Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

(a)  To agree the minutes of the meeting held on 2 February, 2023

(b)  Matters arising

The minutes of the meeting held on 2 February 2023 were agreed and signed as a true record. There were no matters arising.

Report of the Chief Legal Officer

The Cabinet Member considered a report of the Chief Legal Officer which proposed changes to the Council’s Constitution.

The Council’s Constitution sets out how the Council carries out its business and makes decisions. It is a living document and needed to be updated from time to time to ensure that it reflects changes in practices within the Council.

The Constitutional Advisory Panel at its meeting held on 22 February 2023 considered and agreed the following proposed changes to the Constitution:

(a)  Amendments to the membership of the Health and Wellbeing Board

(b)  Amendments to the Member /Officer Protocol

(c)  Recommendations in respect of the Audit Committee and Functions of Council in respect of Severance Payments

Amendments to the Membership Health and Wellbeing Board

(i) The Membership of the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB) had to be reviewed following the establishment of the Integrated Care Board. This amalgamated the two Coventry and Warwickshire Clinical Commissioning Group seats with one for Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care System.

(ii) In addition, two seats were allocated to the voluntary and community sector, and rather than have a standing invite, it was now considered more appropriate to invite their representatives to the meeting based on the relevance of agenda items. 

(iii) The Cabinet Member for Adult Services was currently a member of HWBB as “one additional Councillor nominated by the Leader” and it was recommended that this allocation be amended to the “Cabinet Member for Adult Services” to bring it in line with other similar meetings.

(iv) The Constitution currently allows the HWBB to appoint additional persons as appropriate. It was now recommended that this be amended to give the Board the ability to amend the non-statutory or non-elected member appointments. This would enable the Board to be responsive to organisational changes. The current membership and the recommended amendments were detailed in the report.

Amendments to the Member/Officer Protocol

Following observations made at the Standards Hearing held in July 2022 in respect of elected members, the  Ethics Committee proposed revisions to the Member/Officer Protocol, more specifically when they are dealing with matters that relate to their own personal interests that need to be raised with the Council and recommended to the Constitutional Advisory Panel that additional wording be inserted to Part 4D – Member /Officer Protocol, to afford greater clarity to Members.

The protocol offers guidance on some of the issues which most commonly arose in relation to Member/Officer relationships. The protocol is partly a statement of current practice and convention and in some respects, it seeks to promote greater clarity and certainty. In particular, it covers the behaviour that would be expected between Members and Officers. The protocol gives guidance only, but it may be taken into account if there was a complaint about a Member or an Officer.

The Advisory Panel recommended that the Cabinet Member recommend to Council that additional wording is added to the Protocol at paragraph 3.2(j) under the heading of “Expectations” as per the following:

  “Members may  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27.

There are no outstanding issues

There were no outstanding issues.

To consider any other items of business which the Cabinet Member decides to take as a matter of urgency because of the special circumstances involved.

There were no other items of public business.