Making a complaint about a local authority Member

What is Standards Committee?

• Standards Committee is a group of people appointed by the Council to help maintain and promote high ethical standards.

• Standards Committee is made up of Councillors, and independent people (who are not Councillors or employees of the Council).

What complaints does a Standards Committee deal with?

• The Standards Committee can only deal with complaints about the behaviour of a member of the Council. It will only deal with complaints about things that are covered by the members’ Code of Conduct.

• If you make a complaint to the Standards Committee it must be in writing. You should say who it is about and why you think they have not followed the Code of Conduct. There is a form that can be completed which is available on request by telephoning 024 7637 6266/6439 or can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

• Standards Committees will not look at complaints that are about:
  - people employed by the Council
  - incidents that happened before a member was elected
  - incidents that happened before the Council adopted the Code of Conduct
  - the way the Council conducts or records its meetings.
  - the way a Council has or has not done something. This may be a matter for the Local Government Ombudsman if the Council has not dealt with the matter properly and it has not been resolved locally.
  - decisions of the Council or one of the services it provides. In this case, you should ask how to complain using the Council’s own complaints system.

What will happen to your complaint?

• Once you have made a complaint, you will be told in writing what will happen to it. If the Council decides that the Standards Committee will deal with your complaint, it will set up a meeting of no less than three members of the Committee to decide what should happen next. The meeting will be chaired by one of the independent people on the Standards Committee. This should happen within 20 days from receipt of your complaint.

• Meetings of the committee are ‘closed’, which means that you will not be able to attend. It is therefore very important that you set your complaint out clearly and provide at the outset all the information you wish the Committee to consider.

• The meeting can decide to:
  - Investigate your complaint
  - Take some other action
  - Send it to the Standards Board for England to investigate.
  - Take no further action.

• The criteria that will be used to assess your complaint and decide whether it should be investigated is available to download at the bottom of this page or can be obtained by telephoning
  024 7637 6266/024 7637 6439.
  

What is “other action”?

• “Other action” is usually some form of conflict resolution, mediation or training. This decision is reached where the meeting decides that it is likely to resolve the situation more effectively than an investigation and possible sanction.

What if the Standards Committee decides to take no further action and you don’t agree?

• The law says that the Standards Committee should take reasonable steps to tell you the reason for its decision. You may not agree with the reasons, or think that it did not make the decision properly, or you may have new information that you think might affect its decision. If so, you can ask the Committee to review its decision. You have to ask it to do this in writing within 30 calendar days of receiving its decision.

• The Standards Committee must consider your request within three months.

• The decision will be reviewed by at least three members of the Standards Committee. None of the people who made the original decision are allowed to take part in the review. This meeting will be chaired by one of the independent people on the Standards Committee. They can uphold the original decision or overturn it, and will tell you in writing what they have decided