Agenda item

To receive questions from members of the public who may wish to ask a general question of the Mayor, Cabinet Member or the Chairman of a Committee in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 12.

Two public questions had been submitted in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 12:-

(1)  Mr. Ashraf claimed the minutes and documentation of Council meetings was not fully accurate with information missing. For example, Councillor Alam was also referred to as Councillor Allen repeatedly in the information of the 28^th February Council meeting. He asked how could the Council improve the accuracy of its minutes and official documentation without the need for help from the public?

Councillor Sheppard, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Social Inclusion and Neighbourhood Working, thanked the member of the public for highlighting his concerns and confirmed that the particular instance he referred to had been corrected.

Staff in Democratic Services strived for high standards in the production of minutes, however, they were a summary of discussions to record the decisions taken in the meeting, along with a sense of the discussion around that decision.  They were not a verbatim record or transcript of the meeting itself.  Meetings that were webcast, like Council, were available for a year before being archived so were available for anyone to listen and hear verbatim what was discussed at a meeting.

Naturally human error did occur and were corrected where this arose. The minutes were always submitted to the next meeting for consideration and approval as a true and correct record of the proceedings, and provided the opportunity for any queries or inaccuracies to be addressed. 

The minutes of other meetings, such as the Cabinet, Audit Committee, Planning Board and Licensing Board and Committee were amongst some which were submitted to Council again allowing for any discrepancies to be addressed.

In a supplementary question Mr. Ashraf thanked the named Councillors for their forbearance and liked to ask if officers of the Council could not tell the difference between Councillors Saghir Alam and Sarah Allen how would the public know the difference. For one person to make an error it was being human, but to make what he believed multiple errors in the same official document was a cause for concern.  All attending Councillors then signed off the minutes without noticing calling into question their inability or unwillingness to put their heads above the parapet and challenge some simple mistakes which he believed were indicative of a wider more systemic noble nodding problem and very promiscuous for democratic accountability.  Just as the Council’s Solicitor’s personal opinion was sometimes conflicted with the legal opinion and no one here seemed to be able to challenge it by asking for its legal basis or outside independent legal advice.

For example, the local Council had been able to successfully challenge the official interpretation of Section 17 of the Local Government Act 1988 in the courts, previously cited as the Leicester City Council ruling and the more recent Waltham Forest Council and Islington Council court judgments were, in reality, a flagrant contradiction of the legal opinion of the Council's solicitor.

In addition, while checking his spelling for the legal cases he wanted to cite this afternoon within minutes he came across the Procurement Act 2023, with a magic sub-heading written in bold “The disapplication of duty in Section 17 of the Local Government Act 1988”.   If someone as simple as himself could repeatedly drag the proverbial horse and cart through the blind defence of Section 17 of the Local Government Act 1988 without trying, why could those that were legally educated, trained and employed not do so as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, there were multiple legal avenues to fulfil the wishes of the petitioners in full.   It was clearly not impossible, merely a matter of political will and competent legal advice.

Aside from my three suggestions at the last Cabinet meeting, how did the Council propose to remedy the naughty problem and asked would the Council seek independent legal advice following these court judgments and a last-minute legal discovery in order to fulfil the petition in full.

Councillor Sheppard again thanked the member of the public for his supplementary question and again gave his reassurance that staff in Democratic Services and everyone else at the Council strived for high standards in everything that was published and recorded.  As he mentioned earlier sometimes errors did occur.

With regards to the recent Cabinet meeting a number of queries and questions were given and the member of the public indicated that he would submit them in writing to the Leader.  Nothing as yet had been received so if all the concerns could be wrapped together then as soon as they were received and analysed a response would be provided back to the member of the public.

(2)  “T” was not present to ask the question so an answer would be provided in writing.