Issue - meetings

To consider the report.

To accept the report and the information contained therein.

The report was presented by explaining that ensuring support for Councillors had been key in Cyngor Gwynedd for quite a while. With the support of Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), the Council collaborated and compared with other local authorities, learning and benefiting from their experiences. It was explained that by now, the WLGA had developed a voluntary Self-assessment Framework that offered different areas for the Councils to concentrate on to self-evaluate their performance. It was noted that an advisory document had been developed by the association and that Cyngor Gwynedd had ensured opportunity to present observations in response to the advisory document.

It was explained that Cyngor Gwynedd were eager to plan to proceed with the work following the approval of the final framework. It was recommended that a small group of the Democracy Services Committee's members met to assess the following from the final framework:

·        Is the Council responsible for the field or not?

·        The Council's current performance against the framework's expectations.

·        Is it a priority of the Council?

·        Are there any potential improvement steps?

It was explained that the above steps could be used to create a work programme of improvements by using the framework as grounds to identify matters to prioritise.   It was noted that it would be an effective starting point, but it was emphasised that the framework must be used wisely whilst considering the resources available to the Council.

Matters raised during the discussion: -

·        In terms of creating a small group, it was explained that the Democracy and Language Service Manager would contact the representatives as soon as possible after the framework would be finalised.

·        It was proposed that Councillors Dewi Owen, Beca Roberts, Anne Lloyd-Jones and Cai Larsen would form the group.

RESOLVED to accept the report and the information.