Issue - meetings

Report of the Senior Democratic Services Officer / Legal Officer

The Committee gave consideration to the report as set out on pages 6-9 of the agenda, which asked it to note the progress achieved to date in updating and revising the Council’s Constitution, taking into account feedback received from individual Members and Members of the Constitutional Working Group (CWG) .

The Head of Law & Governance provided the Committee with a brief summary of the report, which gave an overview of the feedback received from Members following circulation of a revised draft Constitution after the previous meeting of Full Council in December 2018. The feedback received had been largely supportive of the revised Constitution as a whole, however there remained a divergence of opinion with regard to a small number of key procedural issues which still needed to be addressed.

In relation to quorum, Officers had recommended that this should be set at a minimum baseline of 3 Members for all meetings; however the CWG indicated that it wished to increase the fixed minimum number of Members present to one third of the overall Membership for all meetings.

With regard to the requirement for an item to be moved and seconded before it can be debated, the Head of Law & Governance stated that Officers recommended the retention of the provision in the existing Constitution i.e. that no speeches should be made until a motion was on the table. This was recommended on the grounds that the principles of good governance, best practice, case-law, statutory guidance and the Constitutions of other local authorities consistently advocated this approach as an example of good administration, avoiding the risk of decisions being challenged on procedural grounds. This approach also allows the Chair of a meeting to exercise efficient control, keeping track of any amendments moved during the course of debate.

Members however took a different view, and felt that although this provision had existed within the Council’s Constitution for a number of years, it had seldom been applied in practice and to the best of their knowledge was not applied at other local authorities either. Members were instead of the view that Committees should be able to hold a free debate, from which it was anticipated that a substantive motion would arise. The Committee felt that this would resolve the issue of members of the public in attendance forming the impression that by moving a recommendation at the beginning of the debate, those Members moving and seconding the motion had already reached a pre-determined view.

The Head of Law & Governance acknowledged that there were acute difficulties involved in balancing the principles of good governance with the desire to satisfy public perception, but reiterated that the view of Officer’s was that good governance should always take priority over public perception.

With regard to a formal scheme of substitutions, the recommendation of Officers was that there should be a fixed proportional number of named substitutes for each Committee, who should be trained as appropriate where the requirement for training in order to sit on the Committee existed.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16