Issue - meetings

(a)          That the Committee note the feedback from the first meeting of the Forum.

(b)         That the Committee suggests items for future meetings of the Forum

The Chair confirmed that this emanated from the Penn Report and Richard Penn’s recommendation that a forum be developed for the whole of Wales, with the first meeting taking place on the 27 January 2023.

The Monitoring Officer confirmed that Clive Wolfendale from Conwy County Borough Council was appointed Chair with the deputy monitoring officer from Cardiff supporting him.   He outlined how the Monitoring Officer support would be provided by rotation throughout North Wales to share the workload.  This was a support body and network and not a decision-making body.  Anything which needed to be discussed and agreed would be fed back to each authority’s Standards Committee.   The Ombudsman attended and her comments and notes were attached to the agenda and the Monitoring Officer provided information on the 9 cases which were shortly to be referred for hearing.  In a normal year 4 cases would be sent for hearing but this year they had received double the number of complaints and information on the long-standing cases was provided.  Because of staffing issues this had led to the delay in pushing the complaints through to completion.   He agreed to speak to the WLGA to ascertain if the recording of the meeting could be shared confidentially with the Standards Committee members.

The Chair attended the meeting and said it was a very useful start to the national forum.   The Forum would like the agendas to be led by Standards Committees and asked if members of the committee had any ideas for items that these be sent to the Monitoring Officer so they could be put forward for consideration.

The Monitoring Officer confirmed that the agenda would be settled at the Monitoring Officers Group prior to the next Forum meeting.   Each Monitoring Officer, following discussions at their Standards Committee, would put forward items.  This would identify any common items to be submitted and any individual items which would be of interest to the Forum.  It was important that the Standards Committees direct this rather than the officers.  The next committee meeting was scheduled for May with the Forum scheduled to meet in June.  This which would provide an opportunity for Members to consider any items which could be included in the agenda for the Forum.

The Chair agreed saying it was important that any items that the committee wanted to put forward were considered.   The Chair then referred to the 12-week consultation seeking views on the recommendation of the Penn Review by Welsh Government and said feedback on this would be something which could be looked at.

The recommendations were moved by Mark Morgan and seconded by Gill Murgatroyd.

RESOLVED:

(a)          That the Committee note the feedback from the first meeting of the Forum.

(b)         That the Committee suggests items for future meetings of the Forum