Agenda and minutes
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Contact: Moira Fraser
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Declarations of Interest To receive any Declarations of Interest from Members. Minutes: There were no declarations of interest received. |
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Petition Scheme for West Berkshire (C2030) Purpose: To discuss and where appropriate amend the draft petition scheme in order to recommend it to Full Council for approval. Additional documents: Minutes: The Committee considered a report (Agenda Item 3.) concerning the adoption pf a ‘Petition Scheme’ as required under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 (“The 2009 Act”). The scheme had been discussed at the previous committee meeting where it had not been possible to finalise the draft policy. At the meeting it was agreed that a working party should be convened. Following that meeting David Holling, the Council’s Monitoring Officer had explained that the deadline for introduction of the scheme was 15th June 2010 and as the September Council meeting was the first full meeting of the Council following the implementation date, it was imperative that the scheme was adopted at this meeting. No guidance had emerged from the Coalition Government suggesting that the scheme should not be adopted. By adopting the scheme at the September meeting, the Council would be able to catch up and ensure that the e-petition requirement was in place by 15th December 2010. As Monitoring Officer, he had to ensure that the Council acted in accordance with legislation and direction from Government and he considered that this policy had to be adopted as soon as possible. It had therefore been agreed that a special meeting should be convened, rather than setting up a working party, in order to consider all the changes requested by individual Members and the Committee as a whole.
Members considered the document and requested a number of minor amendments to the document. These included: · Correcting typographical errors, · the inclusion of a contact telephone number for enquiries about the petition scheme, · using the word ‘Council’ instead of ‘authority’, · replacing the words ‘decision-taker’ with ‘person or Committee making the decision’ and · amending the use of ‘she/he’ etc. In addition Members requested that: · the sentence ‘Exceptions can be made in special cases at the discretion of the Council’s Monitoring Officer’ be added to paragraph 6(a) of the scheme, · the sentence ‘The subject matter must relate to the West Berkshire District or to something over which the Council has responsibility or influence’ replaced the sentence ‘The subject matter must relate to something over which the Authority has some influence, or is an area over which it has responsibility’ in paragraph 2(c)(i), · the words ‘or their nominated representative’ be added after ‘petition organiser’ in the third and fourth bullet points in paragraph 7(d)’ and · add ‘vexatious’ into the list of reasons a petition might be rejected in paragraph 16(b). The Members agreed that the following thresholds and timescales would be recommended to Council for approval:
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