of that Committee had voted the same way but were deemed not to have breached the Code of Conduct. This inconsistency is quite unacceptable.

6.  USE OF PRECEDENTS

  Throughout the drawn-out period of the first four investigations into Surrey Heath Borough Councillors the Board had concluded other very similar allegations and published these on their website. This did not short-circuit the process, and, although some seven or eight months later the fresh draft reports came to the same conclusion, I contend that use of precedents within their own organisation should be common practice so that matters can be cleared up quickly and, most importantly, consistently.

7.  ARROGANCE

  Throughout the many investigations at Surrey Heath Borough Council the attitude of the Board, and in particular that of its Ethical Standards Officer, has been one of arrogance and intolerance. In order to win the confidence of the public in public standards the Board should view working with the Monitoring Officer and local authority concerned as a partnership arrangement and not the master-servant arrangement that they clearly perceive it to be.

8.  GATEKEEPING PROCESSES

  The Board have no arrangement in place for Monitoring Officers, or for that matter any other Council officer, to make an informal check on the position with regard to allegations. Some investigations were begun at Surrey Heath in respect of action taken on non-declarations of interest on the part of certain Members at a particular committee, but an initial check would have shown that the Members in question were in fact not present at that committee. Such rudimentary checks would save time and indeed speed the process for those being complained against.

9.  NON-DISCLOSURE OF COMPLAINANTS

  It seems to be the Board's policy not to advise those against whom allegations have been made of the names of those making the allegations. Again, this is not good for an ethical system in trying to gain the confidence of those involved and is totally devoid of openness and transparency. In Surrey Heath's experience the Ethical Standards Officer has hidden behind an extension of their investigation, which evidence shows cannot be the case.

10.  APPEALS PROCESS

  Whilst the Ethical Standards Officer does issue a draft report, once he has received comments thereon the final report is issued, and there appears not to be an appeals process. That said, however, given that Chief Executives are excluded from the process this is how it has been put to me and I am therefore reporting it at second hand.

11.  INVESTIGATIONS OUTSIDE THE BOARD'S REMIT

  It has been the experience of Surrey Heath that one of the inordinately delayed investigations delved quite deeply into officer matters. It is clear from the Board's remit that it is set up to investigate breaches of the Members' Code of Conduct, and, whilst it is accepted that occasionally there may need to be some information required of officers, a detailed investigation and, initially, reports on how a Council's officers ought to change their procedures, are outside the Board's remit and should not be entered into.

12.  USE OF MATERIAL WITHOUT THE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OR INVOLVEMENT OF OFFICERS

  In one of the investigations undertaken I learned at the very end of the investigation that the Ethical Standards Officer had been reviewing material that I had initiated and yet had not advised me of this. Furthermore, it would appear that he had come to a conclusion about my role in the situation without first having discussed it with me. My initial reaction is as stated above, in that I am concerned that officers are being investigated by the Ethical Standards Officer, but, excepting that in certain circumstances this is necessary in order to clarify the Member's role, it should be never be done without first having interviewed the officer concerned, as had happened in my case.

13.  TRAINING OF BOARD PERSONNEL

  As stated above, when a complaint was lodged it was obvious that the Senior Ethical Standards Officer had no idea what should have been done with regard to dealing with it. Furthermore, following a reference from me on a Member to the Board, it was decided not to investigate, and I was advised by letter that that was the end of the matter: however, at that time I discovered from the website that I was able to have that decision reviewed, and, when I challenged the Board on this, they then accepted that that was indeed the situation. Either they did not train their staff to know their processes or their processes have been organised in such a way as to deter appeals. In either case, the position is not acceptable.

14.  PERCEIVED LINKS

  At Surrey Heath, some of the very early cases which took 16 months to be resolved were delayed, in the view of the Ethical Standards Officer, as a result of his having to review other related matters. In the event, when the final report was issued towards the end of 2003 I understand from my Monitoring Officer that it differed only marginally from the draft report issued in November 2002 and that there was no reference whatsoever to any further material. In fact, when the Monitoring Officer looked at information about subsequent investigations it is quite clear that the initial investigation should have been based upon specific matters of a non-declaration of interest nature in respect of particular individuals, whilst other matters should then have been considered as separate cases. This would have concluded the initial investigation more speedily, albeit outside of the five-month period, and would have given a clear indication to the Members involved that fresh cases were being raised as opposed to there being further extensions of the original case, which turned out not to be the case.

15.  UPDATING OF CASE PROGRESS

  As previously stated, the time taken for investigations at Surrey Heath is quite unacceptable, but, even where delays may occur for genuine reasons, the Board seems to have no process whatsoever in place to update the Council, Monitoring Officer, or indeed those Members complained against, about the progress being made. The Council routinely went many months without hearing from the Board, and, when prompted for information, they gave little or no information back and were clearly irritated by requests for progress. A typical example of this was the issuing of a draft report into an investigation in November 2002 when no contact whatsoever was made until early May 2003, at which time a fresh batch of allegations was forwarded and the Monitoring Officer advised that the previous report could not be concluded as a result. In the intervening months no proactive contact was made by the Board to explain the position to those being complained against.

16.  CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S INVOLVEMENT

  The SBE holds that the legislation excludes involvement with Chief Executives directly and therefore the Board only deals with Monitoring Officers. As a result, I as Chief Executive of the Authority do not see any of the detailed reports, and this goes for both draft and final reports. This means that I have only seen the very skimpy summary reports which appear on the Board's website, which does not give me a good feel for the issues involved when discussing and advising Members on future actions. The Chief Executive is the senior policy officer of any Council and should not be excluded from the process.

  I hope that the foregoing brief comments are of use to the Inquiry: as stated at the outset, Surrey Heath Borough Councillors have been the subject of a significant number of investigations and I therefore felt that it was important for comments to come from those with detailed front-line experience of the processes.

  Please feel free to contact me should you require clarification on any aspect of the matter.

Barry R Catchpole

Chief Executive

 





 
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