It has always been my understanding that when, we the public, place our crosses on ballot papers at local elections to elect the Members of this Council, we thus authorise the Elected Members to act as our representatives to debate and, similarly, vote on all matters that come before them.
Would the Leader kindly list any exceptions to this, whereby Council Members can bypass the democratic method and devise other ways to decide specific matters? Can he also state the criteria on which such departures can be permitted?
Minutes:
It has always been my understanding that when, we the public, place our crosses on ballot papers at local elections to elect the Members of this Council, we thus authorise the Elected Members to act as our representatives to debate and, similarly, vote on all matters that come before them.
Would the Leader kindly list any exceptions to this, whereby Council Members can bypass the democratic method and devise other ways to decide specific matters? Can he also state the criteria on which such departures can be permitted?
Councillor Rodney Chambers thanked Mr Ward for his question and he stated that there was a clear legal framework for local authority decision-making which was clearly set out in the Council’s Constitution.
In terms of specifics, the Constitution set out those matters, which must come before the Council for decision, for example, the annual budget and council tax setting. It also set out how decision-making on other Council functions was split between the Cabinet and regulatory committees. Most meetings were open to the public although there would be occasions where it was legally permissible to exclude the press and public, for example where the decision involved consideration of commercially sensitive information.
Currently the Council did not have individual decision making by Cabinet Members or Ward Councillors although these were both legally permissible.
Obviously in an organisation of the size and scale of Medway not all day?to?day decisions could be taken by elected Members. There was a scheme of delegation agreed by Councillors to enable Directors and their staff to take these day-to-day decisions and officers were required to work within this scheme.
The only exceptions he could see to this process were on the rare occasions when extremely urgent decisions must be made by himself, as Leader, or the Chief Executive or relevant Director where delay would have been to the detriment of the Council and on those occasions, there would be a requirement to report those matters as appropriate afterwards, however, these procedures had not been invoked since the 2011 Local Election.
Therefore, the Leader was satisfied that the elected Members of the Council made not only decisions on behalf of Medway residents but that these decisions are made in an open and transparent manner
John Ward thanked the Leader for the response as it was very useful to have that on the public record. He stated that until recent years, the Mayoralty was selected via a rather odd system that allocated points to named party political groups on the Council. Moving away from this had depoliticised the mayoral selection which had acted as a reminder to Members that they were here to serve the community’s interests over and above any personal or party ambitions, therefore, could the Leader ensure and assure that this current method of mayoral selection could never be changed in future years.
Councillor Rodney Chambers stated that he would give no such assurances and that like other decisions that he had mentioned earlier, which were the responsibility of the Council, the election of the Mayor was the responsibility of the Council.