Members of the Isle of Wight full council will be asked to nominate and vote for a new leader at tonight’s full council meeting (being reported live by OnTheWight from 6pm).
This follows the unexpected resignation of former Leader, Island Independent, Jonathan Bacon, earlier in the week.
The make-up of the Executive of the council will be decided by whoever is elected as Leader. The Executive will decide which party is viewed as running the council.
Nominations
So far, two people have declared an interest in becoming the Leader of IWC.
The Island Independent Group has already stated they will be nominating a member of their group for the position of Leader. The name of this person is not yet official.
Meanwhile, head of the IWC Conservatives, Dave Stewart, has stated that he’d be happy to take on a caretaker role, meeting with other groups yesterday to discuss strategies.
The Executive
The Executive is the part of the council which is responsible for day-to-day policy decisions. It’s made up of the Leader and up to nine other councillors appointed by the leader (although most recently, has been just six members in total).
As confirmed by the IWC earlier in the week, once the new Leader is appointed, they will then select their Executive.
They could choose members of their own political group, or they decide to have a cross-party mix.
Once the make-up of the Executive is known, it will then become more clear who will be regarded as the running the local authority.
The ‘ruling’ group
Even though they haven’t had a dominant number of members since the May 2013 election, the Independent group of councillors have been regard as ‘in charge.’
This could change to Conservative, if Dave Stewart is elected Leader of the council this evening and chooses to place other Conservative councillors in Executive positions.
Placing Indie councillors in the Executive would be a surprise, as the Conservatives have chosen to not be involved in making decisions, despite a number of offers from the Indies in previous years.
Voting procedure for appointments
It can sometimes get a little confused in full council when members are nominating and voting for chairpeople etc, so this excerpt from the Constitution may be of help for those tuning into our live coverage later.
If there are more than two people nominated for any position to be filled and there is not a clear majority of votes in favour of one person, then the name of the person with the least number of votes will be taken off the list and a new vote taken.
The process will continue until there is a majority of votes for one person. Voting in respect of each appointment shall be by way of a recorded vote unless the Council resolves that this procedure should not apply.
If a new Executive is put together from councillors who don’t have experience, council officers are ready and prepared to help bring them up to speed in the area they would oversee.
The next council elections take place on 4th May 2017.
