Issue - meetings

That committee sizes remained as they were.

In presenting the report the Chief Officer (Governance) referred to the comments made around committee sizes at the Annual Meeting of Full Council last year.  Information was provided on the work which had been undertaken and committee were referred to the table at paragraph 1.06 of the report.  The Chief Officer outlined his rationale and the difficulties that he had encountered trying to ensure that all groups were represented.  An outline was provided of the complexities of increasing or decreasing the seats on committees whilst ensuring that they were compliant with the Political Balance Rules.  It was also explained that some committees, such as Audit & Governance Committee, Planning Committee and Standards had been ruled out from this as the membership for these was different.

            Councillor Bernie Attridge commented that he would vote for this to remain the same.

            Councillor Alasdair Ibbotson referred to the illustration and wondered if it would assist if the Labour party lost one seat on the Community & Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee for which it had 6 seats, to be compensated by gaining a seat on the Audit & Governance Committee, where the Labour group had two seats and the Independent Group had 3.  This would ensure that there were no changes in the Labour Group’s allocation and remove the majority on any committee with the seat on Community & Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee becoming available to compensate the group which would lose a seat on Audit & Governance Committee

            In response the Chief Officer commented that this was lawful and that he could not see an issue with it.  If Members wished to reduce the size to 11 then he was happy to go away and work on this.  He felt that the current system worked because of the way members chose to apply the rules with seats allocated to people who were interested in the work of a specific committee.  This was why Members were happy with the current situation.  

            Councillor Paul Johnson referred felt the way that the seats were awarded on political balance worked well and he could see no reason to change the existing status quo.

            Councillor Arnold Woolley also felt that there was no need to change the present system as it worked well.

Councillor Ted Palmer moved the recommendation which was seconded by

Councillor Paul Johnson

RESOLVED:

That committee sizes remained as they were.