Agenda item

SEALING OF COUNCIL DOCUMENTS AND DELEGATION TO LEGAL OFFICERS

Report to follow when available

Minutes:

The report before the Committee proposed a number of minor refinements to the Constitution in respect of the procedure in relation to the sealing of Council legal documents and the delegation of legal powers to legal officers and it invited Members to recommend to Council a change in the arrangements in relation to this procedure in order to enable a more efficient management of the respective legal processes.

 

The Interim Deputy Director Legal and Governance explained that the current process – which involved the Mayor or the Deputy Mayor to affix the seal and add their signatures to these legal documents – was now anachronistic.  She supported this assertion by referring to a survey she had just conducted which showed that none of the 14 responding London boroughs involved their Mayor or the Mayor’s deputy in this process.

 

In addition, with the Council’s legal services now having been transferred to oneSource which was located in Stratford (the better to serve both Newham and Havering), the process was even more costly and time-consuming and those parties waiting for signed and sealed contracts, were becoming frustrated with the delays the Havering system currently contained.

 

The Committee was assured by both the Leader and Councillor Melvin Wallace (both former mayors) that the task of signing and sealing these contracts – which in themselves only represented a small proportion of the contracts being signed on a daily basis by legal officers – was in itself time-consuming and added nothing to the legal process, especially as most of the documents for sealing were land transfers or of a complex nature and so the formality of adding the seal and their signature had only an historic significance.

 

The Interim Deputy Director added that this might be an appropriate time to increase the minimum sum involved from the current £100,000 – which had been in place for a long time – to a more realistic amount: £150,000.  It was noted that the report contained a typographic error in the first recommendation relating to the proposed minimum value of the contract and this was amended by the Committee.  The revised figure could be reviewed after a suitable period and was still modest in comparison to a number of other London boroughs.

 

A Member raised concerns about the removal of elected Members from the process and after further discussion the report’s recommendations were put to the vote.

 

In favour of the motion to accept the recommendations as outlined in the report:

Councillors: Joshua Chapman, Roger Ramsey, Melvin Wallace, Damian White, Meg Davis, Osman Dervish, Clarence Barrett, Ray Morgon, Stephanie Nunn, Darren Wise, June Alexander and Lawrence Webb

There were no votes against the motion

Councillor David Durant abstained

 

The motion was CARRIED by twelve votes to none.

 

The Committee resolved to recommend to Council that:

 

1.            The second paragraph of Article 10.4 of the Constitution be amended to read:

 

“Contracts must be made under the common seal of the Council in accordance with rule 16 of the Contract Procedure Rules.  Contracts under £150,000 may, in most circumstances, be signed by the Chief Executive or the appropriate Group Director, Director of Legal and Governance or Head of Service in accordance with the Contracts Procedure Rules set out in Part 4.

 

2.            The monetary threshold for the sealing of contracts as set out in rule 16 of the Contract Procedure Rules be raised to £150,000.

 

3.            Article 10.5 of the Constitution be amended to read

 

The common seal of the Council may be affixed to any document on the authority of any either of the Chief Executive, a Group Director, the Director of Legal and Governance, the Deputy Director of Legal and Governance, a Principal or Senior Lawyer.

 

“The seal shall be attested by that individual and an entry of every sealing of a document shall be made and consecutively numbered in a register to be provided for the purpose and shall be signed by the person who has attested the seal.”

 

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