Complaints about parish councillors to be dealt with by NNDC

From the start of April, North Norfolk District Council will be handling complaints from members of the public about misconduct by district and parish councillors, under changes to the framework for assessing councillors' conduct being introduced by the Government.

It will be for the Standards Committee at NNDC - as at other councils - to decide whether to investigate a complaint, to conduct any investigation, and to decide the outcome of a complaint against a councillor found to have acted wrongly. The committee will be able to impose a period of suspension, or recommend other sanctions and solutions such as making an apology, training or mediation.

The Standards Board for England, which has dealt with these complaints until now, will monitor councils in their new role. It will step in if a complaint is so serious that a council would not be able to impose a suitable punishment, or if it feels a council's standards committee is failing in its duties.

Under the Government's proposals, the Standards Committee would be chaired by an independent member - someone who is not a councillor - at various stages of the complaint process.

Full details of how the new system will work are not yet available. A consultation on the framework by the Department for Communities and Local Government finished on Friday, 15 February, and the technical detail of the framework may not be finalised until in the middle of March.

Further details will be published, when they become clear and are agreed, on NNDC's website at: www.northnorfolk.org

For more information about the local assessment measures being introduced as part of the ethical regime for the conduct of councillors in England, visit:

• www.standardsboard.gov.uk/Localassessment/Aboutlocalassessment/
• www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/laconduct

ENDS