The people involved
Complainant
The person or people making the complaint.
Subject member
The councillor against whom an allegation has been made.
Monitoring officer
The monitoring officer is a senior (statutory) officer of the Council who has statutory responsibility for maintaining the register of councillors’ interests and who is responsible for administering the system in respect of complaints of councillor misconduct.
Independent person
The Council must appoint at least one independent person and seek that person’s views before it takes a decision on a complaint that it has decided to investigate.
The independent person’s views can also be sought by the Council on any other issue in the complaints handling process. The independent person will also provide, on request, procedural advice to a subject member.
Investigator
The person appointed by the monitoring officer to undertake a formal investigation. They could be another officer of the Council, an officer of another council or an external investigator.
Other terms
Standards Committee
The Standards Committee is appointed each year by the Council. Details of the current membership of the Committee can be found here.
The independent persons are invited to attend all meetings of the Standards Committee and their views are sought and taken into consideration before the Standards Committee takes any decision on consideration of an investigation report on whether the subject member’s conduct constitutes a failure to comply with the member code of conduct and as to any action to be taken following a finding of failure to comply with it.
Local hearing
A meeting of the Standards Committee at which they consider whether the subject member has breached the code of conduct.
Public interest
Public interest considerations are part of the assessment of the complaint.