Lewis weighs into monitoring officer advice on disclosable pecuniary interests

A local government minister has written to all local authority leaders after it emerged that some monitoring officers are informing councillors that being a council tax payer is a disclosable pecuniary interest in any Budget debate.

Brandon Lewis said councillors were then being informed by the monitoring officers that they would be committing a criminal offence if they spoke or voted in that debate unless they obtained a formal dispensation.

The minister wrote: “Whilst my department does not issue legal advice, in our opinion, such dispensations are unnecessary. Council tax liability applies to the generality of the population; councillors have no unique position in that regard.”

Lewis added that being a council taxpayer or being eligible for a discount under the new local arrangements for council tax support were pecuniary interests, but were not disclosable pecuniary interests as specified in regulations.

“Therefore a councillor does not need to seek a dispensation in order to participate in discussions or vote on decisions in the council tax setting process or local arrangements for council tax support,” the minister argued.

Lewis highlighted how holders of public office should be guided by the Nolan Principles. “I believe that the blanket act of every councillor declaring the obvious (that residents are liable for council tax) adds nothing to that cause,” he wrote.

The minister added that s. 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 prohibited councillors who are in council tax arrears (by two or three months) from voting on Budgets. “So there is a clear expectation that the generality of councillors are paying council tax,” he said.

Lewis said that the DCLG would be updating its practical guide for councillors to reflect the view contained in the letter.

In response, Philip McCourt, President of the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors (ACSeS) pointed out that the legislation in question included land owned by a member as one class of disclosable pecuniary interest and goes on to say that if a member has a disclosable pecuniary interest relating to any business that is or will be considered at the meeting, he or she must not participate in any discussion of the business at the meeting. “Setting council tax obviously relates to a person's property,” he added.

McCourt continued: “The Localism Act, unlike the Local Government Acts of 2000 or 1974, does not provide for exceptions or de minimis interest levels. ACSeS has said from the beginning that this part of the Localism Act is poorly drafted and therefore unhelpful. We are therefore pleased that the minister has expressed an opinion on which he believes monitoring officers and their local authorities can rely.

“However, a concern is that legislation does not always mean what ministers may wish it to mean (since statutory interpretation is ultimately of course a matter for the courts). The central desire for a localist approach to interpretation and guidance leaves a vacuum, which may give rise to frustration by ministers and central politicians.”

The letter from Brandon Lewis comes in the aftermath of a Westminster Hall debate in which the minister and Bob Neill MP, his predecessor at the Department for Communities and Local Government, accused some monitoring officers of giving wrong advice and warned against the ‘gold-plating’ of the revised local government standards regime.

This drew a robust response from ACSeS, with McCourt saying the debate “seemed to display an unfortunate degree of prejudice and animus towards monitoring officers”.

The ACSeS President also said that the issue of monitoring officers’ performance should be addressed in its context and at a local level “rather than ventilated intemperately in a public Parliamentary forum”.

Philip Hoult

See also: Standards - rules of the road Nicholas Dobson looks at the purpose of the standards regime and the degree to which 'standards lite' is adequate