Agenda item

(to follow)

At this juncture Mr Swinn addressed the Council with regard to this issue commenting that he still had concerns about the Political Structures, the frequency of meetings, particularly the fact that Executive, Council and Scrutiny meetings had been reduced from ten to six meetings.  He also reiterated his concerns that the number of Scrutiny Committees had been reduced from seven separate Committees to one.  He welcomed the continuous Quality Improvement Teams at all levels to ensure there was good service delivery of all front line services to citizens.

Councillor Larratt then presented the Political Structures and Governance Arrangements – Constitution Amendments and Other Matters Report, copies of which had been circulated together with an amendment to appendix 6 tabled at the meeting which stated – “References to the Executive in this appendix shall also include references to the Improvement Board and all members of the Improvement Board making Executive decisions”.He sought approval to the recommendations contained in the report in order to bring into effect the Political Structures and Governance Arrangements that had been agreed by Council on 21 July 2005.  

In discussing the report several comments were made.  With regard to page 3 concerning the paragraph on the Improvement Board, Councillor Woods asked that rather than the representatives being the Leader and Deputy Leader of each group that it be the Leader and one other member, not necessarily the Deputy of each group.

With reference to appendix 1 paragraph 1(i) Councillor Woods suggested that the references to Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group should read Leader and Deputy Leader of the Minority Opposition.

With regard to page 4 the paragraph regarding Delegations to Cabinet Members some concerns were expressed regarding the last paragraph stating “Connected to this are the procedural changes to the Constitution contained in Appendix 4 which allows individual Cabinet member decisions to be made in private”.  Whilst it was recognised that some issues needed to be dealt with in private it was considered that arrangements on how this was dealt with needed to be looked at further.

With regard to questions to Council it was considered that 12 days was too long and that 5 days would perhaps be better.

  With regard to a quorum for the Improvement Board it was suggested that the three members should be one from each political group.

Some discussion then ensued with regard to Planning Committee in terms of its frequency of meetings and also the  possible suggestion that there could be two Sub-Committees set up on a geographical basis.

 With regard to the procedure at Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings it was suggested that under paragraph 16.2 a further sentence be added stating that officers members of the Board etc attend when requested.