Report of Rob Walker, Deputy Chief Executive & Monitoring Officer.

Rory Ringer, the Democratic Services Manager & Deputy Monitoring Officer presented the report.

The report recommended the appointment of an Independent Remuneration Panel for the period 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2026.

The names of the three suitable candidates were highlighted.

The recommendation was proposed by Councillor James, the Executive Member for Customer & Corporate Services and was seconded by the Deputy Leader, Councillor Claussen.

Councillor Jermy felt disappointed that only 3 individuals in total had come forward and all were male, and all had served on the Panel before.  He found it difficult to believe that not one more person in Breckland had expressed an interest and felt that either the advert had not worked or there was not a single person in Breckland other than these 3 who had expressed an interest.  He was disappointed that Members were being asked to appoint a Panel for a 4-year term without any new opinions or ideas coming forward which the Council would receive by having new individuals and having a Panel that consisted of entirely male members was unfair as, in his opinion, gender balance was critical.  He then proposed an amendment to the recommendation which was to appoint the Panel in its current form, but to re-advertise to try and attract new members specifically female members to join the Panel.

The Leader thanked Councillor Jermy for his remarks. He was certain that Councillor Jermy did not mean that when Councillors were re-elected for a 4-year term, they did not bring along any new thinking and by re-appointing individuals to the IRP for a 4-year period were not by any means different to Councillors. The process was the process, and acknowledged that representation was immensely important, and it would be inappropriate to defer this for any longer as this was a statutory requirement and the appointments needed to be established so that the Panel could undertake this work ahead of the Elections in 2023.

In response, Councillor Jermy said that he was not clear on the urgency, as the existing scheme existed until May 2023. He drew attention to section 3.1 of the report where it stated: ‘to enable appropriate appointments to be made ahead of the next meeting of the IRP in early 2023’.   In his opinion, there was still plenty of time to re-advertise and hopefully recruit some new people and enable an IRP meeting to go ahead between now and May 2023.

The Leader stated that, these individuals had come forward and he respected and applauded them for willing to support local democracy and local councils.  There was other business to undertake, and it was not his place as an Elected Member to lead or influence the Democratic Services Manager or the Monitoring Officer as they had felt it to be appropriate to bring this report forward for work to be undertaken early in 2023.  He acknowledged Councillor Jermy’s concerns but was unsure if anyone else would apply if it went out for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 123