Re: Code of Conduct Complaint

Dear Mike

 Thank you for your reply of June 15th. I am about to go away for 10 days, so this response covers only the main points.

 Assessment sub-committee make-up

I said to you, "Following your remarks, it seems to me (and to those I've discussed this with) that if any member of the Assessment Sub-Committee was party to the Taff Davies' business, or was a member of the Conservative party whilst that was going on, it would be quite inappropriate for them to participate in considering anything involving me, given the political brouhaha and embarrassment that it caused."

 You said to me " In view of your concerns about District Councillors being members of the Conservative party, I will ask that this is taken into account if the Assessment Sub-Committee is convened."

 I've emphasised in green the bit that I don't think is addressed by your remark. My concern about Conservative party members is about any Conservatives who might not have been on or involved with the Council when the Taff Davies witch hunt was going on, but would have known what was happening.

 WWPC Working Parties

 A full analysis of the note from Joanne will run to many pages but Gatwick beckons, as indicated above. Its contents sit somewhere on the spectrum from sophistry to disingenuous non-sense.

Overall my primary concerns, and those of many members of the public, are as follows:

•  It isn't good enough to claim that everything has been done according to 'the rules,' if actual conduct/procedures are clearly established to work around them – c.f. MPs expenses row
•  It isn't acceptable for the Parish Council to decide that the provisions of the Local Government Act are too complicated, or expensive, or onerous, or boring, for a humble Parish Council to implement them; and to decide therefore to ignore them. 
• The notion that the only matter of legal, ethical or democratic relevance is that 'decisions' should be reached in public is tantamount to saying, conversely, that the process by which those decisions have been reached is one that the public and press have no right of access to.
• These concerns are matters on which Members should be giving a lead, and in particular The Chairman.

So far as the actual Working Parties are concerned I refer to my list in Appendix A of my complaint – modified as shown to match the list provided by Joanne, and with extra columns

List of WWPC Working Parties @ 7th May 2009           Membership

Working Party	Mems	Actual	CDC Comp
1.                   Footpaths and Open Spaces	3	5	27
2.                   Allotments	3	5	27
3.                   Sportsfield Management and Millennium Meadow	3	5	27
4.                   Footway Lighting	2	4	21
5.                   Emergency Planning	2	4	21
6.                   Transport	2	4	21
7.                   Poor Sevens Trustee	1	3	16
8.                   Tree Warden	1	3	16
9.                   Pavilion	3	5	27
10.               Snowhill	2	4	21
11.               Finance	3	5	27
12.               Twinning	1	3	16
13.               Coastal Defence	3	5	27
14.               Communications	3	5	27

The Chairman and Deputy Chairman are ex officio members of all Working Parties.

The Actual column shows the real number of members of each Working Party. The CDC Comparison column shows how many Members of CDC would be on each Working Party, if CDC ran a similar 'system.' As I have said before, any Working Party which has as its membership the majority of the Council is, de facto, acting as if it were the Council whenever and wherever it takes a decision by consensus - that's Working Parties: 1,2,3,11,13,14. Imagine what it would be like if CDC were running Working Parties with the kind of numbers in the CDC Comp column.

In the limited time I have available today:

"Working parties are ad hoc arrangements, with no specified terms of reference," however they are appointed on an annual basis, and are invited to report at every meeting (as a major part of the agenda), and in the eyes of the public are quite clearly the vehicle by which the majority of the Council's business is conducted. So much for Ad hoc.

It is interesting to note that although the official position is that only the Chairman and Deputy Chairman are ex offcio members of each Working Party, "any member can attend and take on work of any Working Party at any time which allows all members to participate if they so chose." In other words all Members are, at their own discretion, members of all Working Parties, so the 'official' numbers don't really mean anything. It is precisely this profound lack of clarity, and its implicit undermining of the principles of openness, transparency and accountability that is so disturbing about these arrangements.

There is a great deal more that could, and in due course will be said about the description of working parties you have received from Joanne.

Finally, you say: "The Board has advised me that failure to comply with the general principles does not equate to failure to comply with paragraphs of the code of conduct.  Instead it is essential to have regard to all of the particular circumstances of the conduct in order to determine whether a paragraph of the code has been broken, and the general principles can be used as an appropriate benchmark of good conduct."

This is interesting information, and I am pleased to have it confirmed from someone at the top of the code of conduct food chain, that my utilisation of the General Principles as a benchmark of good conduct was correct.

I look forward to hearing from the Deputy Monitoring Officer.

Wbw

 David Hopson

This email has been posted to http://wwpcmailstore.blogspot.com/

2009/6/15 Mike Kelley <mjkelley@chichester.gov.uk>

Dear Councillor Hopson

Further to my email of 8th June 2009, I enclose a copy of the response I have received from the Clerk of West Wittering Parish Council explaining the nature of the "working parties" which the Parish Council has established for the current municipal year.

It appears from her email that they are not working parties or committees in the traditional sense, for example, a meeting of councillors in a room. Instead some are appointments of a single councillor to an outside organisation or to undertake routine inspections or enquiries on behalf of the Council, and others are the names of councillors who can be called upon by the Council meeting as and when required during the municipal year to investigate matters in a given subject area and to report back on their findings so that the Council can make a decision on the issue at a public meeting.

... See earlier post at wwpcmailstore.blogspot.com