Issue - meetings

The Chairman agreed to the consideration of this matter as an item of urgent business in accordance with Paragraph 37.2 of the Committee Procedure Rules. The item was considered urgent because the Committee was required to give advice to Council at its next meeting.

The report proposed alternative arrangements to restrict the appointment of substitute members for planning matters.

The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 prescribed a regime of proportional representation for political groups on Committees. The Local Government (Committees and Political Groups) Regulations 1990 (“the Regulations”) provided more detailed working rules, in particular that seats allocated to political groups could only be filled by the nominations of the Group Leaders (not by Council or a Committee) and that seat allocations must be revisited at least annually and at or as soon as possible after the first meeting of the authority each year.

The responsibility for constitutional change and for the allocation of seats to groups rested with full Council on the advice of the Governance and Constitution Committee. Council had given the Strategic Planning Board special powers regarding the makeup of planning committees.

A protocol within the Constitution provided that no Member could sit or be a substitute on a planning committee without planning training. The Strategic Planning Board now proposed further restrictions. At its meeting on 17 June, the Board recommended to the Governance and Constitution Committee and Council “that the scheme of substitution in the Constitution be amended as follows:

(a)       No substitution shall be made to the North Area Planning Committee except with a Member from the South Area Planning Committee and vice versa. The substitute Member should wherever possible come from the same political group but may come from a different political group.

(b)       No substitutions shall be made to the Strategic Planning Board from the area committees or at all.”

The Governance and Constitution Committee, having considered the proposals and the reasons given for them as set out in the report to the Board, felt unable to support the Board’s recommendation (b).

RESOLVED

That Council be recommended that the scheme of substitution in the Constitution be amended as follows:

“No substitution be made to the North Area Planning Committee except with a Member from the South Area Planning Committee and vice versa. The substitute Member should, wherever possible, come from the same political group but may come from a different political group.”