Agenda and draft minutes

Public Speaking: To register your intention to speak at a Council, Cabinet or Committee meeting, please contact Democratic Services on committee@uttlesford.gov.uk or 01799 510410, 510548, 510369 or 510460. Panel, Forum and Working Group meetings do not generally permit public speaking. Please refer to a specific meeting's pdf agenda pack for further information and registration deadlines.

Live Broadcast: For Council, Cabinet and Committee meetings the video player will be available on this page under the Media banner a few minutes before the meeting is due to begin. Please note that Panel, Board, Forum and Working Group meetings are not generally broadcast on the website. We believe that live streaming video of our formal decision making meetings, and publishing the recordings to be watched back later, is good for democracy – and you can find these videos on our website. This video technology sits alongside the longstanding practice of providing seats in the public gallery for members of the public and journalists to turn up and watch our in-person meetings live. Please understand that whilst we will continue to make every reasonable effort to ensure that our key public meetings at which important decisions are live streamed and recorded, any failure in that technology does not in any way invalidate the legitimacy of that meeting or of the decisions taken at it. Even in the event of such occasional technical failures, the public gallery will still have been open, as required by law, and the minutes of the meetings will still be made available in due course.

Zoom and YouTube have their own privacy and data security policies, which can be accessed at www.zoom.us and www.youtube.com.

Venue: Zoom - https://zoom.us/. View directions

Contact: Chris Gibson 

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies for absence and declarations of interest

To receive any apologies and declarations of interest.

Minutes:

Apologies were received from the Monitoring Officer.

 

2.

Minutes of the previous meeting pdf icon PDF 196 KB

To consider the minutes of the previous meeting.

Minutes:

The minutes of the meeting held on 26 April 2021 were approved as a correct record.

 

3.

Evaluation of Current Position and Possible Next Steps pdf icon PDF 133 KB

To consider the Review of Governance Arrangements report referred back by Full Council 20 July 2021.

 

To review progress made against the Terms of Reference.

 

To consider possible next steps.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair introduced the report; he said that there had been a change in stance at the Council meeting from a previously agreed position at GRWG and that had been why he had asked for the matter to be referred back to GRWG. He said that in his view if the Opposition parties would not support the previously recommended way forward of holding Portfolio Holder briefings on a trial basis, then there was little point in continuing to meet as a working group. He said that, although there had been delays in the work of the group due to COVID, he felt that he had failed to deliver in his position as Chair and that his intention would be to report this back to Full Council recommending disbanding the group. He invited Members to comment.

 

A general discussion took place covering various areas:

 

·         It was said that one of the original reasons for setting up the GRWG had been to ensure that there was not an extreme concentration of power held by the leaders of the Administration and that all Councillors should contribute to the decision-making process. Some concerns were expressed that the current Administration had become slightly technocratic; it was highlighted that it was the job of Opposition parties to challenge the Administration.

·         It was questioned whether or not the Administration and the Opposition parties really had the will to make changes to governance arrangements.

·         It was recognised that the merits of a Cabinet system as opposed to a Committee system had been previously debated by GRWG and that the preference remained for a Cabinet system.

·         The merits of introducing Portfolio Holders’ briefings were discussed and it was felt that agreement was unlikely to be reached on this matter.

·         It was stated that there was a need to run an efficient Council, not just a “chatroom”. The need for greater accountability was also highlighted.

·         Concerns were expressed that some areas of the Council had appeared to have become officer led.

·         Many “softer” culture issues had been identified and minuted at previous GRWG meetings. Views were expressed that the actual system of governance was less important than the relationships between Councillors and their standards of behaviour. It was felt there was a need for transparency, openness, honesty, respect for one another and trust. It had been recognised that there would be disagreements and challenges but that there was a need to disagree well in a non-hostile atmosphere.  

·         Some concerns were expressed about the need for continuous improvement and a perceived lack of training for Councillors was highlighted. It was recognised that long standing Councillors were in a position to pass on their experiences. However, it was stated that even long-standing Councillors did not necessarily always demonstrate good practice.

·         The importance of the Opposition parties being able to feed into processes was stressed and there was a need to recognise that some Opposition Councillors were also still on a learning curve as were some of those in the Administration.

·         It was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.