Agenda item

Cllr Al-Samerai thanked Julie Timbrell for the draft report summarising the evidence.

Cllr Mohamed introduced the draft report with suggested recommendation for discussion. This had circulated by email shortly before the start of the meeting.

Cllr Al-Samerai commented that it was unfair to Members to circulate it so soon before the meeting because no-one had had time to consider it properly.  Cllr Mohamed responded that any meeting would struggle to agree recommendation and the paper was aimed as guiding the discussions. Cllr Al Sameria added that the draft report was very helpful but while she thought some of the draft recommendations were fine other seemed to have come out of nowhere. Cllr Al – Samerai asked who had drafted the recommendations. Cllr Mohamed said these had been done by him with officers giving some limited assistance.

Cllr Glover commented there was a problem with the amount of time given to digest this. He said that the finalised document would go to Council Assembly along with the legal and financial concurrent. The report that goes to Cabinet will not be able to identify all the cost implications – there is a bit of work to be done on this.

Cllr Al-Samerai and Cllr Mitchell suggested another meeting to devote more time to agreeing the recommendations. Cllr Mohamed said this would be difficult given the deadlines and suggested that they go through the draft recommendations tabled one by one. This was agreed.

Summary of Recommendations

This was uncontentious but it was agreed to change the heading to ‘Introduction.’

Need for Change

It was agreed to add the following bullet points:

• Improve quality of decisions made in Council Assembly
• Hold the administration to account

Cllr Glover cautioned against allowing too much time for public debate, as there would be a risk that special interest groups would dominate.

Purpose: role of the Council Assembly

It was agreed that point 3.2 should be changed to: ‘strengthen the role of residents and elected Members to influence and hold the Cabinet to account and to add ‘Involve Members and the community early enough to influence change.’ The fourth bullet point would be deleted. The fifth would read ‘enable Members and the public to influence decision-making.

There was discussion about 4.1 and 4.2 which appeared to conflict with each other. One suggestion was that it could be re-worded to make it clear that the Council Assembly could take on considering more plans and strategies than the legal minimum, rather than only discussing what was legally required.

Cllr Al-Samerai raised the issue of themed meetings. She had concerns over 1) how could they tie in with decisions that had to be made and 2) who decides the themes? Cllr Mohamed responded that support for themes came out very strongly in the evidence. Cllr Morrissey added that these are very popular with community councils. Cllr Glover agreed that there needs to be clarity over who decides the themes, the balance of the agenda and that they should not dominate a whole meeting – there should be opportunities to debate current issues.

Stephen Douglass commented that advice needs to be taken on point 5.1 – revising the number of signatories required for a petition to be presented at Council Assembly. There was concern that if the number was too low Assembly would be inundated with petitions. It was agreed to take out the reference to the ‘Council Assembly Business Panel.’

Cllr Mitchell asked what was meant by ‘this is reviewed’ in point 5.2 It was agreed that officers, on the basis of clear rules , rather than Members, should decided what deputations are legitimate. It is important that those decisions are a-political. Julie Timbrell said it was possible for officers to look at relaxing the rules to make it easier to bring deputations, and queried if members wanted to prevent them from coming back within 6 months?  It was agreed this might be difficult to devise a satisfactory rule governing this.

It was agreed that point 5.2 should include the wording ‘the number and timeframe will be reviewed by the Democracy Commission.’

It was agreed that the maximum number of deputations per meeting would be 3, and to review this after a year.

Re point 16.4 – it was agreed that the recommendations of the Commission would be reviewed after a year.

Council Assembly Business Panel

Cllr Mohamed explained that the idea of the business panel was to make Council Assembly more relevant, interesting and inclusive. Its membership would need to be politically balanced or neutral and could co-opt local ‘active citizens’ to advise on different themes. Discussion followed on the composition of the panel.  There was a query on ‘proportionality’ and ‘balance’.

Stephen Douglass pointed out that the Council Assembly agenda is currently put together  by officers following the constitution. Following a scrutiny review, North East Somerset council introduced a business management committee to agree the agenda for Full Council.

Cllr Soanes said that it was exciting that the community would be invited, but she was concerned also that we have the right structure and composition.

Cllr Al-Samerai asked if the Constitutional Steering Group could take this on, to avoid creating another bureaucratic structure that did not excite people.

Cllr Glover said that there most be room for a wide number of members to influence the agenda and ensure that topical and relevant issues are discussed and also that there are more opportunities for members to inform decision making.

Given not all the recommendations had been agreed Cllr Mohamed proposed another meeting and this was agreed. Cllr Mohamed requested that members of the Commission , particularly the different political groups, prepare draft recommendations ready to be discussed at the next meeting.