The majority of conduct Complaints handled by Rutland County Councils Monitoring Officer are complaints about Oakham Town Councillors
Rutland County Council publish:
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
5.1 The Council has a small budget for Standards matters.
5.2 Where a member conduct complaint required investigating in the municipal year
2021/2, the investigation was undertaken by an external solicitor, at significant cost.
With the development of the in-house legal service, this work will be undertaken
internally unless there are particular reasons for the matter to be outsourced. To
date there has been no external spend on the member standards budget in the year
2022/3. The officers carrying out the work will start to be time recorded so that there
is an accurate picture of the cost even when there is no external spend.
5.3 There is a separate budget for training for RCC Members
2.4 In the period 01/04/22-13/01/23 the Monitoring officer accepted 11 complaints relating to members conduct relating to 8 different members.
2.4 In the period 01/04/22-13/01/23 the Monitoring officer accepted 11 complaints
relating to members conduct relating to 8 different members.
2.5 Seven of the complaints relate to Oakham Town Councillors, two to RCC
Councillors, One each to Uppingham Town Council and Stretton Parish Council.
2.6 There was an agreed informal resolution in relation to three of the complaints
2.7 Two complaints were referred to the police; there is no current update in respect of
one and the police decided to take no further action in respect of the other.
2.8 There was no further action in relation to two of the complaints as the complaints
were not made out when investigated.
2.9 There are currently two outstanding complaints which relate to the same member
and incident.
2.10 The Monitoring Officer received two complaints from Oakham Town Councillors
about each other on 11th January 2023. The Independent Person’s view is currently
being sought about them.
2.11 The Monitoring Officer was mindful that the majority of complaints related to parish
and town councillors and agreed to fund training for parish clerks delivered by
LRALC. Unfortunately, the take up for the training was relatively low.
