Bending the rules?

Rules that govern the conduct of council meetings usually work well. But if you are determined enough, there are ways around them. As was recently demonstrated at a Chard Town Council.

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The standards of behaviour at our local authorities have not always been all that they could be. With that in mind on 31 May 1995 the UK government introduced the Nolan Principles, also known as the Seven Principles of Public Life.

These principles set out standards of behaviour for elected councillors and public servants. They are expected to behave with:

• Selflessness

• Integrity

• Objectivity

• Accountability

• Openness

• Honesty

• Leadership

In terms of the detail, the way that town and parish councils behave is governed by their standing orders. The exact set of standing orders that each council uses is up to councillors. Each year they vote to approve them and consider if they want to change them.

However, the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) provides a proforma, a set of rules that councils are expected to use, even if they wish to make minor amendments.

The rules govern behaviour of councillors at meetings, how to call a meeting, how to set an agenda and the way to chair a meeting. They are, in fairness, a pretty comprehensive set of rules.

And again, in fairness, most Somerset councils adopt standing orders that are based on the NALC proforma.

In most instances the rules work well. They ensure orderly meetings take place with an agenda that is agreed and decisions are not made unless enough councillors are present (in other words there is a quorum).

But not always. In one recent incident at Chard Town Council, if the rules were not exactly broken, then were certainly leaned on to the point of being badly bent.

Let us take you back to the November meeting of the Amenities and Events Committee of Chard Town Council.

The draft October minutes of the committee would normally have been passed by the November meeting and so turned into approved minutes.

However, when the November meeting was held and approval of the October minutes considered, the minutes were not passed because some of the committee members said they hadn’t had time to read them. Despite the fact that all had been emailed the draft minutes in advance of the meeting. We looked at the draft minutes for that October meeting and, bizarrely, there was hardly anything contentious in them.

That was strange enough, but the minutes were not considered at the December meeting either.

Be that as it may. When the December meeting was held and it was time to consider the minutes of the November meeting, things took an even stranger turn.

We were not able to attend the meeting ourselves, but as there are audio recordings of all Chard Town Council meetings we listened in to hear exactly what had taken place.

The December meeting was properly called, and quorate. The chair, Jason Baker confirmed at several points that he agreed the meeting was quorate.

However when it came to the agenda item to approve previous meeting minutes, he announced that the outstanding minutes would not be discussed, but deferred for consideration at the January meeting.

Chard Guildhall home of Chard Town Council - photo credit Mike Smith

There are several problems here.

Firstly that the meeting was properly called and quorate. Standing orders expect that all items that have been included in the published agenda for a meeting that is properly called and quorate will be considered.

It is expected (though not explicit) that at each meeting, the draft minutes of the previous meeting will be considered and approved.

It is not within the gift of the chair to unilaterally decide not to discuss an agenda item of a properly called and quorate meeting.

It is possible for any published agenda item to be deferred to a future meeting, but only if a vote is taken at the meeting and a majority agree to defer it. No such vote was taken.

And here we get to the crux of the issue. There was no vote because when one of the other councillors questioned the decision to defer discussion of the minutes, Cllr Baker asked if the councillor wanted to pursue that line of enquiry.

Cllr Baker explained that he was uncomfortable proceeding with so few councillors present to agree the minutes.

However the rules are not made for the comfort of councillors. The meeting was properly called and quorate and so should have either considered the minutes, or voted to defer them. It sounded (remember we only had audio and so could not see the councillors debating the issue) as if the committee was unlikely to vote to defer them.

It was also clear that other councillors were not happy.

Finally, the Chair said that if councillors pushed to consider the minutes for approval, he would leave the meeting.

That would, as he pointed out to the others present, render the meeting inquorate.

And an inquorate meeting could not consider the minutes. Or indeed any other business.

By this device, the Cllr Baker got his wish not to consider the minutes of the November meeting. Although listening to the recording, it seems that no vote was taken to ratify the decision (in breach of standing orders).

Was it legal? That is a moot point.

But there is also another question to consider here. Did that behaviour meet the requirements of the Nolan Principles?

And finally, whether it was compliant with the Nolan principles or not, was it moral?

Interestingly, complaints were made to one of Somerset Council’s Monitoring Officer team about the behaviour of Cllr Baker and specifically his threat to walk out to leave the meeting inquorate.

The Monitoring Officer had the same recording of the meeting that we had, so was in no doubt as to what had taken place and what had been said.

The view of the Monitoring Officer was that nothing wrong had happened and no sanction was necessary. And presumably by implication, held the view that the Nolan Principles had been complied with.

Needless to say we contacted Somerset Council and Cllr Baker asking for a comment on the events of the meeting and to understand the reasons for the Monitoring Officer’s decision. Neither responded to us.

You might read this and think, well does it matter? It is at first sight a trivial issue. But if rules are ignored, and if those tasked with enforcing the rules simply turn a blind eye, it creates an unhealthy environment in which to conduct local government.

And that can lead to bigger and more important breaches of the law and whilst clearly not the case in this instance, it can lead ultimately to fraud and corruption.

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