Agenda item

Minutes

To agree the public minutes and summary of the meeting held on 18 February 2020.

Minutes:

The Committee considered the public minutes and summary of the meeting held on 18 February 2020.

 

MATTERS ARISING

Terms of Reference and Frequency of Meetings (page 4) – A Member spoke to ask that some additional points made by himself and another Member were added to the minutes under this item on the basis that he considered to be as, or more, important than some of those already recorded.

 

He asked that, ahead of the MOTION set out on page 4, the following words be added after the sentence ending …”decisions on major projects”:

“She added that the advantage of a Committee having all Wards represented was to make it more difficult for a group of influential members to dominate decision making in the Corporation. She explained that this protection was very limited, because only 20% of Members represented residential wards, whose interests were typically different from those of other Wards, but she believed it was better than nothing, and without it she would not now be addressing this Committee”.

 

He went on to request that the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph on page 6 be amended to read: “With reference to the Governance Review, the Member stated that he believed that this was likely to delay this decision unnecessarily and that the simplicity of this proposal would mean that it could be made now. In response to the Alderman who suggested that all Committees would be Ward Committees if all wards were to be represented, the Member pointed out that ward representation was only important on Committees that had the most important functions, which the Ward Committees generally had. In response to the Member who advocated that the Planning Committee should cease to be a Ward Committee because of prejudice and predetermination on the part of resident councillors, the Member pointed out that this could equally, or more so, be said of councillors representing business wards.

 

Another Member interjected to underline that minutes were not intended to be verbatim records and that he was of the view that the minutes, as they stood, represented the reasonable debate that had been had on this matter at the previous meeting.  The Chair and Deputy Chairman agreed with the point made and stressed that it was for the Town Clerk to express the spirit of what was said given that it was not feasible to reflect all comments made by all Members in relation to all items. The Deputy Chairman added that he had no issue with amendments proposed by Members in terms of accuracy.

 

The Member proposing the amendments underlined that he was not requesting that his comments be recorded verbatim but did feel that some key points of his statements at the last meeting had been omitted.

 

With the agreement of the Committee, the Town Clerk undertook to revise the minute accordingly.

 

The Tulip – Appeal (page 10) – The same Member asked that amendments be made to the minute of this item where he felt that two important points made had been omitted. He firstly proposed that the end of the first paragraph under this Item be added to as follows “…and how the City Corporation could reconcile its quasi-judicial role as a planning authority with the proposal that it should actively support an appeal made by a developer in relation to an application that this Committee had previously considered”.

 

With the agreement of the Committee, the Town Clerk undertook to revise the minute accordingly.

 

Finally, the Member proposed that a comment made by another Member be reflected in the minute of this item, setting out that he had pointed out that material relating to the City Corporation’s position was already available to the developer, who could use it in the appeal without the Corporation’s assistance. The Deputy Chairman stated that he found the addition of this point on behalf of a Member not present today was problematic. The Committee therefore asked that this matter be confirmed with the Member in question and the approval of these minutes therefore be deferred until the next meeting of this Committee. (* - please see further note at item 20).

 

 

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