We are the country’s leading legal advisor on standards investigations.
We are regularly appointed to advise on serious allegations of misconduct in local authorities, ranging from bullying to racism, from conflicts of interest to breach of confidentiality. These include recent high profile investigations involving Mayor Livingstone and Mayor Johnson.
A team, led by Peter Keith-Lucas, has drafted model procedures for investigations and hearings for numerous local authorities and these have also been submitted to the Standards Board for England (who based its recommended local hearing procedure on our model procedure, and commended our local investigations procedure as a model for local authorities). Our team has prepared model reports to assist local authorities in addressing some of the perennial problem areas of corporate governance and probity, such as indemnities and insurance for members and officers, and protocols on gifts and hospitality and the use of IT by members. Our role-play of a local standards hearing has now been performed over 60 times with various authorities or groups of authorities, and our role-play of local initial assessment has already reached 20 performances.
We advise both local authorities and health authorities on allegations of misconduct by senior officers. Working with members of our employment team we undertake disciplinary investigations and, where necessary, draft severance agreements and negotiate compromise agreements.
We also have extensive experience in professional disciplinary proceedings arising from the work we do on behalf of our professional regulatory clients including the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Legal Complaints Service, General Social Care Council and the Architects Registration Board.
We can provide advice and support on:
- conduct of local investigations of allegations of member misconduct
- monitoring officer services to support the conduct of local standards hearings
- officer conduct, including disciplinary investigations and severance
- development and drafting of local protocols and procedures on such issues as gifts and hospitality, conflicts of interest and the conduct of local initial assessment and hearings
- investigation and advice on corporate dysfunction
- reviewing and advising on the validity of decisions affected by alleged member misconduct
- advice and training to authorities on how to deal with allegations of member and officer misconduct