Issue - meetings

To share the final guidance from Welsh Government on this new duty.

(a)       That the proposed guidance be noted; and

(b)       That the draft responses to the consultation be submitted to Welsh Government with an explanation as to why the response was late.

The Monitoring Officer presented the report and explained that the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 imposed a new duty on Group Leaders to take reasonable steps to promote and maintain high standards of conduct by members of their group.  It also imposed a duty as part of its new annual report.

Group Leaders and the Committee must have regard to statutory guidance issued by Welsh Government (WG). It has previously considered an early draft of that guidance.  A consultation draft of the guidance was issued earlier in the year; it was broadly the same as the previous guidance in that it set out the ways in which a Group Leader might promote good conduct and suggested that it would bring their position into disrepute if they failed to do so.  A notable difference was in respect of the reporting function which was now less detailed.

The consultation period opened in February and in May which largely coincided with the pre-election period.  It was therefore not possible to report the draft guidance to the Committee before now.

A copy of the draft template report was appended to the report, as was draft responses to the consultation.  The statutory guidance would be discussed with Group Leaders on 27^th June 2022.

It was agreed that the draft responses to the consultation would be submitted to Welsh Government with an explanation as to why the response was late.

RESOLVED:

(a)       That the proposed guidance be noted; and

(b)       That the draft responses to the consultation be submitted to Welsh Government with an explanation as to why the response was late.