Issue - meetings

The Monitoring Officer introduced the report and outlined the process in bringing forward the amendments to the Constitution to date which had included nine meetings of the Constitution Working Party (CWP).  She confirmed that corrections to the formatting would be undertaken prior to consideration at Council on 30 November 2023.  In addition, improvements to the navigation of the document, such as the inclusion of hyperlinks and an “intelligent” contents page would be introduced prior to the revised Constitution being officially published.

At the invitation of the Chairperson, Councillors Wallace, Read, Brook and Horrill addressed the meeting as summarised briefly below.

Councillor Wallace

He spoke as a member of the CWP which he believed had adopted a positive approach and achieved consensus about a great deal of the constitution.  He expressed concern about the frequency of full Council meetings and in particular the recent long gap due to a Council meeting being cancelled.  He welcomed the proposal to include feedback from Councillors on outside bodies to Council meetings and the clarification of the procedure regarding member and public participation at Cabinet meetings.  In general, he hoped that the amendments proposed would improve the operation of the Constitution in practice.

Councillor Horrill

She welcomed the opportunity of being a member of the CWP and endorsed the commitment to providing a briefing session to aid understanding of the Constitution by both councillors and officers.  She welcomed the proposals set out in paragraphs 12.6 and 12.18 of the report.  She raised three questions/points – a) Queried whether Article 14 required updating to reflect that contracts under £10k should be recorded in writing; b) Expressed disappointment regarding that a date for completion was not included in paragraph 14.2 of the report; c) Sought assurance that the version of the amended Constitution to be presented to Council would be corrected to remove typographical mistakes and incorrect formatting.

Councillor Read

With regard to the West of Waterlooville Forum he believed the Constitution should stipulate that meetings were held in person as he considered virtual meetings excluded some members of the public.  He emphasised that Forum covered a cross-boundary area and so was different to the other two development fora.  He also requested that the Winchester membership be comprised of councillors from those wards covered by the development area.  With regard to the Joint West of Waterlooville MDA Planning Committee, he expressed concern that no meetings had been held in the previous three years with all decisions being taken by officers under their delegated powers.  He believed that this was despite the parish council requesting that a decision be made by the joint committee on regular occasions.

Councillor Brook

She supported the comments made by Councillor Read.  As chairperson of Scrutiny Committee, she welcomed the proposal for the Monitoring Officer to use her discretion as to which committee was appropriate for pre-scrutiny consideration.  She believed it was essential that key decisions were subject to pre-scrutiny.

The Monitoring Officer responded to the comments made regarding the Joint West of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10