Members are invited to consider and note the impact of the repeal of this piece of legislation.
Minutes:
Members were reminded that the Localism Act 2011, among other things, had repealed the requirement for a statutory petitions scheme and mandatory e-Petitions facility. This had an effect of the process currently in place in Havering.
The former statutory Petitions Scheme had established clear procedures for handling petitions and there were some instances where statutory procedures were triggered by petitions. These were unaffected by the Localism Act – indeed, that Act had added to the number of statutory petition arrangements.
It was clearly useful for there to be a set procedure for handling petitions in order to ensure that there was a consistent and orderly approach to them. The proposed Procedure had been modelled on the former Petitions Scheme but omitted the statutory elements of it. In particular, it omitted entirely the provisions of the former Scheme that would have required petitions passing certain thresholds of signatory numbers to be debated by the relevant Overview & Scrutiny Committee (OSC) or the Council.
The former legislation required that each local authority set up on its website an e-Petitions facility. The Government made a financial contribution to the cost of so doing which, in the event, substantially exceeded the cost incurred by the Council in setting one up. The current e-Petitions facility was provided by the Council’s webcasting contractor.
As the cost of the initial installation of the facility had already been met by the government and there were effectively no on-going maintenance costs as the current contract with Public-I included the facility free of charge as part of the overall webcasting package, when the need to decide where to award a new contract arose, whichever provider was used, the facility would be effectively available at no cost and so the report proposed that there was no need to withdraw it.
As a consequence of the repeal of the statutory requirements in relation to petitions and e-Petitions, there was no longer a need to make specific provision in the Council, Committee and Overview & Scrutiny Procedure Rules for dealing with petitions, and the report invited the Committee recommend to Council that they be dispensed with.
Members were asked to note that the deletion of these provisions would not prevent Members from:
(a) Formally presenting petitions at Council meetings
(b) Submitting motions relating to the subject matter of petitions
(c) Requesting that the relevant Overview & Scrutiny Committee consider the subject matter of petitions
RESOLVED
That the Committee RECOMMEND to the Council that:
(i) Rule 23 of the Council Procedure Rules should be amended as follows:
(a) Omit the number 23.1 from in front of the opening paragraph
(b) Delete paragraphs 23.2 and 23.3 (which relate to the holding of debates in response to petitions having 3,500 or more signatories)
(ii) Rule 15 of the Committee Procedure Rules (which relates to the consideration by Overview & Scrutiny Committees of petitions having 2,500 or more signatories) be deleted and all subsequent paragraphs renumbered accordingly.
(iii) In the Overview & Scrutiny Procedure Rules:
(a) Sub-paragraphs (g) and (h) be deleted from Rule 2 (Role of OSCs: dealing with petitions)
(b) Sub-paragraph (e) be deleted from Rule 3 (Specific functions of OSCs: responding to petitions)
(c) Sub-paragraphs (vi) and (vii) be deleted from Rule 20 (Procedure at OSC meetings: considering petitions)