The Council takes most of its decisions through its committees. The Council itself appoints members to committees and those who represent it on external bodies. After each committee meeting the minutes go to the next Council meeting for information and members who were not on a committee can ask the Chairman for more details of a paricular decision or report.
Committees have the power to make decisions on behalf of the Coucnil, and normally their decision is final. A committee can chose to refer a metter to full Council for final decision if it wants to. The Planning Committee has done this on major developemtns, for example the Edgar Street Grid.
All Councillors recieve copies of all agendas so they can decide whether they wish to attend a committee they are not on. The notices of meetings, agendas and approved minutes are on the website, use the links to the left to find what you are looking for. All committees are open to the public and where people have views they wish to present to members you can arrange to speak on what is known as a deputation. If you wish to do this please contact the Town Clerk who will advise you how to go about it.
Sometimes the Coucnil or one of its committees goes into a private session, this is known as “exclusion of the press and public”. The two occasions this might arise are when we are looking at individual staffing issues and people could be identified from the papers being considered or when commercially sensitive information about tenders to supply goods or services to us is being considered. Wherever possible we make sure we can discuss these matters openly, for example by removing names from reports and referring to companies bidding for services as A, B, C etc rather than by their business names.
CALENDAR OF COUNCIL MEETINGS FOR THE MUNICIPAL YEAR 2011/2012:
