Agenda item

Report by the Head of Corporate and Community Services (attached).

The Committee considered a report by the Head of Corporate and Community Services regarding the Review of the Governance arrangements (tabled). 

The Head of Corporate and Community Services presented the Committee with an overview of the Review of the Governance arrangements.

He explained the background of the proposed Governance changes. In summary:

• Prior to 2000 all Councils operated in the same way.  Decisions were taken by Councillors sitting on Committees or by Officers under delegated powers. Decisions by Committee tended to be ratified by Council prior to implementation. There was no scrutiny of decisions.
• The Local Government Act of 2000 separated powers into Council and Executive powers. There had been four governance options (unless the Council had less than 85,000 electorate, in which case they only had one choice). There was a requirement for a cross party Overview and Scrutiny Committee to scrutinise Executive.
• Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007: removed Council Manager Model and introduced the ‘Strong Leader’ model – which the Council currently used.

The Committee discussed the current Council Structure and the Head of Corporate and Community Services confirmed that a cross party working group had examined the available options. They have considered each option against a set criteria. This was based on:

• No extra costs
• No extra meetings
• Wider member involvement
• Ownership of decision making
• Resilience to political change
• Based on Corporate Priorities
• Increased accessibility for the public etc
• Speed of decision making.

He added that:

• The report of the Cross Party Working Group’s findings had been presented to Full Council on 25^th February 2019 and would be taken to Council for final approval in April 2019.
• The recommendation of the Working group was that the Authority adopt a Committee Structure (to replace the existing Executive model) with Committees having delegated decision with only statutory issues taken to Full Council (Budget. Policy framework etc).
• The main changes would be that the Committees would be politically balanced and the Leader would be re-elected each year.
• If a new structure was adopted any further change would be prohibited for five years.
• Local Authorities had been given the opportunity to change their structures via the Localism Act of 2011. It gave them the powers to re-look at the arrangements made in 2007.
• The Committee system was “inherently more democratic, with more Councillors directly involved in decision making”.

The Chief Executive advised that he had experienced the governance arrangements in place prior to the current Executive structure, he was aware it had worked well previously although the Executive Structure had been designed to address the issue of decisions having to be made by a number of committees. This could be slow, and could often lead to each committee having to meet monthly in order to make decisions by set deadlines.  If delegated powers were in place it removed the need to go through multiple cycles.  He felt that Committees worked more effectively when the room was evenly split across political parties because it reduced the risk presented by internal challenge.

The Head of Corporate and Community Services advised that a Committee structure would not remove the useful functions of an Overview and Scrutiny Committee, but only remove the need for that Committee.  Those functions remaining would be contained within the Policy Development Committee.  That Committee, being cross party, would be able to make the decisions objectively with no need to call-in decisions.

RESOLVED that the Review of Governance Arrangements be noted.