Agenda item

7.1

The Committee received a presentation given by Gillian Duckworth, Director of Legal and Governance, which outlined the changes to the Council’s Committee System. She stated that in May 2021 a public referendum voted to change the Council’s governance structure to a committee system in May 2022. Changing the structure also meant a change in how decisions were made. Following on from the referendum result, a Governance Committee was set up. Over the last year, members had worked together as a cross party committee to set out what the new structure might look like.

A public inquiry was held in December, 2021, which included evidence from experts, members of the public and community representatives. The information gathered at the inquiry was used to help design a new model, which was then recommended to, and agreed at, the Council meeting of 23 March, 2022. The new structure would be formally implemented at the Annual General Meeting of the Council, scheduled for 18 May, 2022. A full review of the structure would take place six months later, which would involve input from the public.

The Council currently functioned via a model of governance that consisted of a Leader and 10 Executive members. The Executive team currently made most of the decisions. Transitional Committees had been set up in July 2021 to help with the shift to the new structure and had given members the opportunity to work cross-party.

7.2

A member of the public asked how chairs of the committees would be appointed; would this be decided by the Leader, the majority party or decided amongst the committee members?

In response, Gillian Duckworth advised that chairs of the new committees would be appointed by full council at Annual General Meeting on 18 May 2022. Each committee would have the ability to change this over time.

7.3

Another public questioner asked whether Local Area Committees had staff working exclusively to support the work of the Committee, would there be reports of this Local Area Committee to full Council every month, and was this considered to be an efficient way to push the work of the Committee?

In response, the Chair advised that the North Local Area Committee had a designated team that was supported by Democratic Services and technical staff. There were also officers within other services that could be called on to answer specific queries. He also noted that Local Area Committees were autonomous of full Council and had their own decision-making mechanisms.

Gillian added that teams were being created with nominated officers that would support the new policy committees in their functions.

In response to the question about referring matters from Local Area Committees, Gillian advised that although there was currently no formal reporting mechanism, this was expected to be added as an agenda item for future meetings of full Council.

7.4

Another public question was raised, asking what the current position was regarding the Chief Executive of the Council and had arrangements been put in place to allow business to continue in her absence.

Gillian advised that interim arrangements had been put in place to ensure that the Council could continue to fully operate.