Almost like a full council meeting with lots of councillors in the room. I guess this is because we get 15% deducted from our allowance if we don’t attend these sessions!

We learned about the Council’s internal process for dealing with complaints against councillors.  The new legislation means that since May 2008 complaints have to be made to the Standards Committee of the local council. Complaint are then assessed and the choices for courses of action are to take no further action (if the complaint is not covered by the code of conduct), refer to the monitoring officer for investigation, refer to Standards for England for investigation (only in serious or complex cases where it would be inappropriate to investigate internally), or to take other action such as ordering mediation.  Standards for England is however to be abolished by the new government.