Chichester District Council
Agenda item

Agenda item

Constitutional Amendment

The Council is requested to consider the agenda report and its appendix and to make the following resolutions:

 

RESOLUTIONS BY THE COUNCIL

 

(1)  That the membership of committees shall be amended as set out in the appendix to the agenda report from the date of the May 2019 elections.

 

(2)  That the Monitoring Officer be required to provide a report annually to the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee as to the use of his delegated powers to amend the Constitution.

 

(3)  That the wording regarding the approval of designation of neighbourhood areas in accordance with the Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012  be amended to further state: ‘….and following the Director of Planning and Environment informing the appropriate Cabinet Member and the relevant ward member(s)’.

 

(4)  That the Monitoring Officer be directed to amend the Constitution to clarify that attendance by members for the purposes of section 85 (1) of the Local Government Act 1972 shall be limited to the Council or a committee to which that member is allocated only.

 

(5)  That the consideration by the Task and Finish Group of the Monitoring Officer delegations as to the Constitution and its recommendation that these remain unchanged be noted.

 

(6)  That the delegation to the Deputy Section 151 Officer be amended such that the post-holder shall have delegation in the absence of the Section 151 Officer for all financial matters.

 

Minutes:

The Council considered the report and its appendix circulated with the agenda for this meeting.

 

Mr A Dignum (Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Growth and Place) moved the recommendation contained in the report and this was seconded by Mrs E Lintill (Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Community Services).

 

Mr A Dignum said that the report detailed a series of changes to be implemented as suggested by a task and finish group (TFG) which had met in 2018.  The TFG consisted of four majority party and two opposition members. Its recommendations were unanimous.  There were two main elements of the work undertaken by the TFG: (1) to follow through changes to CDC’s Constitution resulting from the May 2019 restructuring from 48 to 36 members and (2) to look at any other updates which seemed appropriate since the previous major review of the Constitution in 2016. Appendix 1 set out the proposed changes to the committee memberships from May 2019. The TFG debated those numbers at length, ensuring that the agreed numbers were appropriate to the workloads of each committee. The remaining changes set out in the recommendations were all designed to provide transparency in one way or another. CDC’s Corporate Governance and Audit Committee recently considered the first report by the Monitoring Officer (MO) outlining the minor changes to the Constitution which he was responsible for making. It was recommended that such a report be submitted annually so that members were kept aware of the MO’s use of his delegated powers in this regard. The changes to the neighbourhood planning regulations, the councillor attendance calculations and the deputy section 151 officer delegations were also the subject of recommendations. The changes simply ensured that what was hitherto accepted as implied in the Constitution would now be more clearly articulated.

 

Mrs P Tull (Sidlesham) commented briefly on the recent consideration by the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee of the MO’s report, which would now be an annual occurrence.

 

Decision

 

On a show of hands the members voted in favour of the recommendation with no votes against and no abstentions. 

 

RESOLVED

 

(1)  That the membership of committees shall be amended as set out in the appendix to the agenda report from the date of the May 2019 elections.

 

(2)  That the Monitoring Officer be required to provide a report annually to the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee as to the use of his delegated powers to amend the Constitution.

 

(3)  That the wording regarding the approval of designation of neighbourhood areas in accordance with the Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012  be amended to further state: ‘….and following the Director of Planning and Environment informing the appropriate Cabinet Member and the relevant ward member(s)’.

 

(4)  That the Monitoring Officer be directed to amend the Constitution to clarify that attendance by members for the purposes of section 85 (1) of the Local Government Act 1972 shall be limited to the Council or a committee to which that member is allocated only.

 

(5)  That the consideration by the Task and Finish Group of the Monitoring Officer delegations as to the Constitution and its recommendation that these remain unchanged be noted.

 

(6)  That the delegation to the Deputy Section 151 Officer be amended such that the post-holder shall have delegation in the absence of the Section 151 Officer for all financial matters.

 

 

Supporting documents:

 

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