Decision published: Duncan forced at Full Council on Oct. 23rd to give up.

In effect, he will lose £300 p.m approx. (depends how the pay-roll works) to the end of the municipal year. And the Standards Panel will report that he has been censured.

Having seen the actual decision now, some interesting issues are raised: as mentioned previously, “neither the Standards Panel nor any other body of the council have power to suspend or disqualify a member or to withdraw their basic or special responsibility allowance” (I.e. the stipend that attaches to the role of any chair or deputy chair.) And the actual wording of the range of sanctions is that the Panel “recommending to Council that …it recommend to the member’s Group Leader that he be removed from any or all of the council’s committees or sub-committees.”

Unless the Panel is being flexible in its interpretation of the Localism Act, there will be some interesting wriggling at full council.

Cllr Duncan had already left the council’s Green Party Grouping and become an Independent before the Panel hearing. As such, he would have been removed as a deputy anyway, irrespective any hearing, on grounds of the law which governs political balance in the allocation of committee seats. The removal would probably be an agenda item for the subsequent Licensing Committee meeting on 20th November.

Moreover, there is no grouping of Independents in this council anyway and thus it will be an empty gesture for the Panel to ask full Council to remove him as deputy…..

At this point, a number of judicial metaphors spring to mind: double-dunking, chopping both hands….but this is for another time….

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