Sitting councillors told to register interests
Author: Ruth Keeling, LGC |
Ministers have issued a guide to the new standards regime following confusion over whether sitting councillors would have to register their interests.
In a letter to leaders, local government minister Bob Neill has emphasised that all councillors must sign the register of members’ interests, not just newly elected councillors.
The letter and the guide comes after local government lawyers suggested last month that a mistake in the drafting of the Localism Bill meant councillors could avoid signing the register until they were next elected.
Ministers had already rebuffed the claims made by the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors, and the guidance published on Thursday revisits the subject.
Mr Neill’s letter said: “Every councillor should be giving their monitoring officer all the information they need to get and keep their register of members’ interests up to date. The legal requirements mean that sitting councillors, just like new councillors, should be registering their disclosable pecuniary interests.”
ACSeS insist the wording of the Localism Act means councillors are only required to sign the register within 28 days of election or within 28 days of disclosing an interest at a meeting, and that therefore an interest that did not come up in a meeting is not covered by the legislation.
Nicholas Dobson, spokesman for ACSeS, said the guidance published on Thursday was “a cleverly worded document” which attempted to address the “unhelpful” drafting of the Localism Act.
“The guidance is saying that there is an obligation under the Nolan principles to register interests, but that is not the same as the requirement by statute,” he said.
A Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “Any suggestion that existing councillors do not need to disclose their interests until re-election is simply wrong, and indeed wholly contrary to the parliamentary intentions of the provisions.
“The plain English guide for councillors on openness and transparency on personal interests, published last week by the Department, will help councillors and monitoring officers understand their obligations under the new arrangements.”
Mr Dobson also took exception to a separate part of Mr Neill’s letter to leaders in which he said the guidance “makes clear to monitoring officers that any heavy bureaucratic, ‘gold plated’ approach has no place in the new localist standards arrangements.”
Mr Dobson said council legal officers were interested in good governance and “have no interest in gold plating for the sake of it”.
He added: “It is slightly unfair of the government to accuse monitoring officers of looking for opportunity to gold plate, as though there were a personal agenda to make councillors lives as difficult as possible.”