A STANDARDS panel set up by Blackburn with Darwen Council will be able to call emergency meetings if there are urgent issues which councillors need advice on.

The panel will lay down the ground rules for councillors' behaviour, although the power to take action over inappropriate conduct will lie with a regional standards body.

There will be eight members on the committee -- including a retired police chief, a former magistrates' clerk and a council of mosques secretary. Four councillors will also sit on the panel along with a borough resident.

The committee is expected to meet four times a year to lay down a code of conduct for councillors and establish a whistleblowers' charter for people who expose wrongdoing within the town hall.

It will also advise councillors on when to declare any conflicts of interest. A town hall spokesman said that if councillors had personal interests -- financial or otherwise -- in council business, they needed to know whether they should vote on matters or be involved in discussions.

The committee, which will work to guidelines including a national code of conduct for councillors, will be able to give advice.

Councillors also needed to know whether they had rights of access to letters and other documents relating to council business, the spokesman added.

The committee's first meeting had been due to take place on Wednesday but was postponed to August 9 because one of the independent members could not attend.