COUNCILLORS still have concerns about the way Cardiff Council plans to deal with charities it looks after.
Cardiff Council’s policy review and performance scrutiny committee met on Wednesday, March 12, to discuss a new strategy aimed at managing conflicts of interest if the local authority has to make a decision on a charity of which it is the sole trustee.
The approach will involve the creation of two separate committees – a trusts cabinet committee consisting of five cabinet members and an advisory committee consisting of three independent members.
Also discussed at the scrutiny committee was a conflicts of interest policy which will be used in future decision-making.
Despite the reassurance given by Cardiff Council’s director of governance and legal services Debbie Marles councillors still had concerns about how conflicts of interest would be managed when members are being asked to balance the best interests of a charity and those of the council.
The idea behind the new approach for trusts came about after Cardiff Council was criticised for the way it handled a decision on the future of Maindy Park.
Land at the park was proposed as part of plans to expand Cathays High School and as the land was held in trust with the council as the sole trustee an independent advisory committee was set up to make a recommendation to cabinet members on a decision for the future of the land.
Only cabinet members who had not had any previous involvement in the council’s development proposals for the Maindy Park land were allowed to make a decision on the recommendation.
However campaigners and some councillors criticised the move and argued that it was not possible for these individuals not to have a conflict of interest in their roles as cabinet members.
A member of the policy review and performance scrutiny committee, Cllr Joe Carter, said to Ms Marles: “You talk a lot in your opening remarks about avoiding conflicts of interest and the importance of that and the training that you are putting in place but I have to ask the question – what about your own conflict of interest?
“One of the things that comes through all of the documentation we have seen is the role of the monitoring officer to actually try to ride that balance of legal advice for both parties, as it were, but your duty and the role that we employ you [for] as our monitoring officer… is [to] look after the council’s best interests and often the interests of the trust may diverge from that as we saw with Maindy Park.
“There may be conflicts that actually require a legal perspective.”
In response Ms Marles said: “On the issue of avoiding conflict it is obviously a matter that is very much in the forefront of my mind.
“If we are in a situation where we have the serious conflict…. in those circumstances I would certainly arrange for external legal advice to be provided be that to the charity, the trust, cabinet committee, or indeed the executives.
“I certainly wouldn’t be advising both parties because there would be a clear conflict of interest there. Of course there are other officers within legal services but certainly the way I would be minded to deal with that would be to have external lawyers to advise.”
Under the new approach Ms Marles said a serious conflict would include a situation involving a commercial interest to the council such as if it was looking to acquire a piece of land or an asset of the charity.
The conflicts of interest policy for council trusts document states the way in which conflicts are dealt with will depend on the nature and extent of the conflict.
Cardiff Council cabinet members approved the plans to establish the new committees in March 2024.
The new cabinet trust committee will meet for the first time on Thursday, March 20.
