Wirral Council’s Standards Committee agrees recommendation on changes to notices of motion procedural rules

                                                            

Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee meeting held on the 23rd November 2015

One of the changes agreed by councillors at last night’s meeting of Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee was a change to the protocol for dealing with referred notices of motion. Referred notices of motion are notices of motion that have been sent by Wirral Council’s Mayor to one of Wirral Council’s committees to debate instead of being debated at a Council meeting.

The changes to time limits on speeches for the proposer (5 minutes) and right of reply (3 minutes) were to bring the time limits in line with new time limits proposed for Council meetings.

However an extra category of speaker has been added. This is described in the new rules as "any other person" and they will have three minutes to speak. "Any other person" is described as "at the discretion of the Chairperson, other persons with expertise on the subject of the Motion may be invited to attend the meeting at which it is to be considered"

These new rules won’t apply to next week’s high-profile Notice of Motion Proposal for a fire station on green belt land in Saughall Massie to be discussed by councillors on Wirral Council’s Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee at a public meeting starting at 6.00pm on the 2nd December 2015 in Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall. This is because the recommendation by the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee (if agreed by Council on the 14th December) won’t come into effect until the 15th December 2015. At a previous meeting of the Regeneration and Environment Committee councillors wanted to ask questions of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service officers about why they wanted to build a new fire station in Saughall Massie.

Instead the rules agreed earlier in the year by the Coordinating Committee will apply (the part on referred notices of motion starts at the top of page 6).

Hopefully this won’t cause a decision on the issue to be deferred yet again!

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.