Agenda item

The Committee was reminded that Section 5(1) Local Government and Housing Act 1989 required every Council to designate an Officer as the Council’s Monitoring Officer. The Monitoring Officer was designated by Council and may or may not be an employee of the Council.

As part of the current work programme to update the constitutions of both Guildford Borough Council (GBC) and Waverley Borough Council (WBC), the Joint Executive Head of Legal and Democratic Services had deemed the introduction of a Monitoring Officer Protocol as a high priority, to ensure that both councils had the proper procedures in place to allow the Monitoring Officer to effectively discharge their statutory obligations.

The law did not prescribe exactly how the Monitoring Officer was to carry out their functions. Therefore, the Protocol had described the manner in which the Council expected the Monitoring Officer to discharge these functions and how it expected Officers and Members to co-operate with the Monitoring Officer in order to enable them to discharge these functions effectively.

The Committee noted that the report had been considered initially by the Joint Constitutions Review Group (JCRG) at its meeting on 18 December 2023.  The JCRG had supported the adoption of the proposed Protocol by both councils and had referred it to this Committee and Waverley’s Standards & General Purposes Committee for formal consideration.  The JCRG also felt that similar protocols should be developed for the two other statutory officer posts: Head of Paid Service and the Section 151 (Chief Finance Officer).

The Committee noted that Waverley’s Standards & General Purposes Committee, at its meeting held on 8 January 2024, had endorsed the proposed new Monitoring Officer Protocol, subject to two minor amendments.

Having considered the report and the amendments suggested by Waverley’s Standards & General Purposes Committee, the Committee

RESOLVED: To recommend to Council the adoption into the Constitution of the proposed Monitoring Officer Protocol, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report submitted to the Committee, subject to the inclusion of the two minor amendments proposed by Waverley’s Standards & General Purposes Committee as follows:

(a)          the amendment of the first bullet point in paragraph 4.0 of the Protocol as follows:

·      “The Monitoring Officer, rather than the Council, will nominate at least one Officer as Deputy Monitoring Officer, with the power to act as Monitoring Officer where the Monitoring Officer is unable to act as a result of absence, or illness, or conflict of interest; and”

(b)         the amendment of the sixth bullet point in paragraph 5.2 of the Protocol to reflect the Monitoring Officer being responsible for providing or obtaining legal advice rather than necessarily being the principal legal adviser to the Council.

Reason:

To protect the interests of the Council, and to provide guidance on how it expects Officers and Members to co-operate with the Monitoring Officer in order to enable them to discharge these functions effectively.