Meeting documents

To be presented by  Mike Appleyard and Sara Turnbull.

Sara Turnbull attended the meeting to provide an update. During discussion key points were raised as follows:

• Proposal was helping to improve BCC governance.
• Had followed on from issues previously raised, where the list had been condensed to 69 from 200. .
• Looked at current practice and approach, which had presented two recommendations:

Ø  To streamline and reduce some of the outside bodies that were specifically local matters, as highlighted in Appendix 2.

Ø  Agree to adopt a protocol on outside bodies.

• Currently BCC did not provide guidance around roles and expectations and did not have a systematic approach enabling members to provide feedback.
• Purpose of outside bodies was where external organisations approach BCC to have a County Councillor representative on their body and the Council would like to maintain and strengthen relationship.
• When devising the protocol, practices within other Local Authorities were reviewed and Member feedback was obtained. 
• The benefit of having a protocol was that Members would be given clarity on how to feedback to BCC as well as giving greater transparency to the public.

Member Comments and Questions

• It was suggested training could be provided during new Councillor inductions to highlight the process for working with outside bodies. This was agreed by the Committee and details would be provide during the next Councillor induction programme.

ACTION: Sara Turnbull

• It was queried whether the policy may have an adverse effect when Councillors wanted to volunteer to be on an outside body as an individual rather than on behalf of BCC. It was confirmed that BCC only made appointments to outside bodies when a request for representation had been received from the external organisation therefore this should not have an impact. .
• It was queried whether there was any scope for rolling out the same protocol with District Council colleagues. It was confirmed there was definitely the opportunity for discussion as there were a number of twin hatters within BCC. 
• It was suggested that the timetable set out in the protocol for annual cycle, be for the report to be made available for the end of April in any Council year. The was agreed by the Committee and would be incorporated in the proposal.

ACTION: Sara Turnbull

• It was confirmed that following agreement of the proposal at today’s meeting, Members would be approached for feedback.
• P54 personal liability - the protocol stated that Councillors would not have personal liability. It was suggested that this should be amended to state that they would not have personal liability, provided they act reasonably, responsibly and within the limits of the law, as should their actions be negligible they would not be covered under BCC liability.

ACTION: Sara Turnbull 

Recommendations

Ø  To agree to no longer make Council formal appointments to those organisations whose remit relates primarily to locally specific matters and instead to encourage Members to consider individually volunteering to the respective organisation.

Ø  To agree to adopt the proposed Protocol on Outside Bodies as set out in Appendix 1.

Decision

The Committee AGREED to the above recommendations.

The Committee thanked Sara Turnbull for the report.