Croydon Council's Ethics Committee convened on 9 July 2025, to discuss ethical standards, including a review of ethical lapses in other councils and proposed updates to its own code of conduct. The meeting agenda is available online. Agenda frontsheet

The committee reviewed a report highlighting ethical breaches in other local authorities. These included:

  • Cornwall Council referring a former cabinet member to the police for failing to correctly register a disclosable pecuniary interest.
  • The resignation of a Durham City Council councillor after failing to declare council employment.
  • A Planning Committee councillor at King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council breaching the Code of Conduct by messaging fellow councillors on the committee during an application.

The report also updated members on the recently published Local Government Association councillor workbook on handling complaints and service improvement.

In response to these developments, the committee considered revisions to Croydon Council's Member's Code of Conduct (Appendix C - Members Code of Conduct) and arrangements for dealing with allegations of breaches. Proposed changes include:

  • Updating officer post titles and contact details.
  • Making the references gender neutral.
  • Updating regulator details.
  • Clarifying that a Deputy Monitoring Officer may undertake the Monitoring Officer functions.
  • Making changes to the data protection and privacy sections to comply with changes in the law.
  • Including a new paragraph on conflicts of interest, specifically addressing potential conflicts for officers in the process. This includes situations where the Monitoring Officer might have a conflict due to prior assistance provided, and potential conflicts for Independent Persons, outlining how these conflicts will be resolved.
  • Reducing the acknowledgement period for complaints to 10 working days. This change is expected to improve responsiveness, as the previous longer period (15 days) was due to the Council's practice of including clarifications, further information requests, and full details of the process in the acknowledgement.

The committee also discussed the role of Monitoring Officers in filtering complaints, as acknowledged by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The report detailed proposed updates to the assessment criteria to exclude complaints regarding response times to correspondence, admitted errors and remedial actions, pre-member conduct, political activity and personal life, legal and arbitration matters, council or committee decisions, multiple complaints, and member versus member complaints.

Further updates included the inclusion of details within the council's arrangements of an Assessment Sub-Committee of the Ethics Committee to assist in advising the Monitoring Officer on assessment of complaints in certain specified circumstances, expanding the detail provided in the arrangements relating to informal resolution, and adding a new appendix, called Investigation Process to the arrangements, detailing investigation principles and processes. The report also detailed updating the actions that the Hearing Panel can take, and updating the Hearing Panel Rules of Procedure.

The Ethics Committee was asked to consider and recommend to Full Council the adoption of revised statutory Arrangements the Council is required to have in place for dealing with complaints against Councillors, and for their inclusion into the Council's Constitution. The report also proposed that the Ethics Committee recommend to Full Council to approve that the Council's Constitution is amended: (i) to update the Ethics Committee's Terms of Reference to make provision for the Committee to undertake reviews of the Council's Arrangements in relation to Member Code of Conduct complaints (ii) to incorporate the Terms of Reference of an Assessment Sub-Committee to support the Monitoring Officer to assess Member Code of Conduct complaints in certain specified circumstances. The report also proposed that the Ethics Committee recommend to Full Council approval for the amendment to the Code of Conduct for Members in relation to disclosure of Members interests.