A report to recommend changes to the Constitution to full Council.

The Head of Legal Services introduced the report the purpose of which was to recommend changes to the constitution to Full Council.

• 10 recommendations had been prepared and were included in the appendices.
• Changes had arisen organically, largely from officers raising issues with parts of the constitution that “don’t make sense” and not from any individual member group.
• The aim was to identify and resolve issues early, avoiding problems at Full Council.

• Extensive consultation had taken place with officers, group leaders (twice) and political groups and external organisations including a prior meeting of the Audit and Governance committee.

• The committee were asked to approve the report going to Full Council.
• An additional recommendation to make minor changes in consultation with the Chairperson, due to a late group response that had not yet been reviewed was sought.

In response to committee questions, it was noted that;

1. The Monitoring Officer (MO) would exercise discretion on whether a repeat question was materially the same, whether circumstances had changed, or whether an original question was adequately answered.
2. Clearer guidance on questions was not included in the constitution but would be placed on line explaining the purpose of the changes and the reasoning behind restrictions, to avoid appearing to limit public participation. Reference of this would be added into the council final report. (action 2025/26-12)
3. The public questions register which recorded all past questions to support consistency and enforcement would be reintroduced with the possibility of publishing online to be explored. (action 2025/26-13)
4. It was clarified that the rule about “ongoing, repeat or business usual” capital schemes only applied to routine, recurring programmes such as school property maintenance, IT refresh cycles, or standard highway upgrades. Schemes where the same type of work is repeated each year, did not require a new full business case each time. However, this did not apply to multiphase projects. If phase one of a major project had a full business case approved, this did not remove the need for a new full business case for phase two. Each phase still required its own proper assessment unless it fell into the routine “repeat” category.
5. The aim of the LRP was to improve outcomes for everyone involved in parish and town council Code-of-Conduct issues. Personally the HLS agreed with the idea that if a parish or town council choose not to handle its own internal conduct matters and instead, asked the county council and Monitoring Officer to carry out a full investigation, then it would be reasonable for that council to pay the associated costs, noting that such investigations can be time consuming and resource intensive, and the principle is that councils should take responsibility for the problems they generated.

Resolved that the committee approves the recommendations in the report to be submitted to the next available full Council meeting, and delegates any further changes to the Monitoring Officer/ Deputy MO in consultation with the chair of the committee.