Issue - meetings

The report of the Monitoring Officer is attached.

The Leader and Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Strategic and Borough-wide Leadership, Councillor Clarke presented the report of the Monitoring Officer outlining proposed amendments to the Council’s Constitution.

The Leader explained that the amendments had been through the scrutiny process, considered by the Planning Committee Working Group before returning to the Governance Scrutiny Group, and referred Councillors to the Appendix to the report, which detailed them.

Councillor Edyvean seconded the recommendation and reserved the right to speak.

Councillor Calvert confirmed that he had been one of two Governance Scrutiny Group Members, together with Councillor Thomas, who had sat on the Working Group, which had considered amendments to Planning Committee arrangements.  Councillor Calvert referred to the positive amendments made by the Working Group, which had been reported back to and approved by the Governance Scrutiny Group in November 2023. Council was reminded that those amendments had been included in the report published for Full Council on 7 December 2023, which had subsequently been withdrawn without explanation. Councillor Calvert stated that no further information about proposed changes to the Constitution had been provided prior to publication of the report last week, and he hoped that if there had been any, they would have been reported to the Governance Scrutiny Group.  Having reviewed this report, Councillor Calvert confirmed that he could not find any significant changes and sought confirmation that none had been made.

Councillor Thomas echoed the concerns expressed by Councillor Calvert, advised that she had also not found any significant changes and welcomed the constructive process that had been undertaken for this review.

Councillor Edyvean confirmed that whilst there had been further discussion in response to questions raised in relation to ambiguity of language, there had not been any changes made to the original proposals.

It was RESOLVED that Council adopts the proposed revisions to the Constitution.