Welsh community councils rapped over non-compliant registers of interests

An investigation by Newport City Council has found that all 14 of its town and community councils are failing to publish a compliant Register of Interests (RoI) on their websites.

The report, which was considered by the city council's Standards Committee on Thursday (18 April), also revealed that some community councils confused RoIs with Declarations of Interest.

Maintaining a register of interests of their members is a statutory obligation of community councils in Wales, as set out in the Local Government Act 2000 and the Code of Conduct for Members of Community Councils in Wales (2016).

An RoI is a public document that records any personal or financial interests that could potentially influence or affect a member's decision-making or conduct in their role as a councillor.

However, the city council's analysis found that only four out of 14 community councils had "some registers of interests" published on their websites.

Among the four councils, some were still missing RoIs for individual councillors and some of the RoIs published were more than two years old.

In addition, some of the published RoIs were not dated or signed by the community councillor who had filled them out.

There were also two community councils that confused RoIs with Declarations of Interest, and records of Declarations of Interest were presented on their website as a Register of Interest, according to the report.

"None of the Community Councils met the expectations regarding compliance with legislation on maintaining RoIs and making them publicly available to support transparency and impartiality in decision-making," the report said.

It added that discussions with the community councils revealed "clear" differences in understanding of the duties relating to RoIs, with "many" community councils considering that they do not have to publish the document publicly.

Some also believe that holding a private RoI is compliant with legislation, the report said.

"However, whilst changes to legislation means that the specific details like property or business addresses can be redacted in the published register, it must be available online to satisfy requirements for openness and transparency," the report said.

The analysis also found issues surrounding the Code of Conduct, with only a third of the community council websites including the Code of Conduct for community councillors and the community they serve to refer to.

Adam Carey