Agenda item

A Member asked…A Member, noting the passage of time since the Committee’s 2019 decision on gender-neutral nomenclature, asked if the Chairman agreed that all Members should be consulted on the change in wording of ‘Councilman’ to ‘Councillors’ on Ward Noticeboards, and that changes to Ward Noticeboards should require a majority of Members in any given ward, before changing the public declaration of who is and is not a Common Councilman.

The Chairman asked the Comptroller and City Solicitor to provide further information. The City Solicitor, noting elements of his answer would need to be provided in the non-public session, said that he did not think the agreed policy should be revised on the back of a question. The Chairman agreed that he would not want to change or reverse policies just because some Members did not like them; he also did not think that each Ward should have the discretion to set its own policy.

The Member asking the original question acknowledged that a policy had been agreed, but said there had since been significant membership changes. The Chairman asked officers why the Noticeboards had not been changed once the policy had been agreed. The Deputy Town Clerk replied to confirm that a decision had been taken in 2019 to use gender-neutral language on City Corporation communications, which had been implemented across a wide range of material. The scheduled all-out elections in 2021 had been postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic; while the Deputy Town Clerk could not say why the Noticeboards hadn’t been updated to reflect the policy after the 2022 election, he said it may have been missed due to several staffing changes in the Elections Office.

A Member asked whether the City Corporation should consider the necessity for Ward Noticeboards at all, as there were more frequent changes in Membership which made updating more expensive.

The City Solicitor undertook to reply to a question on cost in the non-public session.