Apologies had been received from Councillors H Bramer and RI Matthews.

To receive details of any member nominated to attend the meeting in place of a member of the panel.

Councillor PD Price substituted for Councillor H Bramer, and Councillor WLS Bowen substituted for Councillor RI Matthews.

To receive any declarations of interest by members in respect of items on this agenda.

No declarations of interest were made.

To approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on Monday 18 January 2016.

The minutes of the last meeting were received.

RESOLVED:    That the minutes of the meeting held on 18 January 2016 be approved as a correct record.

To recommend to Council permanent arrangements for the designation of a post as monitoring officer.

The assistant director communities presented the report and attention was drawn to the following key points:

a.         The purpose of this item was to consider permanent arrangements for the designation of a post as monitoring officer.  It was noted that the ‘monitoring officer’ was a particular set of functions which could be attributed to an existing role.

b.         On 11 September 2015 (minute 9), the employment panel had recommended to Council that ‘the post of deputy solicitor to the council people and regulatory be designated monitoring officer for an interim period of up to nine months from the date of approval’.  Full council had agreed this recommendation on 25 September 2015 (minute 28).

c.         During the course of the review period, several options had been explored in terms of how the authority could operate the various functions and these were detailed in the report.

d.         Key stakeholders were engaged as part of the process and the majority were in favour of the interim arrangement being made permanent.  Reflecting this, the recommendation of the report was that the post of solicitor to the council be designated as monitoring officer.

e.         The alternative options, an external appointment process to recruit from outside of the council or sharing the function of monitoring officer with another authority, were outlined.

f.          Attention was drawn to the financial implications section of the report.  It was explained that, working within the limitations of the current pay policy, an initial assessment envisaged that the proportion of responsibilities and accountabilities would be 60% for the post of solicitor to the council and 40% for the functions of monitoring officer.  Recognising the importance and level of responsibility of the monitoring officer, further work had been undertaken since the publication of the report.  Consequently, the ratio had been amended to 30% for the post of solicitor to the council and to 70% for the functions of monitoring officer.  It was reported that this would change the structure of the salary for the proposed permanent arrangement.

The chairman invited comments from panel members.

The vice-chairman considered the proposal to be an intelligent way forward and this approach could be considered for some other roles where appropriate.

A panel member questioned whether the authority could be confident that the demands upon legal services would not put too much of a burden on this post, dealing with external events as solicitor to the council at the same time as internal functions as monitoring officer.  In response, the chief executive made the following points:

i.           The arrangement had been put in place for an interim period for evaluation and it was considered manageable, hence the recommendation of making it permanent going forward;

ii.          Other authorities operated a similar arrangement;

iii.         There was a tendency to refer many matters to the monitoring officer and any post holder would need to be robust and pragmatic about the work that could be undertaken and the timescales involved; and

iv.        Good mentoring support had been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19.