Readers may remember back at the September full council meeting the council’s recommendation to adopt a hybrid of both the Cabinet and Committee governance systems was rejected.
A six week public consultation followed, the outcome of which has now been published with papers for Wednesday’s full council meeting.
Residents were asked to choose which system they’d prefer the council to work under
- The current Cabinet system
- A full Committee system
- A hybrid of the Cabinet and Committee system
Very low response
According to the paperwork, the council received only 115 responses to the online consultation.
Of those responses, 43 preferred option 1, the current system; 36% preferred option 2, a committee system; and 21 preferred option 3 the hybrid executive committee system.
Constitution Review Working Party
The cross-party Constitution Review Working Party have since met and considered the feedback from the consultation exercise.
They agreed, “that as the consultation response was relatively low, and the outcome is not a significant factor in the decision making process, although many of the comments made as part of the consultation responses were relevant and were considered as part of the discussions.”
They recommend:
(a) That given the outcome from the consultation process, and the possible impact of implementation of this option on the resources of the council, that the committee system (option 2) not be adopted at this stage.
(b) That Full Council considers adopting either of the following two options:
- (i) The current one party cabinet system (option 1) but with further work undertaken to further improve the scrutiny function, specifically:
a larger Overview and Scrutiny Committee of say 14 members;
a sub committee to deal with the statutory scrutiny functions of health, crime and flood;
task and finish groups to be set up by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to deal with the scrutiny of particular issues instead of the existing three scrutiny panels;
membership of the task and finish groups to be drawn from the whole council, not just the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.OR
- (ii) Option 3 – the hybrid system consisting of one party executive, with four politically proportionate executive advisory committees and one scrutiny committee with the option to set up task and finish groups to scrutinise particular issues.
(c) That whatever option is decided by council the Constitution Review Working Party continues to develop the detail of the constitution for consideration by the Full Council in due course.
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