Issue - meetings

To consider a report on amendments to the Constitution in relation to disciplinary procedures for Chief Officers and to make a recommendation to Council.

The Monitoring Officer explained the background to the new arrangements for taking disciplinary action against Council Statutory Officers.

He outlined proposals to adopt the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) for Local Authority Chief Executives Model Discipline Procedure and Guidance as the process by which this Council deals with matters of discipline, capability, redundancy and other dismissals against the Chief Executive and other statutory officers.

In order to use the model procedure, the Council needs to appoint appropriate committees with their delegated powers, namely the Investigating and Disciplinary Committee, the Staffing and Appeals Committee and the Independent Panel, before incidents which might engage the procedure arise.

In order to facilitate efficient decision making, the Committee also considered a proposal to give the Head of Corporate Governance authority to amend delegations to reflect changes in legislation, or references to legislation, in those cases where such changes do not alter the nature of the existing delegations.

Resolved to recommend Council to agree:

(i)    to amend the Officer Employment Procedure Rules relating to disciplinary action by reference to the Model Discipline Procedure and Guidance as set out at Appendix 2 to the report;

(ii) the appointment of an:

(a) Investigating and Disciplinary Committee

(b) Independent Panel

with the Terms of Reference as set out at Appendix 4 to the report and

(iii) amendments to the Terms of Reference of the Staffing and Appeals Committee; and

(iv) to amend the introduction to the Scheme of Delegations as set out at Appendix 5 to the report.