Meeting documents

CHILTERN DISTRICT COUNCIL

MINUTES of the Meeting of the CONSTITUTION REVIEW COMMITTEE

held on 27 November 2001

IN ATTENDANCE Councillors N M Rose, N L Brown and Mrs E P Stacey.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE were received from Councillor Miss P A Appleby.

6.     MINUTES

The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 15 November 2001, copies of which had been previously circulated, were signed by the Chairman as a correct record, subject to Minute 4 (f) (2) to read “that the Three-Hour Rule should be dis-applied to the Council, Executive and Committee meetings”.

7.     DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

     There were no Declarations of Interest made by Members at this point in the meeting.

8.     SCHEME OF DELEGATIONS TO HEAD OF PLANNING SERVICES

Arising from Minute 75 of the Planning Committee meeting (22 November 2001), it had been decided that this Committee would review the Scheme of Delegation to Officers in relation to the Head of Planning Services and consider a new Council Procedure Rule which purported to grant limited speaking rights to Town & Parish Councils at meetings of the Planning Committee.  The Head of Planning Services explained the changes with respect to applications determined by officers under delegated powers. The Government’s new standard would be introduced on 1 April 2002. The requirement was that officers should determine, at least, 90% of all applications. This would be a requirement that could not be disregarded.  It was noted that in order to achieve this target, the recommendation of the Planning Committee was that the right of Town & Parish Councils to trigger a referral of a delegated application to the Planning Committee should be removed. The Planning Committee had recognised the concerns expressed by the Town and Parish Councils regarding this proposal and had recommended that it should be introduced for a trial period of not less than six months. The Planning Committee had also recommended the introduction of limited speaking rights for Town and Parish Councils on relevant applications, also for a trial period of six months.

The Committee approved the amendments to the Scheme of Delegations recommended by the Planning Committee and concurred with its recommendations that the test period for the amendments should be for not less than six months, after which it would be subject to a review.

The Committee considered the draft new Council Procedure Rule which was agreed, subject to the following amendments –

     Councillors N L Brown and N M Rose left the meeting at 7.05pm

9.     REVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION

Consideration of a number of items on the agenda for the meeting held on 15 November 2001 had been deferred to this meeting.

The Committee was reminded that the purpose of this meeting was to review the issues, which had arisen since the adoption of the new Constitution by the Council.  Members and officers had commented on its operation, and the need to review and update certain rules and procedures.

The report of the officers outlined a number of issues concerning the Constitution, and the Committee was asked to consider the matters raised and to recommend to the Council any changes or amendments which they would wish to see made. The comments made by Members on the remainder of these issues were as follows –

(a)     Scrutiny Procedure Rules

Members considered the issues raised in the report in turn and agreed that the Head of Legal Services should draft an amendment to the Scrutiny Procedure Rules accordingly.  The important points were as follows –

There should be criteria for exercising the power of Call In and the Notice of Call In should give reasons, which relate to those criteria.

Officers should not have to adjudicate upon the validity of a Call In, (e.g. was the reason given adequate or sufficient). This should be left to the Scrutiny Committee who, as a first issue, would always have to decide whether to proceed with a Call In.

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There should not be a power to rule frivolous, vexatious or malicious Call In’s nor should there be a limit on the total number of Call In’s per cycle.

Members noted that the Call In Protocol recently adopted by the Scrutiny Committee required members of the Executive – usually the relevant Portfolio Holder, to attend Call In meetings if requested to do so by the Scrutiny Committee, provided a minimum of 48 hours was given. Due to the short notice period, the relevant Portfolio holder could nominate another Executive Member to attend instead. The difficulty with amending the Scrutiny Procedure Rules to reflect the protocol was that it would require the Scrutiny Committee to meet twice to conclude a Call In, the first time being to decide which Executive Member(s) should be required to attend. Accordingly, it was agreed that the Executive Leader/relevant Portfolio holder should be invited to attend the Scrutiny Committee on an informal basis in order to keep the Call In process to a single meeting.

The various Urgency Procedures should be harmonised and the Rules should make it clear that the Chairman of Scrutiny must be informed of the financial aspects of Urgency Requests to assist him in determining whether to give or withhold consent.

Members were informed that the Head of Legal Services was in the process of drafting Rule 14 to deal with Declaration of Prejudicial Interests.

Note: Councillor P M Jones left the meeting at 7.45pm

(b)     Access to Information Procedure Rules

The recommended amendment to Rules 12.2 was approved, Members had already agreed that Rule 15 (Special Urgency) should be harmonised with the other urgency procedures.  

(c)     Budget & Policy Framework Procedure Rules

It was agreed that Rule 5 (Urgent decisions outside the Budget & Policy Framework) should be harmonised with the other urgency procedures. The Head of Legal Services also explained the effect of Rule 7 and that departures from the Budget and Policy Framework should not be referred to Scrutiny but to full Council. The statutory and constitutional requirement to consult the Scrutiny Committee only applied to the development of the Budget and Policy Framework, not departures from it. The Head of Legal Services advised that if the Executive required the power to make minor departures from the Budget and Policy Framework, the proper procedure was to seek that power as part of the budget/policy approval process.  

(d)     Financial Procedure Rules

There were no amendments to the report.

(e)     Contract Procedure Rules

The Head of Legal Services advised that a number of minor amendments had been agreed in consultation with Internal Audit. The only significant change was to give the Executive power to waive the Rules. This was agreed.

(f)     Officer Employment Procedure Rules

The Head of Legal Services reported that this had not been drafted yet. However the changes would be minor.

(g)     Codes and Protocols

Members were informed that the Model Code of Conduct for elected and co-opted Members had only just been published and would be the subject of a report to the Standards Committee as soon as the Town/Parish Representative and Independent Members had been appointed. Further, the DTLR was about to issue a consultation paper on a compulsory Code of Conduct for Employees. Both would be likely to impact on the Code of Conduct on Planning Matters and the Protocols on Member/Officer Relations. What was clear was that the timescales involved precluded consideration by the Constitution Review Committee and these matters would be left for the Standards Committee to be considered.

(h)     Scheme of Delegations

The recommendations were agreed. However, in relation to the proposal to delegate certain non-key executive decisions to Officers, such as minor property and traffic consultation issues, consultation should be with the local Member as well as the relevant Portfolio holder. The delegation of individual decision making powers in respect of non key decisions to individual Portfolio holders was also agreed in principle and the Head of Legal Services was requested to draft some appropriate amendments for consideration by the Committee.

(i)     Miscellaneous

The Committee agreed that the Executive /Scrutiny/Council timetable should remain the same. It was also agreed that there was no case for giving any more constitutional recognition to Policy Advisory Groups (PAG’s) but that adopted Protocols and “standing “ PAG Terms of Reference be added to the Constitution as Part 9 for the sake of completeness.

Note: Councillor Ms J E Bramwell left the meeting at 8.35pm.

10.     FURTHER REPORT OF THE OFFICERS

(a)     Substitute Members

Members agreed to recommend a new Council Procedure Rule permitting Planning Committee Members to appoint substitutes.  However it was suggested that rather than 24 hours notice to appoint a substitute, this should be changed to 5pm on the day preceding the meeting. It was also considered that substitution should be available to all Council Committees and Sub-Committees and therefore the Rule governing the appointment of Alternates to the Scrutiny Committee and its Sub-Committees should be dispensed with.  

(b)     Petitions

          Members approved a new Council Procedure Rule governing Petitions.

(c)     Officers Reports to Full Council

Members approved a new Council Procedure Rule which required full Council to resolve itself into Committee when receiving an Officers Report..

(d)     New Executive Procedure Rule – Member Representations

The Committee approved the proposed new Rule, subject to (1) an amendment limiting speaking rights to local Members in relation to proposed decisions affecting their ward or to members with technical or specialist knowledge in relation to a proposed decision and (2) the deletion of the following sentence -

“Where this happens, members will be called to make representations in the order that they notified the proper officer of their interest in the matter, up to the permitted total.”  

11.     NEXT MEETING

The next meeting to be held on 19 December 2001.

The Meeting ended at 8.55p.m.

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